We opened the doors tonight and the room showed up. First Kookout in the books, and it set the standard for what these Tuesdays are going to be. The thesis: in a year when everybody is scared AI is coming for their work, the real question is not whether a machine can copy your sound. It is what it is even copying. The answer is your signature. The choices you make, the space you leave, the lived experience that no model has in its training data. AI can copy the output. It cannot copy the lineage. You cannot prompt a life. We were honored to have Phil Cornish in the room. Phil has played and produced with Kanye West, J. Cole, Alessia Cara, and Coco Jones, and his story is a masterclass on its own. He broke down how he got the call to a Kanye session with no brief, and how he won the room by doing the opposite of what most people do. He did not try to lead. He read the room, listened, found the objective, and delivered it without getting in the way. His point landed hard: success in collaboration is about role clarity, not ego. The greats partner with talent. They do not compete with it. Crystal pulled up and talked through her collaboration with Kosine and her new single "What You Doing," out June 19. Go support it. Kosine tied the whole night together with the through-line he has been living for years. Be different, not just good. Confidence and team-building over chasing a look. And the reminder underneath all of it: connection without expectation. Phil's career-changing run started with a chance meeting in 2012 and a relationship that was never transactional. We also sat with the difference between chasing the bag and being the bag, and a quick stop on the difference between profit and prophet. Same sound, different soul. The challenge this week: bring one original loop or verse built from scratch. No AI on the core idea. Be ready to defend your signature out loud. This is the work. Next steps: - Want favor in the room (priority questions, DMs, replays, cohort)? Become an Internz Academy member.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 Good morning! So, from our last session, we were instructed to write our life but also write something based off the lecture. While I was fully invested in all of the nuggets being tossed in the pot from @Kosine Palacios , I was simultaneously consumed with the opening words "Usher passed on your song". 🤣🤣🤣 I promise I paid attention though. But ultimately at the end of it all, this is what was produced from that pain! I also have to say I just watched Michael B. Jordan's new animated movie "Swapped" on Netflix. S.N. my mama basically told me to write something else lol

*A field report from the front line of creative entrepreneurship.* --- Tonight's class was a working week translated into curriculum. We opened with **the Akai homecoming**. The drum machine that built a career in 2001, a used MPC 2000 bought on Yamaha Motif money, is back in the picture in 2026 at a different altitude. From an Arizona State University stage with the new MPC Live 3 to live conversations with the Akai team about what comes next, the lesson was simple: your tools are not just tools. They become characters in your story. Pay attention to which ones keep showing up. We sat with the **vintage gear dream**. The next chapter is hardware. Real circuits. Real instruments. A vault built around a producer's true sonic fingerprint. The discipline that gets you there is the same discipline that bought the first machine. Save. Study. Show up. Then we walked into **Day 1 of arguably the biggest male R&B stadium tour of all time**. The R&B Tour Usher and Chris Brown, 33 stadium dates this summer through winter. The lesson from inside that room was not glamour. It was craft on top of craft on top of craft. When you finally get into the room you've been praying for, your job is not to perform. It's to listen. We honored **the architects**. Iz Avila and the Avila Brothers — the production duo behind Usher's "Burn" off Confessions, behind work with Stevie Wonder, Boyz II Men, KEM, Brian McKnight. Two Latin American brothers from the Bay Area whose fingerprints are all over an era of Black American music. The takeaway: the architects rarely live in the spotlight. Find them. Sit near them. Carry their bags if they let you. We named **the Latin secret sauce**, the centuries-long conversation between Latin musicianship and Black American music, baked into the DNA of how a record like "Burn" actually feels. Where culture shows up in your music whether you meant to put it there or not is the part of your sound that nobody else can copy. We taught **studio etiquette in four corners**: walking in, working, speaking, leaving. Be early. Be quiet. Listen twice as much as you talk. Speak in service of the song. Thank the engineer by name. Be invitable again.

Hearing @Kosine Palacios play his new project on our last call & challenging us to pick up an instrument or practice our instrument(s) was necessary for all of us. Since then I have been randomly listening to older music(all genres) As a result, I am discovering sooooo many remakes(artist utilizing another skill for creative maximization). I am “today years old” of finding out Michael McDonald did a remake of Marvin Gaye’s song. The language & interpretation of music has and will always be “fascinating”. Brand new week. Brand new ideas. Consistent focus. Consistent drive. Consistent discipline. Consistent diligence, perseverance. https://youtu.be/_0cjdfWWlxk?si=TW9A5WpCFKDjduQv

We went deep on what I learned sitting front row at Jon Batiste's keynote at USC. We talked about John Mayer's masterclass. I broke down the Bangladesh situation and what "stealing a style" really means in music production. I showed you how I discovered six figures in uncollected royalties from my own catalog. And I played unreleased saxophone covers from Kover Girl before anyone else on the planet hears them. If you were there: drop your biggest takeaway in the comments. I want to hear what hit hardest. If you missed it: this is what happens every Tuesday at 4 PM. The next one will be even bigger. This week's assignment: Go to your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). Look up your songs. Make sure the splits and publishers are correct. If you find something wrong, post it here. We'll work through it together. Your money might be sitting in a database right now waiting for you to claim it. Mine was.