Yo! Been a second! I've been heads down in Yards (and probably a bunch of other shit), but wanted to sit down and organize my thoughts around 2025 for me and-me adjacent people. I'm listening to Lapalux while working on this, specifically the album When You're Gone, in case you wanna synchronize vibes as you read this. This is a very selfish post, all about me. Thanks for caring.
Black Dave MK2
Last year in August, I finally released an album I've been talking about and tinkering with for a long time, Aspiring Gundam Pilot (listen here!), and with that I updated my artist name to Black Dave MK2. The idea behind changing my name was that I needed to separate myself from the other Black Dave's on the internet & making music, and I've been entertained by the idea of just saying "I'm the new and improved Black Dave" by adding an MK2 to my name. MK2, pronounced Mark 2 (but MK2 is acceptable too I suppose), just means version 2...and I figured its a good way to poke fun at the other Black Dave's that exist out there, while giving myself a little space not only from them, but from my old self(?).
Anyway, I'm working on new music (I'm lying I've made like 6 beats this year that I def won't be using for my music) and will be trying to create some experiences for everyone soon. I started playing shows (I'm also lying I played one show and I gotta get a few booked but that's in the itinerary), and I'm out of shape but I do know the words to my songs and I'm really funny on stage so if you hear about one I'm playing at, come see me. The algorithm isn't friendly when it comes to announcing things, so good luck to both of us.
The Artist's Way
Since the beginning of the year, I've been reading (and doing) the Artist's Way, which is a book that I call a creative recovery exercise. It's a 12 week long experience designed to unblock the creativity that may be in front of you. I heard A$AP Ferg mention it in a recent interview with Zane Lowe and (more importantly) I saw that Doechii had read and completed it as well. She documented it all on her YouTube, except for week 12, which I'm upset about because I wanted to know how it ended for her. Shortly after completing The Artist's Way, her career started moving in a positive direction. I'm not gonna say it's why but I am gonna say there's no such thing as coincidence. I'm 3 weeks in and I'm doing my best to follow the sort of submit myself to the exercise. I'm not completely creatively depleted or blocked, but I'm definitely creatively out of shape...so this is a fun journey. This is a big theme of the first quarter (12 weeks) of my year, so don't expect a ton of creations until after.
Yards
Coming with me into 2025 is my video series, Yards. For those unfamiliar with Yards, I make videos in my yard, talking about different things on my mind. Some episodes are a minute long some art 15 minutes long. I worked really hard to make sure they're uncut as much as possible, so you can participate in it at the cadence I'm actively thinking in. I recently locked in an Executive Producer for Yards, which provides me with the resources to continue to bring this series weekly (or as close to it as possible) through 2025. The term "executive producer" here is a bit different than you may traditionally know it, and in this context I mean it as direct support to make this happen (in this case financial, but can mean a lot of things). I try to upload them on Wednesdays to Zora and my social media pages, as well as YouTube & the episodes as a podcast.
Black Dave Token
2025 is going to be an interesting year for Black Dave Token. Black Dave Token, for the uninitiated, is a token designed to provide me with direct financial support to make my ideas happen. There are 1,000,000 editions of this token available for collection, and if all sell, I would have received support to the tune of 250 ETH. Each token sells for .00025 ETH (I did the math so you don't have to) and so far, I've sold 29,513 of the 1,000,000 available. In 2023 and into 2024, folks were buying the token to show support for me and what I'm providing to the web3 ecosystem, but as a result of the market conditions, and life in general, that's slowed to almost a complete halt. One of the most known things that have spawned from the existence of Black Dave Token is a gated telegram chat that a lot of the supporters, around half, are in. We have tons of excellent conversation about all sorts of topics and have fostered deeper relations with each other. Some really cool people in there. I honestly can't believe the quality of folks in there. I can be nothing but grateful to be supported by such fire individuals.
Anyway, I have no clue what the future of Black Dave Token is, but no one will let me quit doing it so I'll keep thinking of ways to push it forward for as long as y'all will have me.
NFTs & Web3
NFTs are in such a bad place right now. All of the individual creators I know aren't doing too stellar right now. Crypto as a whole is such an algorithm driven echo chamber that we essentially hear about the same few projects (not individuals) over and over and over again in our segment of that echo chamber. Looking at it all more broadly, Web3 (which I just define as "the internet + crypto" or "the crypto-enabled internet" & I know it's way more than that but we tryna keep it simple) is more focused on the ability for individuals to spin up their own crypto token (we call them memecoins for the non-crypto folks reading this) and try to drive attention and revenue to it. Toward the end of 2024, I launched an NFT project called 3% (which I wrote about), and after that I launched a memecoin of my own. Let's talk about that.
$ANTI - Anti Memes Meme Club
I launched a token of my own called Anti Memes Meme Club, an obvious play on Anti Social Social Club, with the intent of releasing a few pieces of clothing, which will actually just be bootlegs of other streetwear pieces that say "Meme" or "Memes" or something like that. This is an experiment for me, to figure out how running a token works, as we lead up to doing a coin for Project Phäros.
The way a memecoin works, and seems to generate revenue, is through trading fees. Each trade has a small fee associated with it, and as the creator of the token, you get a % of those fees. As I continue to work on and bring attention to the token, people trade it, and I make money from those trades. I also made 3% be an NFT you buy in ANTI instead of in ETH. That just sends me the equivalent value in ANTI instead of ETH. Been fun so far just figuring out what I can do.
My ultimate goal with ANTI is to make some tees that you can buy with ANTI instead of cash or ETH. Or if you're buying with cash or ETH, it converts to ANTI then buys. Just stick with me on this one. I don't know how far it'll go but I at least wanna do one tee to prove the concept out.
Project Phäros
Finally free from the chains of our partnership with Rarible, Project Phäros has been reinfused with new energy. Matt Monday and I (and a league of contributors) worked super hard to bring the project to everyone, and while it didn't take off as it we had hoped. No problem, a project doesn't need to have a stellar first week to be important to musical zeitgeist, and it's the same for NFT projects. We're working on getting a few new ideas put together and will be bringing the project back to you with new energy. We're decently along in the process of getting an animation done, and will throw more details at you guys on that soon.
Black Dave Energy Co.
I did a video a while back and I don't remember the title but the subtitle was "don't be surprised if your favorite content creator is VC backed" and Black Dave Energy Co will be my effort toward that. I've written about this idea of artists as business entities many times, but I think in the multihyphenate era we exist in right now, there is a stronger case for that now more than ever. I'm gonna try it. Let me know if you wanna help me put my ideas into a compelling deck to a) convince people that this is worth it and b) raise some money so I can be my highest self. One of the earliest ideas I had for a clothing brand I'm working on is inspired by the Shinra (Energy Co.) logo from Final Fantasy 7, so maybe I just use that here instead. I kinda wanna do this a bit out in the open, but we'll see.
Miscellaneous Other Shit
I have a lot more ideas of random things I wanna do. I had a collection of ideas already in the Black Dave Token vault, and who knows what else is there now. I have a simple game idea I wanna do that I'm trying to figure out. I wanna release a photo book I shot that my friend Desmond directed called Hey Girl combined with an art opening type event, showing the photos and maybe selling the books. I wanna do a hi-fi listening bar pop up called The Player's Club (shout out Liv for this one). I need music videos. I need to learn ads for my music. I have ideas!
If You Made It This Far, Thanks!
I'll keep the outro short. Thanks for the support.
There are many links here and I'm sorry for that but I hope you enjoy them.
