“The Road to Sweets 2” is a series of drops I’m rolling out on Sound.xyz over the coming weeks
It’s all leading up to a collection of music NFT’s for my album, Sweets 2
The “Road” singles will be the last music I release under the name “Lackhoney”.
After these drops, all of my music will be released under my real name: Aly.
This is part of a combined web2/web3 rebrand that I’ve been planning since November 2021.
There will be perks/free mints for any collector who picks up all of the “Road” drops.
There’s gonna be a whole other set of drops for the Sweets 2 music videos/short film, which are almost done!!!!
If you’ve collected any of my work, come join my gated Collectors TG. Link below.
Sweets 2 is an album made up of 12, 30-second songs.
It’s 6 minutes long and tells the story of one year of my life, where I saved up money and moved to Nashville, TN to pursue music for all of 2021.
It’s going to be my first release in web3 as Aly, and my first web2 release in about a year under the same name.
It is also a short film/music video, but that’s a conversation for another day.
A series of releases leading up to a larger drop for the Sweets 2 album.
Collectors of “ROAD” singles will get a free mint of the Sweets 2 collection when it drops.
Collectors holding all of the “ROAD” singles on Sound will get an early free mint when the Sweets 2 project drops.
“ROAD” singles started with Stupid on Sound, which sold out in like 10 seconds (thank you to everyone who grabbed it, and for everyone who’s copped off secondary)
You can tell it’s a “ROAD” single because in the bottom left corner it says “ROAD” in all caps (example below)
During that year, I heard about NFT’s from a Gary V video and started researching. I didn’t see any outlets for music to exist on-chain so I started trading art NFT’s on Nifty Gateway in between studio sessions and food delivery shifts. I lost a few hundred dollars and didn’t think about NFT’s again for a while.
Over the course of that year I hit my highest highs and lowest lows (since then the highs have gotten higher and the lows have gotten lower, so it goes).
One of the biggest blessings to come my way in that year was being connected with the producer Supah Mario, who I’d looked up to for years beforehand. (He’s produced on the last 3 Drake albums, along with a long, long, long list of others.)
We linked over twitter before I knew anything about Web3, back when I still had 180 followers and tweeted once every 2 years.
He was hosting a contest to promote a sound pack he’d recently released and I sent him the link to the video for Sweets 1 as my entry.
He chose me as a winner of the contest and we scheduled a time for a 15 minute Zoom call. I couldn’t make it home in time for the call so I ended up having it in the middle of my night-shift delivering food. I sent him the early version of Sing Aloud (which you can listen to here).
That 15 minute chat turned into a number of 3 hour conversations over that week where we talked about music, shared about our lives and traded advice on specific music production techniques.
On each one of these calls he was sending me anywhere from 10-30 beats. I was sending him back a song or two a day at that point. (The “Road” drops are comprised of a few of our favorite singles + even some full versions of songs from Sweets 2).
At first the songs we were making were all just isolated singles without any storyline.
After some months of working consistently together I had the idea to make the sequel to my first album Sweets on all Supah Mario beats.
I’d been working on a full album at that point and decided to take the core story of that project and tell it over Mario’s production.
I did the bulk of the project in the 2 weeks following that idea but it didn’t feel right to drop it yet. I needed the visuals to go along with it.
I also knew that I couldn’t afford the video at that moment, since I was subsisting off of $1200 a month from delivery money, so the project went on the back burner for a while.
In October 2021, I discovered artists like Daniel, Haleek and Ibn and saw a whole new world emerging for artists just like me receiving insane blessings and wins for the first times in their careers.
I dove in immediately and started having calls with people in the space. That decision alone was huge.
https://twitter.com/lackhoney/status/1484156645810872320?s=20&t=6MhvektOKYkZEKmdJRECIQ
Thanks to those connections I quickly sold two music video NFT’s to Buddha and Adam D’Augelli--both folks that I will forever have nothing but love and gratitude for. Without their early support I don’t know if I would’ve had the faith to make it here.
https://twitter.com/lackhoney/status/1459249972973649929?s=20&t=euRpmBZRW-XIin2urBG_rQ
With the support of the community + friends I made in Web3, I went on to break the record for the largest PartyBid on Glass Protocol at 4.804 ETH ($14520.40 at the time, rip 3k eth).
That auction alone was an insane saga that you can read about here after you finish this one.
Then I got on Catalog and had my largest sale to this day for Sweets.
Still an insane moment to reflect on.
https://twitter.com/catalog__bot/status/1542984035005243393?s=20&t=euRpmBZRW-XIin2urBG_rQ
I went from being:
An unemployed college graduate living in Nashville
Delivering food 10 hours a day, 6 days a week to pay rent
Failing to blow up on Tiktok (and as a result losing hope that music would work for me)
To now being:
An artist that’s found a new sense of direction, purpose and belonging largely thanks to this space
A working pilot in LA (but only 1-9 days a month)
Able to part of some insane projects like SongCamp Chaos, LNRZ Freshman class, a verse for SongADayMann’s 5000th song + more
Taken risks + run experiments like my Barter Drop
Able to spend even MORE time to work on music than before.
Able to find funding via NFT sales and a web3 creative grant (shoutout MODA DAO) for the music video/short film of my dreams for Sweets 2
(Announcements coming soon on the video! If you join the TG I’m leaking snippets in there.)
Since I first started making music under the name “Lackhoney,” i’ve always felt like it wasn’t exactly the right fit. anytime i meet someone in person, i insist that they call me by my actual name, Aly.
It’s been almost a year since I’ve released any music on Web2, and in that time I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the artist that I’ve been in the past and how i’d like to evolve going forward.
The initial aha moment for me was after I made Readjusting.
https://www.sound.xyz/lackhoney/readjusting
It didn’t feel like “Lackhoney”.
It felt like ME.
It felt like Aly.
The Road to Sweets 2 will be the last music I release under the name “Lackhoney”.
Following these drops all of my music will be under the name Aly.
See you on Sound <3
P.S. This is the golden egg art for my next drop. Crews wya
