I’ve gone through four different living situations, grown in every category of my artistry and taken a deeper look at myself than ever before.

The project grossed 6.0 ETH across 770 editions – in the middle of a bear market! 

Not bad considering I accidentally closed the mint a day early!!! Sorry prospective FOMOers!

Here’s how it unfolded.

RECAP

SWEETS 2 was dropped in three chapters, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. It’s the first album to be released as open editions on Sound, and the first one to feature 30-second songs.

Each chapter covered a different part of the story of the album, and were released as 3 day open editions minting on both Sound and aly.works.

This has been an experiment in community-led rarity, and has given me valuable insights to take into the web2 rollout.

You can read more about SWEETS 2 in my last article.

https://mirror.xyz/imaly.eth/FO89wBSKTcdhkJG5d1oXREbIAE1DlUR3oYQlbiLRo9Y

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

SWEETS 2 saw 5 different companies working together to bring the release to life.

Huge thanks to all the teams that have been involved.

To Sound, who formed the foundation for it and made the process of changing my artist name seamless.

To Bonfire, who worked through numerous drafts and notes to bring the final site to life.

To 402HQ, who shipped badges, multiple track mints and viewer profiles specifically for my livestreams.

To Bello, who generated the eligibility list for +240 collectors that could receive airdrops.

To Spinamp, for the custom theme and for being my favorite place to listen to my Music NFTs.

https://twitter.com/roadtoaly/status/1628189068873068544?s=20

And finally to Ziggy Ziggy Music, who covered the project when I first released.

SWEETS 2 AIRDROPS

Collectors were entitled to one airdrop per-song that they collected from the ROAD singles. If they collected all 7 ROAD songs, they would be airdropped a full set of all 12 songs from SWEETS 2.

171 airdrops were claimed by 45 collectors of the 7 ROAD TO SWEETS 2 singles.

It was important to me to bring value to the collectors who had supported the ROAD drops, and this format made it so that collectors were proportionally rewarded for their support.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER CHALLENGE

In the middle of Chapter ii,  I called up Crittie, Michael DiVestea and CXY and came up with the idea to reward top collectors of SWEETS 2 with the opportunity to co-executive produce a song from my next project, “Goodie Bags”.

Executive Producers will be:

• Voting on which artist I’m going to be collaborating with

• Hear that song at all stages of creation

• Give creative feedback

• Be credited as “Executive Producer”

I’ve always enjoyed allowing my supporters into my musical process. This experiment’s going to be the biggest point of access my collectors have ever had into my process.

SWEEPS 2

At the 500 mint milestone, 10% of the gross profits of SWEETS 2 (0.6 ETH) was unlocked to sweep the collection floor.

Sweeps will be decided in my collector chat, and will be taking place over the next few weeks. 

https://twitter.com/roadtoaly/status/1627367491080011777?s=20

REFLECTIONS

It was important to me that SWEETS 2 be interesting on multiple levels. 

Musically, visually, and also in experimentation on-chain.

Pulling off the first Open Edition album on Sound has been a process of a lot of adaptation.

We’ve had to roll with the punches a fair amount through this process. 

Chapter iii ended a day early. Cooper and I were egregiously rugged on our big recap Twitter Space.

There’s been a lot to overcome, but somehow it’s been an extremely seamless and successful project.

My biggest takeaway was the importance of doubling down on myself. 

So many people told me that I was reaching too far, and half of the time I would reach out to people about this project.

I was told that nobody would collect 30-second songs, or that the market was too bad, or that the goals we’d set going into this project were too outlandish.

Good thing we didn’t listen to them!

I can’t take all the credit at all, the list of people that were essential to this moment is a long one. I’m just grateful SWEETS 2 has come to mean something to people outside of just me.

NEXT STEPS

Myself and the six new Executive Producers will be releasing “Goodie Bags” in the coming months. There’ll be a whole host of things to figure out and boundaries to push.

Special thanks to Cooper Turley for project managing and elevating this drop in all the right ways, and to Ramie Charaani for fixing my mistakes at many points along this road.

If you missed out on minting SWEETS 2, the songs are all available on secondary now.

Make sure you get them fast, SWEEPS 2 is around the corner.

If you want to get involved, hop in my collector chat.

There’s plenty more to come - and I couldn’t be more excited to bring Aly to the world with a bang. 

Love,

Aly** **

https://guild.xyz/aly-collectors-chat

P.S. Some links to check out for more info:

Original Tweet blast

https://twitter.com/roadtoaly/status/1624128651192315904?s=20

Original Mirror article

https://mirror.xyz/imaly.eth/FO89wBSKTcdhkJG5d1oXREbIAE1DlUR3oYQlbiLRo9Y

The Executive Producer Game

https://twitter.com/roadtoaly/status/1627733554842210304?s=20

Road to Sweets 2 Mirror Article

https://mirror.xyz/imaly.eth/hz4e60_xDvt4Ub2ZecG5WCOzHFDSa2yPX9miVTgGXa0

• SWEETS 2 is here.

• Drop:

  • SWEETS 2 is dropping in 3 chapters starting this upcoming Monday Feb. 13th

  • All Chapters will be 3-day open editions hosted on Sound.

  • You can mint from aly.works or Sound (I suggest the former)

• Airdrops:

  • Collectors who hold any editions of the ROAD TO SWEETS 2 singles will receive airdrops from the collection via claim form

  • You can find the claim form in The Aly Collectors Chat).

    • Collectors have until this Sunday (2/12) to collect as many different songs from the ROAD drops to max out airdrops. Snapshot occurs then via Bello.

• Milestones:

  • At each of these milestones, a certain % of the proceeds will be used to sweep the floor of SWEETS 2 songs after all three chapters are completed.

    • 250 editions - 5% of proceeds (~0.125 ETH)

    • 500 editions - 10% of proceeds (~0.5 ETH)

    • 1000 editions - 20% of proceeds (~2 ETH)

INTRO

I’m excited to announce my first project under my real name, Aly.

SWEETS 2 is finally here.

It’s an album of 12 songs that are each 30-seconds long.

It will be rolled out on Sound in three chapters starting on Monday, February 13th.

Each chapter consists of 4 songs, all released as 3-day open editions with a mint price of 0.01 ETH.

Side Note: For the best experience, I suggest minting SWEETS 2 from aly.works

SWEETS 2 is an experiment in community curation.

You decide the supply.

You decide which songs are the most popular.

You decide how much ETH goes back to supporting the collection.

Here’s what’s next.

THE STORY

SWEETS 2 tells a chronological story of my life between my 22nd and 23rd birthdays.

During that time I made the decision to pursue music full-time for one year with the hopes of being a full time musician at the end.

My plan was to deliver food through Postmates and Uber Eats during the day, and make/promote my music at night.

I packed up all my items, saved a bit of money and stayed in a friend’s cobweb-covered bedroom for $400 a month.

At the end of the year, I wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I had experienced the highest highs and lowest lows of my life, and had this album to show for it all.

Since then, I’ve become an active member of the web3 music community.

I was an artist during the Songcamp CHAOS project where I collaborated with 70 other artists to release a project of 45 songs.

I’m also a member of the LNRZ Freshman Class where I’ve been lucky enough to work with Reo and the incredible LNRZ core team.

I’ve also been a part of Campfire – where I collabbed with artists like TK, FUTRxLGND and ABJO to make music for the Campfire Season 1 project (alpha) at the Art Basel studio sessions. Special thanks to Alec and TK for having me out.

https://twitter.com/Campfire_xyz/status/1608583938745815041?s=20&t=NcHKg8fyk5xgcP61qrGOBA

I’ve also been an active collector of Music NFTs. For the last few months, I’ve found just as much satisfaction in collecting other artists as in selling out my own drops.

My journey as a collector has shed so much light into how I want to approach my drops as an artist.

That brings us to my favorite part.

SWEETS MILESTONES

SWEETS 2 is divided into three chapters.

Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Each chapter contains 4 songs.

Every song will be minted as an open edition for 0.01 ETH with a duration of three days.

To encourage collecting, we are setting milestones at different supplies.

At each of these milestones, a certain % of the proceeds will be used to sweep the floor of SWEETS 2 songs after all three chapters are completed.

• 250 editions - 5% of proceeds (~0.125 ETH)

• 500 editions - 10% of proceeds (~0.5 ETH)

• 1000 editions - 20% of proceeds (~2 ETH)

In addition - the top collector of Sweet 2 will receive a private plane hour-long plane ride with me as your pilot.

The goal is to let the community determine the supply and decide which songs are the most popular.

By encouraging different milestones, the proceeds from the project can go back towards rewarding the collectors.

The mint will take place on both Sound and aly.works. (Some alpha from me: mint from the site.)

But there’s more.

SWEETS 2 AIRDROPS

Throughout the last few months, I’ve been releasing my “ROAD TO SWEETS 2” collection on Sound.

It’s all been leading here, and I’m so deeply grateful for all of my collectors’ support throughout all 7 drops.

Collectors that own every individual release from the “Road” singles will receive a full set of SWEETS 2 airdropped to them. (12 airdrops)

To qualify - this means that you have collected:

• STUPID

• WHY

• FAKEOUT

• GRATEFUL

• BOOM! [WITH JADYN VIOLET AND JAMEE CORNELIA]

• SORRY

• FAKEOUT PT. 2 [WITH LATASHÀ]

In partnership with Bello - a snapshot will be taken on Sunday, February 12th at 12PM PST to lock in the balances of holders for the airdrop.

For all other collectors, they can fill out a form to receive an airdrop of one of the 12 songs for every single from the “ROAD” drops that they own.

That means if you’ve collected 3 songs from the “ROAD” drops, you are eligible to receive an airdrop of your favorite 3 songs on SWEETS 2.

The airdrop is on a per-song basis, which means that even if you collected 3 editions of the same song, you can only redeem the airdrop for that song once.

Airdrops will take place via my collector chat using a Google Form.

Simply fill out the form with the song(s) you want, and it will be airdropped to your wallet accordingly.

Also, you can read more about the ROAD TO SWEETS 2 here.

KEY DATES

Snapshot on Sunday, February 12th at 12PM PST.

CHAPTER i: FLORIDA - Monday, February 13th at 12PM PST.

CHAPTER ii - GEORGIA - Thursday, February 16th at 12PM PST.

CHAPTER iii - TENNESSEE - Monday, February 20th at 12PM PST.

Each chapter will run for 3 days.

NEW CHAPTER

SWEETS 2 is a story.

It’s the story of the child of immigrants stepping outside of deep cultural programming in order to pursue something that’s more meaningful than a straightforward path to financial stability.

This is the most honest I’ve been in any of my songs, so it’s only fitting that I finally start going by my real name: Aly.

Since I first started releasing music under “Lackhoney,” I knew this day would come. I’m so excited that the way I’m coming out to the world as myself is in this space first.

WHY COLLECT?

I entered the Web3 space through selling my work at a premium.

My third ever NFT sale was the Party On music video for 4.8 ETH (which is its own story here).

Then a few months later, Sweets 1 sold on Catalog for 5 ETH.

These moments along with all of my other sales thus far have blown my mind, and prompted full mental breakdowns on the TL. I’m eternally grateful to each of the collectors that continue to support me.

This time I want to try something different.

My goal with this project is accessibility with the deeper goal of spreading the story I’m telling through the music.

For that reason, I’ve chosen to price my whole album at 0.01 ETH.

I highly encourage everyone to collect the full SWEETS 2 set, and maybe even multiple editions of your favorite songs. I want these to be gifted to first time collectors, be peoples’ first experience in Web3, and the grail in y’alls collections (golden eggs ftw).

SWEETS 2 is for everyone.

I want to make sure that nuanced, underrepresented stories like this one get told. I believe that speaking on this experience is a deeply important task of South-Asian creatives.

On a foundational level, our stories aren’t being told with the level of true diversity/detail that’s necessary.

This music and the accompanying visuals are the tip of the iceberg in the continuing conversation around the broadening of what it means to be Brown in the Western world.

WHAT’S NEXT?

For years, I avoided discussing my family and culture in my music for fear of being labeled as “the brown rapper”.

These days, I’ve been feeling the opposite.

The music I’m making now–and have been ever since SWEETS 2– has been solely focused on the most honest stories I can tell.

My collectors chat has been hearing these songs from first draft to completed song for months.

The two projects I’m releasing later this year focus on highlighting those stories, as well as exploring some very exciting collaborations with my friends – many of which you may already be quite familiar with.

GET INVOLVED

To stay up to date with SWEETS 2 and everything I’m working on - join my collectors chat!!!!

https://guild.xyz/aly-collectors-chat

I’ll be posting more about the project over the upcoming week, including in-depth breakdowns of each chapter and snippets from the SWEETS 2 music video–which is the most insane shit I’ve ever made.

I may or may not be leaking the entire SWEETS 2 music video in my collectors chat early – just saying.

(Special thanks to MODA DAO for partly financing the creation of these visuals. They’re my pride and joy and I’m deeply grateful.)

This is the home base for all collector comms, including the airdrops and floor sweeps.

Thank you all for being a part of this journey

WELCOME TO SWEETS 2 <3

• “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.

  https://t.co/oXLdWoiVT8

What is Sweets 2?

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.

What is “Road to Sweets 2”?

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.

Some Info About The 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)

The Story of Sweets 2

Early Intro to Web3

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).

Mario

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).

The Album/The Delay

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.

Enter Web3

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

Current Day

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.)

RIP LACKHONEY

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

Here’s how I’m imagining it:

• An artist (in this case, me) decides to mint a song with 5 editions

• Instead of 'bidding’ or ‘buying,’ prospective collectors offer to trade for it via Twitter DM

• If I like the trade offer, I’ll accept and the collector gets a new piece in exchange for one already in their collection via SudoSwap

• Both parties get to tell a story about something new they tried and if something insane happens it becomes a broader talking point.

Who knows, maybe somebody trades me a Punk!

Roadmap

For now, I’m going to start small and do a small number of editions dropped. But after a convo with C.Y. Lee (who’s graciously agreed to be the first collector to trade with me), I think it’d be fun to expand on this idea and do a group trading session among a network of collectors.

Let’s see how this goes!

Link to listen/mint the song on Zora.

The Song: “Atlanta”

I started the idea with my co-producer/best friend Ben Pleasant on our first ever music trip to ATL.

We were staying in the cheapest and smallest spot I could find on a day’s notice - a bedroom with a sink in it and a tiny bathroom attached.

We were so excited to be living out a dream of ours that we set up my laptop and interface on the bed and started recording.

The next day we went to a friend’s video shoot, had another session, and drove back to Nashville in time to make it for rehearsal.

A couple of weeks later I re-approached the idea and recorded the song reflecting on my passion for pursuing my dreams.

It’s a sentimental timepiece for me and I hope you enjoy it.

Stream it on DSP’s here

I’m interested in trying out new ideas in the Web3 Music space and have been thinking about running this experiment ever since Black Dave mentioned his run at it in a Twitter Space a couple of months back. Here’s his version.

Some Questions:

What if there was a way to make a new type of bet on an artist in the form of an NFT that could give the collector a massive upside down the road outside of pure economic models.

What if the biggest artist in the world had this before they reached mainstream success? Any initial investment on the collectors’ part would be so small down the road in comparison to the payoff.

The Lackhoney Song Token:

This NFT is redeemable for a single Lackhoney song or feature verse at any point in the future.

It can only be redeemed once, and once it’s been used it can’t be claimed again.

If there's any confusion on whether or not this NFT has been claimed, feel free to reach out to Lackhoney via social media.

Regarding a traditional Web2 Release:

If the collector requests a song, this NFT does NOT guarantee that I’ll put out that song on all DSP’s (i.e. Spotify, Apple, etc). Just that I’ll make a custom song for that person/organization. I might drop it if it’s dope though.

For a feature verse, on the other hand, you’re free to do what you want with it -- given the proper master/publishing percentages are allocated ahead of any commercial release.

Ideally, whoever claims this would do so once I’d advanced a few stages in my career, but that’s up to them.

Check out the NFT below:

https://foundation.app/@LACKHONEY/honey-0000000001/2

Addtl. Info:

I’m setting the price for this first experiment at 1.5 ETH because that’s around the price my Catalog 1/1 records have been selling at.

Whoever collects this will also be receiving an airdrop of my “Collector Key” which grants access to my Private “Collectors” Discord Channel. I share unreleased songs and run ideas like this by them before I go public.

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, I’ve got a couple of 1/1 NFT’s still available that I’ll link below :)

https://beta.catalog.works/lackhoney/trip

https://zora.co/collections/zora/6547

https://zora.co/collections/zora/6452