How a DJ Turned Pain Into a Legacy Movement

Stephen counts as an artist manager, entrepreneur, and the founder of Down by Law Management.

He helps independent artists build sustainable careers through strategic management, creative leadership, and a commitment to financial freedom in generational wealth. Nowadays we have AI, and a lot of producers are utilizing the tools from AI to help you scale everything you're doing. The main thing is finding your lane and creating a new revenue stream with the use of AI as a tool not to replace yourself as an artist. Explain a little bit more about AI DJ that you're doing. I have my own hybrid AI artist DJ, you on DJ Universe, I'm the human side of the AI hybrid, so it's not my clone, but he's his own entity.

The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast.

“I'm your host again, Jay Slangen, and we are down here in the studios of Sunny Miami Beach during the World Cup fever, almost America 250, right?”

All of us, we've got a lot of action going on, but we've got a special guest who drove down here, starting at three in the morning, but he made it and introduce yourself.

And what's your business? What's going on? My name is Stephen counts also known as DJ Universe, I'm the founder of Down by Lowell Management LLC, where I manage hip pop music artists. All right, hip pop, all right? Yeah, okay, so how many artists you got on your right here? Right now, our roster contains five artists including myself, okay, and you're from near Jacksonville, is that right?

Originally from Columbus, Ohio, but yeah, I'm South of Jacksonville now, about our South. You're artists that you got on your label, they're from Florida, local. Two of my artists are actually in Columbus, Ohio, or I'm from, and then me and my AI artists are down here, and then another artist is actually from Louisiana, but is in Calabas, California. All right, so it doesn't matter if it's local or not.

“Right, it's signing some, all right, how do you find them?”

My artist in Columbus, Ohio, you know, I grew up with him, and he has another artist that comes to his studio, and we met through my, my artist up there.

And he's got his own studio, so that's makeshift studios, and he basically brings in all kinds of talent, and is working with a lot of artists.

He's got a couple different groups he's in, and basically he does all the engineer work, and now I moved down here to Florida. I left all of my studio equipment up there with him, so I could start new down here, so we got a studio up there in Ohio, makehift studios, and then my studio down here is everlasting impression studios. All right, all right, nice, everlasting impression, so what kind of hip-hop these guys doing? Because hip-hop in my day, it hip-hop today is go freely different stuff, you know?

You know, hopefully they don't mumble rap. Yeah, more or more old school, you know, we grew up in the 80s, and we're very influenced through 90s hip-hop, so a lot of talking about language. Yeah, my main artist, he just released his album called Natural, his name is Mayhem. His album came out December 26, last year, and I'll tell you, he's got almost all the artists that comes and works with him, featured on the album. He's got, of course, got me listed as the manager on there, and he's doing really big thanks.

Yeah, he's nice. Yeah.

“And so, yeah, and I grew up in the era when the old Kanye era, and even before the old Kanye, right?”

So, yeah, I mean, from planet rock, and then to Kanye was the old Kanye, and then I kind of got out of it. You know, you're like, you know, my influence is, I mainly grew up on Keras 1. And I was ranked to play him over nearly every one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you started out a young age.

You started out like 13. We were just talking to your mom, and she was saying, hey, you went down to the store. Oh, yeah. And you got this big thing, and then you were like, yeah, that was two turntables. Yeah, two techniques.

Right. All right. So, yeah, you're getting two technique turntables at 13. And I started off young. Yeah, I started off young.

You got a joint credit card, and was able to pay that off interest free in less than six months. And the main thing was I was kind of disappointing when I bought them, because I didn't realize the turntables at that time didn't come with the stylus or needles. So, I had to literally find a store where I could buy these needles and the stylus is, so I can listen to the vinyl on the turntables.

So, these are the professional DJ turntables.

I mainly was influenced by those after researching those models from seeing DJGQ on the movie Juice. Oh. Yes. So, all right. So, you got juices turntables, but no needles.

But that was a big thing back then. You know, like, for, for where you scratch in is out, you had to get a bunch of things. Oh, well, you know, at the time, I had to perfect my technique. And I had to learn how to do everything from scratch, because I didn't know how to scratch when I bought the turntables. But over a few years of perfecting my craft, I was able to get pretty.

But I was able to master the craft and probably could say, hey, nice, nice.

So, yeah, I mean, today that the scratching is just incredible.

I actually, I just sent this to my friend.

“There was a guy that was scratching, and he had some, some, what do you call it, some MIDI controller, right?”

Yeah, he had some things lined up, right? And yes, scratching now with the middies, and it was just like, oh, no. If he's some people were like, okay, he's cheating, because he's using pre lined up, you know, kind of cues, right? And, but the real kind of OG diehards that knew what he was doing was like, yes, but he's an amazing scratcher. Oh, yeah, you couldn't cue that up and do that without, you know, having it lined up like he was, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So, it was like, it was something that was totally new, like advanced, and yeah, I just had to send it. It's still like this today, because nowadays, that's a tool like back then, but nowadays we have AI. And a lot of producers are utilizing the tools from AI to produce music. And there's a lot of controversy over it, and stuff like this.

And that, but the main thing is, you know, as long as you don't use it to replace yourself, it can help you scale everything you're doing in your production and your music. Whatever it is that you're doing in the studio.

“Yeah, I got to, you know, a DJ friend in the Netherlands, right?”

You're just trans. That's all of course. Yeah. And he's, he used to be big, and now he's like getting back, but he knows all the big guns, right? But, you know, he had some stuff that he was sitting on.

And then, you know, he started using all the AI tools, right? Yeah. And, you know, started to keep me to whole album in, like, you know, just like a month or two months, right? Finished all his old stuff and was able to show it to those, you know, massive household name DJs, right? That's all those.

That's all those. And then their, because they were like, you know, boys back in the day. I'm not going to name drop anyone, but if you know a trans, you know the names, right? Yeah.

The big guns, and they were like, wow, this is incredible. And now they're like rebuilding what he had built, but using all the tools, using bringing in the singers, right?

And, you know, and yeah, I mean, like you said, if you use it in a way to get your ideas out, and then you can rebuild them, right? Yeah. Then what's the, I think it's amazing too for, you know, artists, like, you know, they're certain artists that, you know, a certain one I was thinking about, because with NWA, but not necessarily a part of their membership, but he got in a car accident, and he could no longer use his voice after that. Well, now with the technology, he can recreate his voice through AI and still make music.

Oh, my God. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's, so I guess he ran all his old tracks into the AI and then it learned his voice.

Correct. He was able to run. But there's also other artists who have their voice still and don't want their voice replicated to be able to, you know, because it comes down to streams. If the, you know, AI company that's streaming or putting together to use the AI to make your music, and you get these streams. And original artists whose voice it replicated doesn't get the streaming money.

It becomes a controversial thing to where we're not getting what we're supposed to get. Yeah. Actually, there's a really horrible situation of there's a YouTube a girl, and she's just making country folk music. Yeah, I, in her, in her backyard, great singer, you know, decent guitars, but the, the videos that she was putting out is just just beautiful stuff, right? Okay. And so, you know, some AI producer used her, her voice, used her guitar music to create some stuff, right?

“And then he was the one putting that stuff out and I believe like Spotify are all kinds of stuff without her permission, right?”

And then, and then he was able to sign his music, right? Yeah. And then the lawyer sent her a season dismiss, right, on her own music, that's crazy. And then she was like, but that's me, right? And so like now it's like this big controversy. Oh, yeah, it's like worst case scenario stuff.

Yeah, yeah, those are one bad people are using the AI technology for the wrong reasons. You know, it's like, you got to back the original artists, right? You got to make it fair.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, that's the main thing is finding your lane and creating a new revenue stream with the use of AI as a tool not to replace yourself as an artist.

Correct, correct. Yes.

“I mean, I guess you could say, okay, back in the day we had bands, right?”

Band's moved to two turn tables and then those DJs were like, oh, you know, people were all the haters were like, oh, why don't you learn the instruments? Yeah.

And then you wanted to, you're just, you're just pressing play, right?

And then it came to, you know, that the people on the techniques like you and then they had the CDJs and then with the same button. And now it was a whole thing, whoa, why don't you learn how to beat marriage, you know, you just letting the computer do it, right? And now like the people that are on the CDJs with the AI, it's like, oh, you're not, you know, so it's like this ongoing kind of the same discussion right now with AI, it's like, you know, so nice level. And DJs, the job of a DJ changed a lot when hip hop came through because for instance, there was no scratching a record on a turntable when DJs were popular back in the 70s.

And in fact, that was actually against the law. You didn't want to scratch somebody's right here. You can't say it. Well, it took people like DJ cool herk and grandmaster flash to invent the, you know, the turntable. It was the mixer and then do the merry-go-round with bringing the break beats so that the, you know, you know, the, you know, the, be boys could break dance during the break beats and the MCs could rhyme over those break beats. It was, it was an amazing thing to just invent that out of the middle of the south Bronx in the middle of the depression era.

“You know, it was crazy. You could just create this and now all of a sudden it's a whole new culture 50 years later that the whole world isn't, you know, engulfed them. So how are you and your artists using AI?”

Oh, myself, I have cloned my avatar in my studio, all right. And my voice basically would, would jelly pod. So jelly pod, you know, they, they have a platform where you create AI podcast. I have a total of five so far. Wow. So creating your avatar. That was done with the mobile phone. I'm, I'm picturing like, you know, kind of like doing a 360 scan of yourself with the mobile phone or something. It was more of a agent. So if you're familiar with agent, okay, it's another app like jelly pod only, you know, you're, you can create like a pseudo where our list or, yeah, like you didn't feel,

you can replicate, you know, an AI voice or you can use an 11 labs voice, but me, I take my audio from jelly pod over to agent and then I record myself in my studio.

Yeah. And it just basically lip syncs the audio into my video. Gotcha. And it looks so realistic. A lot of people don't know. It's AI.

“Yeah, yeah. So so you've recorded how much of a podcast recordings of, you know, video. Did you have to train the AI to make it really well, that's the thing on agent.”

You can do as many recordings as you want, which you are character to have different outfits. So I actually made quite a lot at the time when I was doing it a lot, there was a limit to like I think 99 or 100 outfits you could do per, you know, avatar. So I had, I had done probably half of that in my amount of time of using it. However, you know, I've gotten away from that and I've kind of gotten into different videos from my AI podcast, but at the same time, it's something that's very revolutionary and, you know, when it comes down to it, not too many other people who were doing what I'm doing, we're doing it the way that I was doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. And then how about your artist, how they're using AI? Well, again, when it comes to my artist, it's more for like pushing, you know, like what you would call automations for emails or and or like funneling in people to their website to see their merch or their music and, you know, get them a lot of the marketing and the back end stuff that we don't want to do so we can. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my artists don't necessarily utilize AI in the production like I do, I have my own hybrid AI artist DJ you, I'm DJ universe my hybrid artist is DJ you, I'm the human side of the AI hybrid.

So basically, I have an EPK for my AI artist on my website at down by lawmanagementlc.com. We're also having my digital business card anybody that's interested in any more information. You can get all my information my email, my phone number, my website, everything from social media is anything you need is on this digital business card and in fact, you can create your own business card from it and you can exchange your information to be put on my email list where I can send out.

So yeah, you're the, you said you're the live part of your AI DJ. Okay, so so DJ you is my hybrid AI artist. So he's not necessarily DJ, but because he kind of came off of a clone of me, I created my own character out of him.

So it's not my clone, but he says own entity. And basically, I use Suno and different, you know, platforms like music creator AI open music AI stuff like that.

Yeah, I'm actually partnered with them. So anyway, you can use that to create AI music. So instead of just creating is any old, what they call, you know, AI swap. I have an actual purpose behind my creations. I have an actual artist that that can do promo material for anybody. Collaborate, you know, sponsorship, do seek licensing, whatever this artist would like, or could come his way, you know, as being a manager, also for this artist, you know, I'm looking for collaborations. I'm looking for sponsorships. I'm looking for features.

I'm looking for everything I can get for all of my artists as well as my AI artist. Wow, nice, then. So yeah, you got some some special box here. What's going to tell me about this. So this is my designer shoes in the custom box.

“These are the sole legacies by Stephen Cowes here. I'm going to read the box you guys. It says the best way to predict the future.”

Right, you would think is is past behavior, right, but this says the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Oh, yeah. I show it on that. Well, because I'm creating the future. And these are my color ways. I'm giving my nice nice box. They're on the other way. So each one of my artists can design their own designer shoes. When we go on tour, we can wear our designer shoes and our designer apparel on stage on tour. So these are the sole legacy. I have the name on the strap and I have the logo on the tone. All right, yeah, obviously these man. So we got a cut. We kind of got some Jordan one colors scheme here. We've got some red and black, some white, man.

Yeah, these look pretty solid, dude. Right. So how did you get these? Red and green are my favorite colors. Christmas colors all year round. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then red doesn't agree. It's dark here. So yeah, that is originally from the homeland, the mother land in Africa. So that's, you know, the red black and green. You can't deny it.

“Nice. And how'd you go upon making these? Like, uh, did you have to fly the China?”

This is so good for these are made in Italy by the company called. There you go. A live shoes. And I did an application. That's why you got the quality on these. Like, look at the leather back. They're hand stitched. Nice. Perfect quality. I mean, you really can't beat that. They're real Italian leather. Yeah. I mean, no, the leather quality on this is really good. They're really comfortable as well. Okay. And so how much these, these go down for or these are only exclusive to your artist to make custom or what's what's up right now.

These are going on the website right now for $225. All right. My other artists. That's a deal, dude, custom, Italian leather, you know, gray box and everything. Yeah, it's got a magnetic box. So yeah, but yeah, my artist got their own color way. I'm sorry, but that that's is a deal. During Italian leather, right, 220 costumes. No tariffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And no logo. And so you're like, okay, yeah, what are these, man? These are these are fire. Yeah, so I'm sure he's a great man. And this is, of course, I'm going to shirt the logo for this for the sole legacies on my ass.

You can store your whole thing shirt shoes in the hat. Yeah, plus you get the story and you get to, you know, kind of support local, local businesses. Local artists, right, that are trying to create the future, as it says. Yeah.

And this is the, the revolutionary side of this whole story is we've coined ourselves the down by law management roster.

Yeah, the hip hop hero league. And I've started my own TV network, which is available on Roku and it was a fire. You got all kinds of stuff going on. The hip hop hero league TV network. Yeah, yeah. So DJ universe creating the universe of AI TV shoes merch. You got it all, you got it management, right? Yeah, yeah, right on man. So you're, you're operating at 100 miles per hour. Oh, wish I could go with spouses on my parade.

“All right. Well, real quick, I asked everyone, you know, like, what, what do you most excited about? What's, what's going, what project you got right now?”

That's, that's, that's on, that's on the, that's on the bang murder right now. Okay. The biggest thing, my artist danger is I goes, his newest album will be released within the next couple of months.

So we can get his, you know, pre sales up. Yeah. We want to get the other thing is I'm working PR. So public relations. I'm trying to, you know, get more articles.

You do have, you know, public relations articles on the site. If you can check out, again, down by law management. I'll see you dot com.

“All right. We have all everything you need to know about my company, my artists. They're all on there.”

Yeah. I have a free independent artist blueprint that that you can get for free. And it will teach you how to monetize your music without going through a record label.

All right. So honestly, like you see it's so excited about all the stuff that's going on.

“It's been a pleasure. I mean, I can sit here and talk to you all day, man. All day. Yeah. For millennia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly. So thank you for coming down.”

Yes. Thank you. I know you had a early drive this morning. Drive back. Don't drive back at a hundred miles per hour.

Not parade at a hundred miles per hour, but driving like drive out of saves. Yes. But thank you for coming down to the studio. Thank you, Jay. I appreciate you. And yeah. Enjoy the drive back. It's a good sunny day. Cheers. Right.

“All right. And yeah, tune in to his, he's, you know, his legacy makers show. If you want to know about, you know, his, his colorful past with with DJ music getting set up music industry.”

You know, having a management company. It's all there. So thank you guys for tuning in and we'll see you again on inside your legacy podcast. (upbeat music)