July 27, 2023 • 48 mins
In 2010, Brandon McEachern and Marcus Allen threw a hip-hop centric Earth Day celebration for the black community in Los Angeles.
In the decade plus that followed, and with the help of co-founder Jermon Williams, that party evolved into Broccoli City, a global brand focused on community, music, health, and culture, culminating in an annual festival in Washington DC.
But along the way Broccoli City would discover the challenges that come with running a festival, expand into digital content, and develop exciting new initiatives that make a positive impact in their community.
On this week’s episode of Idea Generation's All Angles, we talk to co-founders Brandon McEachern, Marcus Allen, and Darryl Perkins, creative director Hugo Cubias, and Chief of Staff Jacqueline Alston, to hear the intricacies of throwing a major festival and creating one of the most dynamic brands in music and culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's Friday, fustifoards the next day and we had not secured.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All the permitted.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Me and Brandon are literally running around. We had to
get the fire department to sign off. And it's been
at the very last minute. You know, folks on Friday
in the government is they've taken off trying to get
up out of there, So we were down to the
last minute.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to our Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about
culture's most influential brands and the teams that built up.
If you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing
the power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Beveror each
week as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture.
Because the only way to truly understand success is to
(00:54):
look at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles
is a Willer Media podcast. In twenty ten, Brandon mcahern
and Marcus Allen through a hip hop centric Earthday celebration
for the black community in Los Angeles, and in the
decade plus that followed, that party would evolve into Broccolly City,
(01:17):
a global brand focused on community, music, health, and culture,
culminating at an annual festival in Washington, d C. But
along the way, broccoly City would discover the challenges that
come with running a festival, expand into digital content, and
developed new exciting initiatives to make a positive impact in
their community. On this week's episode of All Angles, we
(01:38):
talked to co founders Brandon mcaheurn, Marcus Allen, and Darryl Perkins,
creative director Hugo Cubias, and Chief of staff Jacqueline Austin
to hear the intricacies of throwing a major festival and
creating one of the most dynamic brands in music and culture.
But before any of that happened, years before booking Future
as a headliner or having the DC Mayor attend one
(01:58):
of their events, there were just two best friends growing
up together in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
My mother is a second grade teacher.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
My pops, you know, middle class dude, worked at the bank.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
This is Brandon mckahurn, founder and CEO of Broccoli City.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
They were also very very active in our church, in
our church community.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
I think that's where I kind of got.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
A lot of my each one teach one type of
mentality from was growing up in the church out there
in North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Down the street from Brendon was his best friend and
future business partner, Marcus.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I know Marcus my whole life. We grew up together.
My neighborhood is pretty close to his, and we used
to ride the bus together.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
I used to pick on him, he used to pick
on me, but yeah, always been my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I met his mom first second grade, and then shortly
thereafter I met him.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
This is Marcus Allen, co founder of Broccoli City and
one of Brandan's best friends since childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
He was a grade behind me. We got connected, you know,
probably summer or second grade, summer third grade. At that time,
they were still living like a little bit away. I
think in fourth or fifth grade they moved close to
where our elementary school was. That was really where we
got like super cool and it really became a friend group,
(03:17):
from sports to hanging out, to picking each other up
to just the whole mine.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The two stayed closed throughout high school, but eventually I
ended up taking different paths for college, with Marcus going
to North Carolina A and T, while Brendan went to
North Carolina Central and Durham.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
In college, I actually was a part of the theater
department there and acted in a couple of plays.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
I was like, Yo, I'm gonna do the Hollywood thing.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm
gonna do something in that world and in that realm.
I graduated and moved back to Greensboro, like most of
us do. You graduate school and you moved back home.
And when I moved back home, I was watching Entourage
every Sunday. I watched Asarage and then I had a
homegirl who actually lived in La Right, so I'm watching,
(04:04):
you know what I mean, Vinnie and Turtle, I'm watching
all these adventures. I'm like, Yo, this shit is crazy
fucking e you know what I mean, just like the
whole thing, the ris of the world, the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Brandon had Hollywood dreams, and after visiting a friend in
Los Angeles, he knew he needed to move out west.
So he packed up his things and hit the road,
driving across the country in search of a new adventure.
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
Man, I was super excited. I've always been the type
of cat that's excited for like the first day of
school or the first day you know, somewhere new, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I was super duper excited.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Taking the Southern Rape to get to California. The timing
of Branda's trip could not have been worse, so we
didn't know it he would be driving directly into the
wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I had went through Atlanta to pick up my older
brother so he can ride with me most of the way.
I came around like the Katrina Tom It was crazy.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
He had got caught in a.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Huge storm, you know what I mean, off the back
end of Katrina. I mean, when we pulled over somewhere
in Alabama, we didn't have no gas, and then I
ended up meeting these like super cool white boys and
they were like, follow us to this gas station and
they like, man, they pumped the gas for us, like
all sorts of shit. And then I turned around and
they were gone. I know that sounds crazy, but it's
(05:23):
like the dead ass truth, you know.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
What I mean. Then I got to California and I
ended up visiting my homegirl. I was like, wow, like
this is where I need to be. Once I got here,
I was like, yo, I need a job. And I
ended up.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Going on Melrose and I met somebody who was actually
still my.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Friends to this day shout out to my man Seed's.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
He worked at this store called Workmen's and Workman's It
was on Melrose Avenue, and they were doing things like
cossignment with like T shirt.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Brands and things of that nature.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
Now, granted, I'm from North Carolina, so I don't know
anything about you know, I don't know anything about none
of this, you know what I mean, the hundreds, none
of that shit, right. I just remember like being engulfed
in this world. End up getting a job at the
place called Workman's. I met Sees. He was from the
East Coast, so we automatically just kind of vibed and
he was like, oh, you just moved out here. I'm like, yeah,
I just moved out here, man, need a job. Like,
(06:12):
what's up, bro? I always been like personable when I
was working in Workman's. I just got hip to the
Los Angeles kind of culture.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
At the time.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Labrinia was discovering the culture of Los Angeles. Marcus moved
to Washington, DC to work in local government as a
logistics coordinator. Even though the two friends were across the
country from one another, they still talked daily, and soon
they were both enamored by the buzzing streetwear scene. Local
brands like Crooks and Castles and the Hundreds had brand
his attention, and both of them wanted in on that energy.
(06:45):
That desire would plant seeds for the two to develop
their own brand, Broccoli City.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
There was a lot of other brands, the Hundreds, Crooks
and Castles, but they were much darker in terms of
their concepts. Like the look of it was Darkerhnny Cookcakes
was very playful, it was colorful, it was it was
a bit it was a bit more jovial, and that
was kind of the brand that we were, Like Yo,
Johnny Cupcakes, Like yeah, like Broccoli City, like we gonna
(07:12):
be that.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
When starting a brand, one of the hardest parts can
be deciding on a name that's worthy of your vision. Luckily,
for Brandon and Marcus, they already had that on deck.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I used to rap back in the day and I
had said Broccoli City.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
In a rat one time.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
I don't remember the exact line or nothing, but something
that rhyme with witty or something I'm from Broccoli City
or something like oh shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
That's a vibe.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
He was in this little shitty band. It was like
a hoodie and a blowfish. It was like the black
rapper with the with the band, you know what I mean,
Jim class Rod type ship. Right, it was that whole vibe.
We were just outside one day and he was like, yeah,
because we from the Broxi City, it's just like, oh shit,
Broccoli City. That's hard. And then it was like, look
different places. We would say it randomly.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
I remember actually going and visiting like New York and
other places and people would ask me where I was from,
and instead of saying Greensboro, I would say like, yeah,
I'm from Brockley City and people would.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Be like, oh, snap, you know what I mean, what's that.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
I kind of just carried the name with me through college,
Like you'll have a friend from DC and you'll be like, oh,
they're from PG County or they're from the district, and
you know, I would say things with my little friends
like yo, oh they're from.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The brock Like, oh, they're from Greensboro.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Brockley City is Greensboro, so like Broccoli is the green
and then Borough is the city part, so it's Brockley
City Greensboro. So when you met me, instead of it
being Brandon, it was like I was building somewhat of
a community. So I would introduce myself as like branding
from Brockley City.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I'd be like, yo, brand in Brockley.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
City, but up and people would save my number as
brand in Broccoli or Broccoli b or whatever the case
may be.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I always pushed it. It was always my.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
With a name in hand. Brandon looked to his new
LA connections to help bring the brand to light.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I ended up meeting this guy named Dee.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
He was like this Filipino dude, and he was outside
of Workman's and he was like smoking a joint or
something and he just.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Looked mad cool. So I'm like, damn, like who is you?
What the fuck you do?
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Bro?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And he's like, man, you know I got a T
shirt line. It's called Crooks and Castles, you know what
I mean. We got the T shirts in here and
the T shirt was the Fasace mask with the ski
mask on the face. I was like, Yo, this is crazy,
Like so how'd you do this? And he like, yeah,
this is my company, Bro. I got a graphic designer,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I just I put it together and I'm like, oh.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Shit, I said, make some T shirts like this say
Brocoli City on them.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I ended up just like talking to people trying to
find like graphic designers.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
At this time, it wasn't like the my spaces and
the igs and what was my space? But it wasn't
like IG's and all that, so you couldn't just find
cats the way you can find them now.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
I went to a spring print spot. It was in
the Valley. I had like the regular Fine with just
like Broccoli City on it.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
You know what I mean, Like that had have been
times New Roman or some shit like that, and I
took it to the screen shop to get it printed.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I met this dude there. It was a Hispanic cat.
His name was Fine, and he was there with this other.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Dude named KB I mean, who was like a rapper
at the time, and they had this brand called Ghetto
Rock off.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Of the common song. I was like, man, like, how.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Much would you charge me to do, you know, to
do a logo? And he was like, you know, I
forgot what he told me, but scrambled up.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
I got the money. I paid him, and then he.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Created the first like Broccoli City logo, and then I
created like a website, you know, the whole nine.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Because farn was super nice and all that shit.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
And at this time, I'm telling Marcus about all this
stuff that's going on right like he's still on the
East coast.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I'm on the West coast.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
As Brendan networked and spread the Broccoli City name in
La Marcus was in DC plotting on the future. Soon
they were throwing their first Broccoli City parties and stumbled
up on the inspiration for their first major event.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
We had been starting to have like smaller parties at
like this spot called Center Space. We had started giving
T shirts away. It was really to promote the T
shirt line and to get more visibility, and we ended
up giving a bunch of T shirts away. If you
go back and look at the pictures and just look
at the vibe, I mean, everybody from like Nick Cannon
to like, you know, everybody who was popular in LA
(11:19):
culture at that time some kind of way ended up
coming to our events. Ultimately, we got hit up by
earth Day Network, which is the organization that manages earth Day,
the holiday. We ended up making some T shirts for
them for like their thirtieth anniversary, and that was the
first time we'd even heard earth Day, Like that doesn't
even exist. In North Carolina at that time, right, So
(11:40):
it's like Earth Day, Like, yo, what is this? So
I ended up going to the celebration and it was
on a National Mall in DC. It was like Usher
Anita Baker and like all these big artists, but it's
like no Black people there. But it was obvious they
were like booking this for it to be multicultural, but
it was like no people of color there. And I
(12:01):
remember hitting b after that shit, like, bro, they had
to shit the fucking National Mall. That shit was crazy.
I see Usher da da da da, but it was
no Black people out there.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Like, I'm telling you, it's some shit with it, yo,
we might need to do it. When to do a
Black earth Day celebration.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
I remember hearing and learning more in depth about earth
Day and what Earth Day represented, and I was like,
oh shit, like you know, this is super dope, like
a day that focuses in on community love, you know, sustainability,
this that to the third I'm like, man, like why
ain't nobody done that in you know, in the urban community,
in the black community, right, And I'm like, yo, I'm.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Gonna do a party during Earth Day, you know what
I'm saying?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Like that was like my thing because I'm like, oh,
it's Broccoli City, so automatically, a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Of people thought that it was, you know, health driven,
you know what I mean, because of the broccoli.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
They even thought it was health driven or weed driven,
which I always used to think was hilarious, what makes
perfect sense. But I always wanted to have some time
a community element to whatever I did.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Their passion for community health and the environment led them
to planning an Earth Day celebration for the Black community
in LA. While searching for brands to work with on
the event, they ended up meeting a future partner of
broccoly City.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
My parents were always very engaged kind of with social
movements in the Bay areas.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
This is Darryl Perkins, co founder and managing director of
Broccol City.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I grew up around a lot of social justice activism.
I think that was always I always saw myself doing
something to help my community to be socially active. And
I ended up going to Howard University, and I started
as a business student, but I wasn't really feeling the
business courses, but I enjoyed my anthropology classes and looking
(13:46):
at how cultures changed, how culture and music played along
with social movements back from the slave spirituals all the
way to hip hop. The relationship between the two as
social movements went from then to now, how music and
artists played a large role in the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Daryl's passion for combining culture, music and activism led him
to work with a top leader in the environmental justice space,
and was also about to lead him to working with
Brandon and Marcus too.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I was working with Carrie Fulton, who's actually a leader
in the environmental justice movement, has been and continues to
be Carrie Fulman. And we met through Carrie as we're
doing outreach to different folks that were.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Doing these Earth Day events. I remember those early.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Conversations but like, oh, they're just doing dope stuff, and
they saw it from a perspective similar to the way
I saw getting again, folks that look like us, talk
like us, making it cool to have these conversations about
the environment, because at that time talking about the environment
was not a cool thing to do.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I mean it was you know, they.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Saw them as not folks that look like us. You know,
we're putting as tree huggers. There's just not us having
these conversations. Well, at the same time, we knew how
important that these environmental issues had on our communities, and
so we understood that. And so the way that we
saw that as well as to have the look and
(15:10):
feel of something that I would want to be a
part of it my friends who want to be a
part of it, was very important. I was working on
a campaign called Green the Block, and we were doing
all these events around environmental justice, fighting power, and involution
around the country. One of the things that came of
that was we did all these Earth Day events all
around the country, and Broccoli City was one of our
(15:32):
flagship events. It was called the Global Cooling and I
believe this was twenty ten, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Broccoli City now had a partner in place to help
launch their first major event.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
I ended up getting that with them, and we end
up calling this event Global Cooling right, because they you know, cooling,
global Cooling bomb.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
It was downtown LA on Margot Street.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
It was healthy food vendors as well as musical acts right,
and the acts that we had with everybody such as
Dom Kennedy, you and I, Kendrick Lamar, and it was
so much camaraderie. On the West coast at that time,
you know what I'm saying. We had dom headline, and
it was right when he had dropped on West Side
from Love from West Side with Love, so like he
(16:16):
performed like nineteen ninety seven, you know what I mean, Like, Bru,
this is for anybody who's in this world listening to this,
I know they're getting chill bumps, you know what I'm saying.
BJ the Chicago kid, Casey Veggie's and anwar carriage. We
thought we were gonna do two hundred and fifty people
or whatever the case may be, but the joint ended
up doing like five six hundred people, and at that time,
(16:36):
like that's a lot of people. That joint was smacking,
you know what I mean. And then it was on
all the blogs. This was like twenty ten when we
put that first festival together. It was during that blog
era time filming the recap and trying everything in my
power to get it to like Mika.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
And them over it too dope boys, you know what I.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
Mean, because that was like the thing to get like
your video on their blog. I ended up meeting him
and he ended up posting all of our recap videos.
That was kind of like the beginning of okay, let's
turn this into something physical outside.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
It exceeded expectations for sure, you know what I mean.
For sure?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
For sure, even though Daryl had worked on these kinds
of events before, working with Brandon and Marcus on the
Global Cooling, it felt different.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I mean, it's beautiful and you have a space and
there's nobody there, and then you have a lot of
people there coming together to celebrate Earth. It was powerful,
but I think it was also our high moment in
terms of we can bring people together in a positive space.
It can be fun, it can be cool, it can
be educational, it can be impactful.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I think it was like, oh there's something here.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, I mean there was a magic there. And then
after it's done, the war just kept spreading like if
you missed out, Like, man, you kind of missed something.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I think we made a little money, but it wouldn't
nothing to even talk about.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
It was like, oh, okay, we didn't go broke doing it,
you know what I mean. Obviously I had to pay
the ax, but I didn't have to pay it. What
you gotta pay acts nowadays.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
The Global Cooping was a huge success, and the team
saw the potential for Broccoli City to grow, but they
weren't sure that Los Angeles was the best home for it.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So I'm thinking, Okay, you know what I mean, Let's
do this again. This shit about the pot let's do it.
But then just the finances became a thing because, like
I said, everybody ended up getting signed.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
The landscape in Los.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
Angeles, you know, it still was a very clicks town,
and I'm not really too heavily into like all the
clicks and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So yeah, we had to like sit down for like
a year and a half, like two years. May ain't
really do nothing.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Just try to figure it out, like what can we do.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I was in DC. I was working government contracting. I
got a job, but I'm active, like I'm in the streets,
like I'm going out every night, like I'm partying, like
I'm having a fucking ball, and I'm talking to be
Because at the time, he's working for James Dubows as
a PA.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
While I was working as a pdu duction assistant for
a guy by the name of James Debos. I worked
on like The Keisha Cole Show and some MTV shows,
but I was just a PA, and for anybody who
knows what a PA is, you're like the lowest of
the lowest of the lowest when it comes.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
To like production.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
So like I was going and getting people subs and
you know, making sure what no onions on that joint
things like that, but also playing like an office manager too,
you know what I mean, to the production places and
having to drive and drop off cuts.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
He's calling me every day with like printing out map
quest just dropping off like reels and dropping off cameras
to different people all over LA. And I'm sitting in
my office with the door clothes and we're talking for
like four hours a day, just like just talking shit.
He just in the car. I remember just telling him
and just talking to him, like, Yo, this DC shit
is just like LA, It's just different. He like, Bro,
(19:51):
you tripping. I'm like, fam cats are out every day
till two three in the morning. The only difference is
they got job and they wake up for their jobs.
I'm like, Yo, they go out and they wake up though,
I'm like, yo, they beat it their job at nine
in the morning and they do that shit again the
next day. I'm like, it's not even that popping on
(20:13):
the weekends. I'm like, yo, it's all during the week
I'm like, there's a culture here that people got money.
I'm like, bro, we should do it here.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
He was like, yo, being we need to bring it
to DC. Bro Brandon agreed.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
That a DC event was a great idea, but if
they were gonna throw a party there, he would have
to be bigger. So they started putting into motion where
would become the first ever Broccolly City Festival.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
So on my side, I always have been the one
to kind of go off and book the talent. And
then Marcus on his side, he was building the relationships
in Washington, d C. With a lot of like government
agencies and things like that. He was very mixy in
terms of building those relationships. Marcus ended up building a
relationship with somebody he was like in real estate, and
(21:01):
we were able to borrow some money from him to
pay the acts.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So my homie Nate shout out to Nate. I had
been telling him what we were trying to do. He's like, yeah,
I got somebody who probably be interested. We end up
meeting at Ted's Montana Grill in Crystal City and I
walk in Chuck Taylor's you know what I mean some jeans,
hoodie or something, probably smell like weed done and smoking.
(21:25):
The car I get in there, they got on suits.
They're younger, though they're not like older guys, like they're like,
you know, probably six years seven years older than us,
you know what I'm saying. But they suited, right, They
very much in this DC suit culture.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
They start asking questions. I pull out a deck, start
pulling out the budget, walking them through everything, and then
a week or two later I end up hearing back
from them. He was like, Bro, like you made me
readjust how I view business because I was very turned
off by you by the way you were dressed. But
when you started talking, I realized how thorough and how
(22:03):
much you knew what you were talking about. And he
was like, it made me really get out of my
mole of thinking, like judging a book by his cover
and just being like, but this dude, don't got on
a suit. He told me that, like, Bro, you changed
how I approached business moving forward for the rest of
my life. If I had just kept my guard up
based upon how you looked and just all of that,
I probably wouldn't even have heard what you had to say.
(22:25):
But you came off so much solid. It was just
it was a thing. I definitely remember him saying that,
I remember that whole that whole process of like getting
an investor and paying them back with interest and like
all of that. And I think they invest in like
thirty five forty grand.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
With some investor money in their pocket to fund the festival.
The team went out to book acts, vendors and secure location.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Marcus, like I said, he handled all the operational stuff
and then I handle all the talent stuff.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Marcus ended up getting us the Navy.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Yard, which was kind of a crater or whatever, you
know what I mean, you know, and it got them
big ass bends up and things like that. Like they
got him, they have him in different cities. He ended
up locking that venue. Our biggest act that we had
at the time was Big Crit. I booked Big Krit
from I want to say, Johnny Snipes. At the time,
Big Crit had just dropped. I don't know if it
was Krit was here, I don't know what it was,
(23:18):
but it was one of.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Them joints that was nuts. It was like when Krit.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Was that dude not saying that he's still like much
respecting you, Krit, I'm still a fan. We had the
likes of Phil I Day on there. I want to say,
we had a Go Go band on there. Then we
also had vendors, right, we had the healthy vendors. That
was something that I was always big on, like just
having healthy juices and things like that. I'm not the
healthiest person in the world, but I always think it's
(23:44):
dope to.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
At least provide the option, to be honest with you.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I had never went to a festival before Brocoli City,
so I never knew what one looked like outside of
what we did. But what we did though, was We're
gonna create this platform and give other people an opportunity
to kind of shout on it.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The first ever Brocco Lea City Festival launched on April
twenty first, twenty thirteen, and featured acts like Big Krit, Scissa,
and Jamison. They also posted yoga, art, pop ups, craft beer,
and games.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
We thought we were gonna do like twenty five hundred people.
We ended up doing like four thousand people. And the
way it looked at the time was like, oh, shit,
and the mayor came and shit, it was crazy. The
mayor came and at that time we knew, oh, this
could really be something like there's a there's a need for.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
This safe space, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
For people, it was a lot of women, you know
what I mean, And not saying that like, oh we
got all the girls, but it was like for those
who like wearing Jordan's but also you know, like wearing heels,
you know what I mean, Like it's a very balanced crowd.
It was everybody out there, white, black, Hispanic, you know
what I mean. If you were a fan of just
music and good vibes, you were out there and it
was super duper dope.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
It was super duper dope. And then that was the.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
First one that we actually called the Broccoli City Festival.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
The Broccoli City Festival had a ride. The perfect blend
of rising artists, unique venders, and positive messaging made the
festival a massive success. It also made the team hungry
for more. As they began planning the twenty fourteen edition.
They raised the bar even higher by making two separate festivals,
one in DC and the other in Los Angeles. He
was an ambitious move and one that would test the
(25:26):
limits of the team.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
It's like, y'all, let's do it again, and let's just
try to make it bigger.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
We had made a little money.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
With that one, but yet again we had to pay
due back. But we actually stayed in relationship with him
because he saw what we were able to do, right,
so it was like all right, you know, So then
we bawled just a little bigger bag from him the
next time around, in twenty fourteen is when we actually
moved to Gateway Pavilion, which was an old insane asylum
(25:54):
in southeast DC. It was like dead smack in the
middle of a hood hood.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
We did like five thousand people, five thousand.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
And seven thousand people. It was really like, Okay, this
is a thing. And then that's when like the city
of DC started reaching out to us, you know what
I mean, Like conversations started to change a little bit.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
The DC leg of the duo Festival was a total success,
but the la iteration it was a little shakier.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So we just finished one, right, So we finished and
then we're going out to La. It's Friday Fusiboards the
next day and we had not secured all the permitting.
I remember me and Brandon are literally running around. We
had to get fire fighters the fire department to sign
off on so we're getting these these permitting. Then at
the very last minute, you know, folks on Friday in
(26:43):
the governments they taken off trying to get up out
of there. So we were down to the last minute,
but we got everything handled.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That was crazy. Who's fools for that? When I look
at how other brands have been able to grow to
multiple cities. It was the right thought for sure, no question,
was the right thought. The problem is we didn't have
the resources right, Like, we were robbing Peter to pay
Paul on one festival, so to do it for two
was crazy. We did have the right mindset LA at
(27:11):
that time. That's where we were supposed to be growing to,
but we got an ass kick. Our venue was huge.
We ended up selling like a good amount of tickets,
but the venue was so big that it looked like
it wasn't that many people. But going back looking at it,
like all the right people from LA that became like
made people like super influential ended up being at that event,
(27:34):
you know what I mean. So we were in the
right path. We were in the right thought. We just
did not have the resources as an independent brand.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
The LA joint was successful from like a people coming out.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Wise part, you know what I mean, Like it was
a good look, but the venue and all that felt
like we could have got a better venue.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The layout was so crazy that year because the state
was on one side and the VFQ was on the full.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Like this big ass kark. I remember that day.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I looked how much I'd walked, and I'd walked over
a marathon because we were walking back and forth. I
did over twenty seven miles walking back and forth all
day long. And I remember after I had never been
more tired of out and I'm more tired.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I remember throwing the shoes away, whatever shoes I had on.
The bottoms of them were so black and just melted
looking that it was just like yo, they're done.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
It was a wrap.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It was quite a feat just to do it from
coast to coast, but that was our last time at
for now that we did that, especially in that short
time frame we turned around.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
We were very ambitious.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
We definitely pulled it off, but it was super ambitious though.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
The team had pulled off the duel festival, but it
left them exhausted. As they hit the drawing board to
plan for the following year. They decided to refocus their
efforts on a single event in DC. If Broccoli City
was going to be a staple event in the district,
then they needed to up the value proposition across the
board through bigger bookings, better vendors, and more digital content.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
And I started a company called Simple Multimedia with a
graffiti friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
This is Hugo Qbs, marketing and creative director for Broccoli City.
Speaker 6 (29:16):
We just started and the whole premise was, you know,
like we all were marketers, like keep it simple, right.
You look at the best brands, they're always very simple
and clean and easy to digest.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
So that was our premise.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
We're like, hey, you don't need to make your website complicated,
you don't need to make your branding complicated. It just
needs to be really clean and really efficient.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So fast forward.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
We've been doing a lot of work since two thousand
and nine. You know, up until like twenty fourteen, I
was just you know, connecting with a.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Lot of different people. I co called.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
The only person that I knew was a lawyer from
my school, and I was like, hey, can you help
me set up an LC And he's like, oh, I'm
a real estate attorney. I don't really do that. You know,
Like I was like, all right, cool, could you put
me in contact with someone? So we started an open
dialogue to come to find out he was a startup investor,
so he was investing in a bunch of startups, like
he was investing in like early seed and stuff like that.
(30:09):
And then one of his group of investors were investing
in Brocoli City, like they were one of the underwriters
originally for Brocoli City. So like I had seen like
the investment deck and what they were doing early on.
He was like, Hey, I know you're not really in
the investing space, but like I think, you know, there's
a lot of really good synergy between what you're doing
and what Brocoli City's doing. I was pretty tapped into
(30:32):
like the DC you know kind of music scene, and
you know, Marcus in Brandon in Brocoli City would always
be like that kind of event that kind of stood out.
You know, there was a lot of events here, you know,
Howard Homecoming and a bunch of things that happened in
the city that are kind of flagships that have you know,
program and activations around that. Broccoli City really stood the
(30:54):
test of time. When I started paying really close attention
was like two thousand and four were teen fifteen for me.
The artwork for those festivals were so different, you know,
and so artistically creative.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
They just didn't look like anything.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
Else that was out there from like a music offering.
I was like, man, like the Broccoli City people got
it right. Twenty fifteen, I started event production company, so
we got this warehouse in Sterling where we operated, and
I'm just more focused on, like really folks working with
certain brands like Brockly City and my own brands, and
(31:32):
just working with some of these other clients. So that
warehouse was really like an incubator for like a lot
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Would Hugo bring a new perspective to Broccoli City. The
team through a successful twenty fifteen campaign and were able
to capture robust digital content to further grow the brand,
but the team was starting to feel stagnant. Dozens of
others festivals were popping up across the country, and many
of them were booking bigger acts. If Broccoli City wanted
to compete, they needed to lock in an a list
headliner for the twenty sixteen festival.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
At this point, you know, you start noticing other festivals,
you know, what I mean. You start looking at other
cats and what they're doing, and like, how can I
get some of these huge, huge acts that these cats.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Have, And like I said, you know, you just try
to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
And they also your consumers are looking at other festivals too,
and they're like, yo, I love Broccoli City, but so
and so got you know whatever that you just artist
is at that time. But I think that we kept
our community pretty good because you know, we just curated.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
We curated some pretty good vibes. To be honest with you,
I never really had.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Admirations to like build a festival, you know what I mean.
It was just more so about the community. I think
that it helped because it got to like kind of
show off our curation in a sense, just in terms
of the type of acts that we were booking, because
I could look at a festival and just be like, oh,
they just had money.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So twenty sixteen that was when like we had built
up enough capital in the agent industry, right the agents
knew who we were a bit our name was making bills.
There was one agent, Caroline I think at the time
she was working for ICM. This was at the start
of Futures Rise. At that time, it was like you
(33:16):
just got to get the right talent. It was like, yo,
it was talent first and then work backwards. I'll never forget.
It was around twenty fifteen Christmas time. I was doing
a Christmas light like you know how you walk through
the Christmas light little thing. I was with my daughter.
She was very young, She's probably two years old. And
(33:36):
I'm out there with my wife feet and were walking
around and the calls me, like, yo, Caroline about to
call me about future And she calls and I think
we had put like a seventy five thousand dollars offer
on there, which was more than we had ever paid.
And she gets on the phone and she's like, yo,
I just taught this futures management. They're willing to do it,
(33:57):
but they need one fifty So this is well more
than anything we had ever spent. So now I'm like
walking away from my family right I'm at this Christmas thing.
I'm walking away. I feel I feel my wife be
like literally mad as fucking me, like because I'm wandering now,
I'm casing because now because we got to make an answer,
like we but we also can't look weak on the phone,
(34:19):
because if she senses it's anything wrong with our money,
then it puts us in a position to where she's
not gonna have confidence. So I'm like on my phone
trying to do math, trying to figure out, like, Yo,
how do we make this work? And I remember like
being on mute and I go back home and I
was like, Yo, Carolina, can we get a little bit
more time? I was like, but I think we can
(34:39):
make it work. I just need to mess with the
budget real quick. We'll call you back in like a
few hours. So I called me back and I'm like, bro,
and Bee's already feeling it. He's like, Yo, fature the
biggest shit out here, bru. If we can get this motherfucker,
it's gonna sell. Like it will sell, Bro. We end
up just fucking cash flowing that shit. We end up
negotiating negotia. She had the first deposit in two payments,
(35:03):
so we had to put We had to do like
a thirty and like a thirty five. So it was
like we got under the deposit, we got on sale,
sold some tickets, got some money back, aid the rest.
You know what I'm saying. Made it work. She ends
up selling out it was one of the greatest. I
personally think it was like one of the best lineups.
Anybody who was at that festival will tell you that
(35:24):
shit was special. Anderson Pat Jane Ico, like the Internet,
like the the vibes to have that come together. Yeah,
that shit was. That shit was special. And then from
there it was like, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
The Future booking came at a perfect time, fresh off
the release of his critically acclaimed DS two. Future was
one of the hottest acts on the planet. Locking him
in as a headliner established Broccoli City as a premier festival,
and it got the attention of Live Nation, a part
that would soon be able to help them elevate their booking, marketing,
and production.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
The same way we were getting everybody else's attention, we
was getting their attention. We knew we needed more marketing,
but we didn't have a cash I ended up getting
connected to this cat, Mark Mangle, who ran the Feel
More and ran a bunch of the theaters in the
DC market. End up getting connected like, Yo, we got Future,
we got Jay, ain't we got this? How can we
(36:28):
do something marketing? How can we get y'all support? He's like, man,
I love what y'all are doing. See y'all building be
hearing about it. He's like, man, let's just do something,
give me a dollar ticket back in done. Ended up
doing a marketing deal, was able to get some emails
and some support from Live Nation ticket Master that helped
us put us over the top. We end up having
(36:48):
to pay them a dollar ticket on the back end.
Through that, people in the Live Nation building started kind
of connecting with us and started kind of watching what
we were doing. And then this is twenty seven seventeen,
we get a call from Mark and this other guy like, Hey,
it's guy Sean Ge, manager of the Roots. He want
(37:09):
to connect with y'all. He also do roots pitting it.
So we thinking like he about to be on some
hater shit, be honest with you, you know what I mean?
We like, Yo, the fuck motherfucker's about to be hating,
you know what I'm saying. So he hiss us and
he like, yo, my wife's family is from DC. I
come to DC every holidays. When I come, I asked him,
(37:30):
I asked, like, all the young people, what do I
need to be looking out for? Like who's hot? And
they like yo, Rocky City. Shit's going crazy. He like,
what what the fuck is this? He's like, this is
the second Christmas today done mentioned us. So he like,
let me dig into this, digs into it. Impressed. He's like, Yo,
I'm gonna be in I'm gonna be in DC over
the holidays. Come sit down. I go meet him at
(37:50):
the Rich Carton in Georgetown. We do a couple of drinks.
He's telling me about his plans. He was gonna be
getting a new venture Underlive Nation, and he was like, man,
I love to make y'all the first thing under our venture,
but it's gonna probably be late twenty seventeen before I
have a deal in place. He's like, so, I want
to see what y'all do in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
But in order to secure the partnership with Live Nation,
they first needed to impress the president of its urban division,
Sean g with their twenty seventeen festival. The pressure was on.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
We had a twenty seventh teen festival. That lineup was crazy.
It's the first time we try to do two stages.
We're still in the hood at this fucking mental institution
or whatever it is. It rains in classic Broccoli city form, right,
It's rain and it's cold, but people was out there
still so shan jee there he calls like, y'all, I'm
(38:46):
back to the festival. He's like, yo, walk me through.
We walking through. He's like, Yo, this shit is late,
damn Like this motherfuckers has really got some shit. Two stages,
people going back to back, go back to the back stage,
were in the little artist area. It's clean, it's done.
He's like, Yo, shit was good. Now, mind you, I'm
already known we didne lost a couple in a thousand,
(39:07):
Like I'm already knowing this going into the event, Like
I'm knowing this, but I'm walking around like shit, sweet,
you know.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
As with any festival, rain results in money pouring down
the drink. The twenty seventeen festival was a heavy loss financially,
but the team did enough to impress Sean g in
Live Nation and it set them up for a brighter future.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
We sent back down and start talking about how we
can pull a deal together and what that would mean,
and at that time Sean hadn't like he was pretty
much just following our lead, like yo, getting us who
we wanted? I think the only name he pushed back
on was like Nipsey Hustle because Nipsey wasn't really he
didn't have no history. But we were like very tapped
into Nipsey because B's in La. We just was watching it.
(39:50):
We were like, nah, Nipsey, I'm telling you. So he like,
all right, you think so we end up doing Nipsy.
Then he like, yo, something is missing. He like, listen,
I got a relationship with Cardi B. She had just
done a management deal with QC. I think he like yo,
I think I can get Cardi.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Twenty eighteen featured headliners Migos Miguel and Cardi B. Broccolely
City was now able to get the A list headliners
at the top, but the overall curation remained the heart
and soul of the festival, so further down the lineup
you could still find Grammy Award winners like Nipsey Hustle,
Her and Daniel Caesar, local DMVX, and a variety of
exciting vendors and artists. Live Nation also provided more than
(40:33):
just bookings and production support. They had some very talented
employees as well.
Speaker 7 (40:40):
So Broccoley City is the most unique organization I've ever
worked for. I teld people this all the time because
they are very free flowing.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
This is Jacqueline Auston, currently the chief of staff at
Broccoli City. At the time, she was being mentored through
a Live Nation training program called femet Forward.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
So I come from a corporate environment.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
You know, everything's pretty structured, and you know you have
certain ways of doing things, and Brocoley City is almost
the opposite of that in a great way.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Right.
Speaker 7 (41:10):
Growing up, I always wanted to work in entertainment, but
because I went to North Carolina A and T, which
is also marcusist alma mater, I studied communications and journalism
and also study that for my graduate degree at John Hawkins.
My plan was to be in entertainment. Somehow, I did
a program called them Forward. It's by Live Nation and
(41:32):
it's actually pioneered by Hedelori, and they pair you with
a mentor in a field that you're interested in. They
paired me with a mentor name of Shavn.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
She's the s VP of Live.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Nation's curated program. She became my mentor in twenty twenty one,
and I told her that I had a history of
doing event planning and communications and tech and all of
that stuff, but I wanted to start a transition into
festival spaces, and she said, well, do you happen to
know the founders of Brox City. I said, I've never
met them, but I know the festival, and so she
(42:04):
introduced me to Brandon and I took it from there.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Jacqueline started working on projects with Broccoli City and would
eventually join the team full time as chief of staff.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
I had spoke to Jackie.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Jackie was just looking for some opportunities to work in
the live space. She already had a job, she was
already good. And I remember the first conversation I had
with Jackie. I felt like I knew her my whole life,
you know what I mean. And honestly, she was just
the sweetest person ever, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
And she's so like on it.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
From a project management perspective, from a you know, just
an organizational perspective, man, yeah, I honestly don't even know
where we would be without Jackie at this point.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Twenty nineteen saw Childish Gambino, Lul Wayne, and Gunner Grace
the stage, further cementing Broccoli City is one of the
most exciting festivals on the East Coast, but the COVID
nineteen pandemic in twenty twenty would prove to be their
toughest test yet. With live events shut down, the team
had to rethink their entire business model and figure out
how to expand the brand beyond just festivals. So they
(43:07):
turned to Hugo in his Warehouse Content studio.
Speaker 6 (43:13):
That Warehouse really like saved us during the pandemic because
we were able to create a bunch of tools on
the virtual side that we still use to this day.
We were so known for festivals and live events that
we had to pivot and have like a different identity,
and I think the identity that we did have was
like a very relevant cultural voice that I thought was
(43:34):
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
COVID really made us take a step back. We decided
to really center ourselves around people who was like smarter
than us from like just a brand and just like
an overarching standpoint. So we surrounded ourselves over COVID around
like some really smart people to really make us critically
think about what value proposition we want the brand to
have on culture. It was just this concept that we
(43:56):
came up with that BC Broccoli City for Black change
right and really leveraging our brand to create real valuable
change in a lot of different ways, right, Obviously social
impact and community involvement being important, being able to use
our platform to provide information about issues and challenges and opportunity.
(44:19):
We just understood that we just we played a unique
space in terms of who we connected with. But then
also too, like always pushing culture and being able to
leverage like our Live Nation and trying to get big
artists and trying to push big productions for people of
color in our events.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Yeah, I mean, yet again, it was always about education
for us, right, it was always about community.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
And I had a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (44:40):
Hitting my line like Yo, man, how y'all do this festival?
I got this idea for this festival, and I always
wanted to be willing to help, you know what I mean,
just like a regular person, right, Like you just want
to help somebody out. So I'll be like, all right, man,
just shoot me over a debt or something, you know,
just shoot me like a little one sheet. And the
Hallmies was like, what's a one sheet? What's a I'm like,
(45:00):
oh shit, okay, so you know what I mean, Let's
start this with scratch.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
So that was the idea of doing the conference.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
So we started a conference called the Broccoli Conference Broccoli
Conference short.
Speaker 6 (45:11):
One of the things that I'm really proud of, the
broccolikon digital over two days, we had almost seven million
people view that stream.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
And then on the flip side, we also knew that
a lot of people within our community couldn't necessarily afford
festival tickets right and never like Broccoli City was a
super expensive festival, but when you think about the people
that we cater to, you know, one hundred and fifty dollars,
two hundred dollars for you know, a day festival ticket
to see a couple of music acts, that's a lot.
(45:39):
You know what I mean, if you got two kids,
if you got you know what I mean, you got bills.
So we had created this campaign called the Power of
One campaign where you can volunteer in the community, whether
that's Southeast DC, Northeast DC, wherever, and then be able
to earn a free ticket to Broccoli City.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
He looks to the future, the possibilities are endless. They've
mastered live events, can create digital content in house, and
are launching some incredible initiatives to help their community.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Marcus says the best.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
He's like, we just want to be different Coachella does
it a certain way, Dreamville does it a certain way.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Everyone does it a certain way. Like we just want
to have our own lane.
Speaker 6 (46:19):
I'll take our Broccoli City team against any team, you know,
just because like we've been doing it together and separately
for so long.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Really just thinking about the long play and really just
really just making us say, like, man, our brand could
be so much more valuable if we position it as
something that is a platform for change and not just
the annual event.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
I mean, that's really it, man, Like it's the brock,
you know. And we're gonna keep going. We're gonna keep
doing what we do.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Broccoli City story is a testament to the power of
community collaboration and constant elevation. Initially a local celebration intended
to promote climate change awareness and the black comunity, Broccoli
City has evolved into a global brand, and they've done
it with integrity and a constant commitment to their founding ethos.
As a combination of opportunity, creative ambition, and market forces
(47:11):
compelled the company to evolve. They've expanded into digital content
and developed righteous programs to give back to their community.
With every facet covered broccoly City has become a three
to sixty brand that would make any music festival green
with envy. For Idea Generation, I'm Noah Callahan Beverer. Thanks
for listening to the All Angles Podcast presented by will
Packer Media. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate
(47:35):
to like, comment DM or tell a friend to tell
a friend about Idea Generation and the All Angles Podcast.
This episode was brought to you by Will Packer Executive
produced by John Balachik and Helena Ox. Original music by
Valentine Fritz, edit and sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and
(47:56):
hosted by me. Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan bever Idea
Generation's All Angles is a Whelpacker Media podcast
It's Friday, fustifoards the next day and we had not secured.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
All the permitted.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Me and Brandon are literally running around. We had to
get the fire department to sign off. And it's been
at the very last minute. You know, folks on Friday
in the government is they've taken off trying to get
up out of there, So we were down to the
last minute.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Welcome to our Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about
culture's most influential brands and the teams that built up.
If you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing
the power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Beveror each
week as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture.
Because the only way to truly understand success is to
(00:54):
look at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles
is a Willer Media podcast. In twenty ten, Brandon mcahern
and Marcus Allen through a hip hop centric Earthday celebration
for the black community in Los Angeles, and in the
decade plus that followed, that party would evolve into Broccolly City,
(01:17):
a global brand focused on community, music, health, and culture,
culminating at an annual festival in Washington, d C. But
along the way, broccoly City would discover the challenges that
come with running a festival, expand into digital content, and
developed new exciting initiatives to make a positive impact in
their community. On this week's episode of All Angles, we
(01:38):
talked to co founders Brandon mcaheurn, Marcus Allen, and Darryl Perkins,
creative director Hugo Cubias, and Chief of staff Jacqueline Austin
to hear the intricacies of throwing a major festival and
creating one of the most dynamic brands in music and culture.
But before any of that happened, years before booking Future
as a headliner or having the DC Mayor attend one
(01:58):
of their events, there were just two best friends growing
up together in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
My mother is a second grade teacher.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
My pops, you know, middle class dude, worked at the bank.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
This is Brandon mckahurn, founder and CEO of Broccoli City.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
They were also very very active in our church, in
our church community.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
I think that's where I kind of got.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
A lot of my each one teach one type of
mentality from was growing up in the church out there
in North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Down the street from Brendon was his best friend and
future business partner, Marcus.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I know Marcus my whole life. We grew up together.
My neighborhood is pretty close to his, and we used
to ride the bus together.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
I used to pick on him, he used to pick
on me, but yeah, always been my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I met his mom first second grade, and then shortly
thereafter I met him.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
This is Marcus Allen, co founder of Broccoli City and
one of Brandan's best friends since childhood.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
He was a grade behind me. We got connected, you know,
probably summer or second grade, summer third grade. At that time,
they were still living like a little bit away. I
think in fourth or fifth grade they moved close to
where our elementary school was. That was really where we
got like super cool and it really became a friend group,
(03:17):
from sports to hanging out, to picking each other up
to just the whole mine.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The two stayed closed throughout high school, but eventually I
ended up taking different paths for college, with Marcus going
to North Carolina A and T, while Brendan went to
North Carolina Central and Durham.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
In college, I actually was a part of the theater
department there and acted in a couple of plays.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
I was like, Yo, I'm gonna do the Hollywood thing.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm
gonna do something in that world and in that realm.
I graduated and moved back to Greensboro, like most of
us do. You graduate school and you moved back home.
And when I moved back home, I was watching Entourage
every Sunday. I watched Asarage and then I had a
homegirl who actually lived in La Right, so I'm watching,
(04:04):
you know what I mean, Vinnie and Turtle, I'm watching
all these adventures. I'm like, Yo, this shit is crazy
fucking e you know what I mean, just like the
whole thing, the ris of the world, the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Brandon had Hollywood dreams, and after visiting a friend in
Los Angeles, he knew he needed to move out west.
So he packed up his things and hit the road,
driving across the country in search of a new adventure.
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
Man, I was super excited. I've always been the type
of cat that's excited for like the first day of
school or the first day you know, somewhere new, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So I was super duper excited.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Taking the Southern Rape to get to California. The timing
of Branda's trip could not have been worse, so we
didn't know it he would be driving directly into the
wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I had went through Atlanta to pick up my older
brother so he can ride with me most of the way.
I came around like the Katrina Tom It was crazy.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
He had got caught in a.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Huge storm, you know what I mean, off the back
end of Katrina. I mean, when we pulled over somewhere
in Alabama, we didn't have no gas, and then I
ended up meeting these like super cool white boys and
they were like, follow us to this gas station and
they like, man, they pumped the gas for us, like
all sorts of shit. And then I turned around and
they were gone. I know that sounds crazy, but it's
(05:23):
like the dead ass truth, you know.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
What I mean. Then I got to California and I
ended up visiting my homegirl. I was like, wow, like
this is where I need to be. Once I got here,
I was like, yo, I need a job. And I
ended up.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Going on Melrose and I met somebody who was actually
still my.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Friends to this day shout out to my man Seed's.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
He worked at this store called Workmen's and Workman's It
was on Melrose Avenue, and they were doing things like
cossignment with like T shirt.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Brands and things of that nature.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
Now, granted, I'm from North Carolina, so I don't know
anything about you know, I don't know anything about none
of this, you know what I mean, the hundreds, none
of that shit, right. I just remember like being engulfed
in this world. End up getting a job at the
place called Workman's. I met Sees. He was from the
East Coast, so we automatically just kind of vibed and
he was like, oh, you just moved out here. I'm like, yeah,
I just moved out here, man, need a job. Like,
(06:12):
what's up, bro? I always been like personable when I
was working in Workman's. I just got hip to the
Los Angeles kind of culture.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
At the time.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Labrinia was discovering the culture of Los Angeles. Marcus moved
to Washington, DC to work in local government as a
logistics coordinator. Even though the two friends were across the
country from one another, they still talked daily, and soon
they were both enamored by the buzzing streetwear scene. Local
brands like Crooks and Castles and the Hundreds had brand
his attention, and both of them wanted in on that energy.
(06:45):
That desire would plant seeds for the two to develop
their own brand, Broccoli City.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
There was a lot of other brands, the Hundreds, Crooks
and Castles, but they were much darker in terms of
their concepts. Like the look of it was Darkerhnny Cookcakes
was very playful, it was colorful, it was it was
a bit it was a bit more jovial, and that
was kind of the brand that we were, Like Yo,
Johnny Cupcakes, Like yeah, like Broccoli City, like we gonna
(07:12):
be that.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
When starting a brand, one of the hardest parts can
be deciding on a name that's worthy of your vision. Luckily,
for Brandon and Marcus, they already had that on deck.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I used to rap back in the day and I
had said Broccoli City.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
In a rat one time.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
I don't remember the exact line or nothing, but something
that rhyme with witty or something I'm from Broccoli City
or something like oh shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
That's a vibe.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
He was in this little shitty band. It was like
a hoodie and a blowfish. It was like the black
rapper with the with the band, you know what I mean,
Jim class Rod type ship. Right, it was that whole vibe.
We were just outside one day and he was like, yeah,
because we from the Broxi City, it's just like, oh shit,
Broccoli City. That's hard. And then it was like, look
different places. We would say it randomly.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
I remember actually going and visiting like New York and
other places and people would ask me where I was from,
and instead of saying Greensboro, I would say like, yeah,
I'm from Brockley City and people would.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Be like, oh, snap, you know what I mean, what's that.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
I kind of just carried the name with me through college,
Like you'll have a friend from DC and you'll be like, oh,
they're from PG County or they're from the district, and
you know, I would say things with my little friends
like yo, oh they're from.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The brock Like, oh, they're from Greensboro.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Brockley City is Greensboro, so like Broccoli is the green
and then Borough is the city part, so it's Brockley
City Greensboro. So when you met me, instead of it
being Brandon, it was like I was building somewhat of
a community. So I would introduce myself as like branding
from Brockley City.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I'd be like, yo, brand in Brockley.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
City, but up and people would save my number as
brand in Broccoli or Broccoli b or whatever the case
may be.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I always pushed it. It was always my.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
With a name in hand. Brandon looked to his new
LA connections to help bring the brand to light.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I ended up meeting this guy named Dee.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
He was like this Filipino dude, and he was outside
of Workman's and he was like smoking a joint or
something and he just.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Looked mad cool. So I'm like, damn, like who is you?
What the fuck you do?
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Bro?
Speaker 5 (09:19):
And he's like, man, you know I got a T
shirt line. It's called Crooks and Castles, you know what
I mean. We got the T shirts in here and
the T shirt was the Fasace mask with the ski
mask on the face. I was like, Yo, this is crazy,
Like so how'd you do this? And he like, yeah,
this is my company, Bro. I got a graphic designer,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I just I put it together and I'm like, oh.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
Shit, I said, make some T shirts like this say
Brocoli City on them.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I ended up just like talking to people trying to
find like graphic designers.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
At this time, it wasn't like the my spaces and
the igs and what was my space? But it wasn't
like IG's and all that, so you couldn't just find
cats the way you can find them now.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
I went to a spring print spot. It was in
the Valley. I had like the regular Fine with just
like Broccoli City on it.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
You know what I mean, Like that had have been
times New Roman or some shit like that, and I
took it to the screen shop to get it printed.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I met this dude there. It was a Hispanic cat.
His name was Fine, and he was there with this other.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Dude named KB I mean, who was like a rapper
at the time, and they had this brand called Ghetto
Rock off.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Of the common song. I was like, man, like, how.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Much would you charge me to do, you know, to
do a logo? And he was like, you know, I
forgot what he told me, but scrambled up.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
I got the money. I paid him, and then he.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Created the first like Broccoli City logo, and then I
created like a website, you know, the whole nine.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Because farn was super nice and all that shit.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
And at this time, I'm telling Marcus about all this
stuff that's going on right like he's still on the
East coast.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I'm on the West coast.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
As Brendan networked and spread the Broccoli City name in
La Marcus was in DC plotting on the future. Soon
they were throwing their first Broccoli City parties and stumbled
up on the inspiration for their first major event.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
We had been starting to have like smaller parties at
like this spot called Center Space. We had started giving
T shirts away. It was really to promote the T
shirt line and to get more visibility, and we ended
up giving a bunch of T shirts away. If you
go back and look at the pictures and just look
at the vibe, I mean, everybody from like Nick Cannon
to like, you know, everybody who was popular in LA
(11:19):
culture at that time some kind of way ended up
coming to our events. Ultimately, we got hit up by
earth Day Network, which is the organization that manages earth Day,
the holiday. We ended up making some T shirts for
them for like their thirtieth anniversary, and that was the
first time we'd even heard earth Day, Like that doesn't
even exist. In North Carolina at that time, right, So
(11:40):
it's like Earth Day, Like, yo, what is this? So
I ended up going to the celebration and it was
on a National Mall in DC. It was like Usher
Anita Baker and like all these big artists, but it's
like no Black people there. But it was obvious they
were like booking this for it to be multicultural, but
it was like no people of color there. And I
(12:01):
remember hitting b after that shit, like, bro, they had
to shit the fucking National Mall. That shit was crazy.
I see Usher da da da da, but it was
no Black people out there.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Like, I'm telling you, it's some shit with it, yo,
we might need to do it. When to do a
Black earth Day celebration.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
I remember hearing and learning more in depth about earth
Day and what Earth Day represented, and I was like,
oh shit, like you know, this is super dope, like
a day that focuses in on community love, you know, sustainability,
this that to the third I'm like, man, like why
ain't nobody done that in you know, in the urban community,
in the black community, right, And I'm like, yo, I'm.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Gonna do a party during Earth Day, you know what
I'm saying?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Like that was like my thing because I'm like, oh,
it's Broccoli City, so automatically, a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Of people thought that it was, you know, health driven,
you know what I mean, because of the broccoli.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
They even thought it was health driven or weed driven,
which I always used to think was hilarious, what makes
perfect sense. But I always wanted to have some time
a community element to whatever I did.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Their passion for community health and the environment led them
to planning an Earth Day celebration for the Black community
in LA. While searching for brands to work with on
the event, they ended up meeting a future partner of
broccoly City.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
My parents were always very engaged kind of with social
movements in the Bay areas.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
This is Darryl Perkins, co founder and managing director of
Broccol City.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I grew up around a lot of social justice activism.
I think that was always I always saw myself doing
something to help my community to be socially active. And
I ended up going to Howard University, and I started
as a business student, but I wasn't really feeling the
business courses, but I enjoyed my anthropology classes and looking
(13:46):
at how cultures changed, how culture and music played along
with social movements back from the slave spirituals all the
way to hip hop. The relationship between the two as
social movements went from then to now, how music and
artists played a large role in the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Daryl's passion for combining culture, music and activism led him
to work with a top leader in the environmental justice space,
and was also about to lead him to working with
Brandon and Marcus too.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I was working with Carrie Fulton, who's actually a leader
in the environmental justice movement, has been and continues to
be Carrie Fulman. And we met through Carrie as we're
doing outreach to different folks that were.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Doing these Earth Day events. I remember those early.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Conversations but like, oh, they're just doing dope stuff, and
they saw it from a perspective similar to the way
I saw getting again, folks that look like us, talk
like us, making it cool to have these conversations about
the environment, because at that time talking about the environment
was not a cool thing to do.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I mean it was you know, they.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Saw them as not folks that look like us. You know,
we're putting as tree huggers. There's just not us having
these conversations. Well, at the same time, we knew how
important that these environmental issues had on our communities, and
so we understood that. And so the way that we
saw that as well as to have the look and
(15:10):
feel of something that I would want to be a
part of it my friends who want to be a
part of it, was very important. I was working on
a campaign called Green the Block, and we were doing
all these events around environmental justice, fighting power, and involution
around the country. One of the things that came of
that was we did all these Earth Day events all
around the country, and Broccoli City was one of our
(15:32):
flagship events. It was called the Global Cooling and I
believe this was twenty ten, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Broccoli City now had a partner in place to help
launch their first major event.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
I ended up getting that with them, and we end
up calling this event Global Cooling right, because they you know, cooling,
global Cooling bomb.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
It was downtown LA on Margot Street.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
It was healthy food vendors as well as musical acts right,
and the acts that we had with everybody such as
Dom Kennedy, you and I, Kendrick Lamar, and it was
so much camaraderie. On the West coast at that time,
you know what I'm saying. We had dom headline, and
it was right when he had dropped on West Side
from Love from West Side with Love, so like he
(16:16):
performed like nineteen ninety seven, you know what I mean, Like, Bru,
this is for anybody who's in this world listening to this,
I know they're getting chill bumps, you know what I'm saying.
BJ the Chicago kid, Casey Veggie's and anwar carriage. We
thought we were gonna do two hundred and fifty people
or whatever the case may be, but the joint ended
up doing like five six hundred people, and at that time,
(16:36):
like that's a lot of people. That joint was smacking,
you know what I mean. And then it was on
all the blogs. This was like twenty ten when we
put that first festival together. It was during that blog
era time filming the recap and trying everything in my
power to get it to like Mika.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
And them over it too dope boys, you know what I.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
Mean, because that was like the thing to get like
your video on their blog. I ended up meeting him
and he ended up posting all of our recap videos.
That was kind of like the beginning of okay, let's
turn this into something physical outside.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
It exceeded expectations for sure, you know what I mean.
For sure?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
For sure, even though Daryl had worked on these kinds
of events before, working with Brandon and Marcus on the
Global Cooling, it felt different.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I mean, it's beautiful and you have a space and
there's nobody there, and then you have a lot of
people there coming together to celebrate Earth. It was powerful,
but I think it was also our high moment in
terms of we can bring people together in a positive space.
It can be fun, it can be cool, it can
be educational, it can be impactful.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I think it was like, oh there's something here.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, I mean there was a magic there. And then
after it's done, the war just kept spreading like if
you missed out, Like, man, you kind of missed something.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I think we made a little money, but it wouldn't
nothing to even talk about.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
It was like, oh, okay, we didn't go broke doing it,
you know what I mean. Obviously I had to pay
the ax, but I didn't have to pay it. What
you gotta pay acts nowadays.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
The Global Cooping was a huge success, and the team
saw the potential for Broccoli City to grow, but they
weren't sure that Los Angeles was the best home for it.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So I'm thinking, Okay, you know what I mean, Let's
do this again. This shit about the pot let's do it.
But then just the finances became a thing because, like
I said, everybody ended up getting signed.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
The landscape in Los.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
Angeles, you know, it still was a very clicks town,
and I'm not really too heavily into like all the
clicks and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So yeah, we had to like sit down for like
a year and a half, like two years. May ain't
really do nothing.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Just try to figure it out, like what can we do.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I was in DC. I was working government contracting. I
got a job, but I'm active, like I'm in the streets,
like I'm going out every night, like I'm partying, like
I'm having a fucking ball, and I'm talking to be
Because at the time, he's working for James Dubows as
a PA.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
While I was working as a pdu duction assistant for
a guy by the name of James Debos. I worked
on like The Keisha Cole Show and some MTV shows,
but I was just a PA, and for anybody who
knows what a PA is, you're like the lowest of
the lowest of the lowest when it comes.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
To like production.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
So like I was going and getting people subs and
you know, making sure what no onions on that joint
things like that, but also playing like an office manager too,
you know what I mean, to the production places and
having to drive and drop off cuts.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
He's calling me every day with like printing out map
quest just dropping off like reels and dropping off cameras
to different people all over LA. And I'm sitting in
my office with the door clothes and we're talking for
like four hours a day, just like just talking shit.
He just in the car. I remember just telling him
and just talking to him, like, Yo, this DC shit
is just like LA, It's just different. He like, Bro,
(19:51):
you tripping. I'm like, fam cats are out every day
till two three in the morning. The only difference is
they got job and they wake up for their jobs.
I'm like, Yo, they go out and they wake up though,
I'm like, yo, they beat it their job at nine
in the morning and they do that shit again the
next day. I'm like, it's not even that popping on
(20:13):
the weekends. I'm like, yo, it's all during the week
I'm like, there's a culture here that people got money.
I'm like, bro, we should do it here.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
He was like, yo, being we need to bring it
to DC. Bro Brandon agreed.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
That a DC event was a great idea, but if
they were gonna throw a party there, he would have
to be bigger. So they started putting into motion where
would become the first ever Broccolly City Festival.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
So on my side, I always have been the one
to kind of go off and book the talent. And
then Marcus on his side, he was building the relationships
in Washington, d C. With a lot of like government
agencies and things like that. He was very mixy in
terms of building those relationships. Marcus ended up building a
relationship with somebody he was like in real estate, and
(21:01):
we were able to borrow some money from him to
pay the acts.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So my homie Nate shout out to Nate. I had
been telling him what we were trying to do. He's like, yeah,
I got somebody who probably be interested. We end up
meeting at Ted's Montana Grill in Crystal City and I
walk in Chuck Taylor's you know what I mean some jeans,
hoodie or something, probably smell like weed done and smoking.
(21:25):
The car I get in there, they got on suits.
They're younger, though they're not like older guys, like they're like,
you know, probably six years seven years older than us,
you know what I'm saying. But they suited, right, They
very much in this DC suit culture.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
They start asking questions. I pull out a deck, start
pulling out the budget, walking them through everything, and then
a week or two later I end up hearing back
from them. He was like, Bro, like you made me
readjust how I view business because I was very turned
off by you by the way you were dressed. But
when you started talking, I realized how thorough and how
(22:03):
much you knew what you were talking about. And he
was like, it made me really get out of my
mole of thinking, like judging a book by his cover
and just being like, but this dude, don't got on
a suit. He told me that, like, Bro, you changed
how I approached business moving forward for the rest of
my life. If I had just kept my guard up
based upon how you looked and just all of that,
I probably wouldn't even have heard what you had to say.
(22:25):
But you came off so much solid. It was just
it was a thing. I definitely remember him saying that,
I remember that whole that whole process of like getting
an investor and paying them back with interest and like
all of that. And I think they invest in like
thirty five forty grand.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
With some investor money in their pocket to fund the festival.
The team went out to book acts, vendors and secure location.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Marcus, like I said, he handled all the operational stuff
and then I handle all the talent stuff.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Marcus ended up getting us the Navy.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Yard, which was kind of a crater or whatever, you
know what I mean, you know, and it got them
big ass bends up and things like that. Like they
got him, they have him in different cities. He ended
up locking that venue. Our biggest act that we had
at the time was Big Crit. I booked Big Krit
from I want to say, Johnny Snipes. At the time,
Big Crit had just dropped. I don't know if it
was Krit was here, I don't know what it was,
(23:18):
but it was one of.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Them joints that was nuts. It was like when Krit.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Was that dude not saying that he's still like much
respecting you, Krit, I'm still a fan. We had the
likes of Phil I Day on there. I want to say,
we had a Go Go band on there. Then we
also had vendors, right, we had the healthy vendors. That
was something that I was always big on, like just
having healthy juices and things like that. I'm not the
healthiest person in the world, but I always think it's
(23:44):
dope to.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
At least provide the option, to be honest with you.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I had never went to a festival before Brocoli City,
so I never knew what one looked like outside of
what we did. But what we did though, was We're
gonna create this platform and give other people an opportunity
to kind of shout on it.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
The first ever Brocco Lea City Festival launched on April
twenty first, twenty thirteen, and featured acts like Big Krit, Scissa,
and Jamison. They also posted yoga, art, pop ups, craft beer,
and games.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
We thought we were gonna do like twenty five hundred people.
We ended up doing like four thousand people. And the
way it looked at the time was like, oh, shit,
and the mayor came and shit, it was crazy. The
mayor came and at that time we knew, oh, this
could really be something like there's a there's a need for.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
This safe space, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
For people, it was a lot of women, you know
what I mean, And not saying that like, oh we
got all the girls, but it was like for those
who like wearing Jordan's but also you know, like wearing heels,
you know what I mean, Like it's a very balanced crowd.
It was everybody out there, white, black, Hispanic, you know
what I mean. If you were a fan of just
music and good vibes, you were out there and it
was super duper dope.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
It was super duper dope. And then that was the.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
First one that we actually called the Broccoli City Festival.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
The Broccoli City Festival had a ride. The perfect blend
of rising artists, unique venders, and positive messaging made the
festival a massive success. It also made the team hungry
for more. As they began planning the twenty fourteen edition.
They raised the bar even higher by making two separate festivals,
one in DC and the other in Los Angeles. He
was an ambitious move and one that would test the
(25:26):
limits of the team.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
It's like, y'all, let's do it again, and let's just
try to make it bigger.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
We had made a little money.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
With that one, but yet again we had to pay
due back. But we actually stayed in relationship with him
because he saw what we were able to do, right,
so it was like all right, you know, So then
we bawled just a little bigger bag from him the
next time around, in twenty fourteen is when we actually
moved to Gateway Pavilion, which was an old insane asylum
(25:54):
in southeast DC. It was like dead smack in the
middle of a hood hood.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
We did like five thousand people, five thousand.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
And seven thousand people. It was really like, Okay, this
is a thing. And then that's when like the city
of DC started reaching out to us, you know what
I mean, Like conversations started to change a little bit.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
The DC leg of the duo Festival was a total success,
but the la iteration it was a little shakier.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So we just finished one, right, So we finished and
then we're going out to La. It's Friday Fusiboards the
next day and we had not secured all the permitting.
I remember me and Brandon are literally running around. We
had to get fire fighters the fire department to sign
off on so we're getting these these permitting. Then at
the very last minute, you know, folks on Friday in
(26:43):
the governments they taken off trying to get up out
of there. So we were down to the last minute,
but we got everything handled.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That was crazy. Who's fools for that? When I look
at how other brands have been able to grow to
multiple cities. It was the right thought for sure, no question,
was the right thought. The problem is we didn't have
the resources right, Like, we were robbing Peter to pay
Paul on one festival, so to do it for two
was crazy. We did have the right mindset LA at
(27:11):
that time. That's where we were supposed to be growing to,
but we got an ass kick. Our venue was huge.
We ended up selling like a good amount of tickets,
but the venue was so big that it looked like
it wasn't that many people. But going back looking at it,
like all the right people from LA that became like
made people like super influential ended up being at that event,
(27:34):
you know what I mean. So we were in the
right path. We were in the right thought. We just
did not have the resources as an independent brand.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
The LA joint was successful from like a people coming out.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Wise part, you know what I mean, Like it was
a good look, but the venue and all that felt
like we could have got a better venue.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The layout was so crazy that year because the state
was on one side and the VFQ was on the full.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Like this big ass kark. I remember that day.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I looked how much I'd walked, and I'd walked over
a marathon because we were walking back and forth. I
did over twenty seven miles walking back and forth all
day long. And I remember after I had never been
more tired of out and I'm more tired.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I remember throwing the shoes away, whatever shoes I had on.
The bottoms of them were so black and just melted
looking that it was just like yo, they're done.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
It was a wrap.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It was quite a feat just to do it from
coast to coast, but that was our last time at
for now that we did that, especially in that short
time frame we turned around.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
We were very ambitious.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
We definitely pulled it off, but it was super ambitious though.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
The team had pulled off the duel festival, but it
left them exhausted. As they hit the drawing board to
plan for the following year. They decided to refocus their
efforts on a single event in DC. If Broccoli City
was going to be a staple event in the district,
then they needed to up the value proposition across the
board through bigger bookings, better vendors, and more digital content.
Speaker 6 (29:07):
And I started a company called Simple Multimedia with a
graffiti friend of mine.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
This is Hugo Qbs, marketing and creative director for Broccoli City.
Speaker 6 (29:16):
We just started and the whole premise was, you know,
like we all were marketers, like keep it simple, right.
You look at the best brands, they're always very simple
and clean and easy to digest.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
So that was our premise.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
We're like, hey, you don't need to make your website complicated,
you don't need to make your branding complicated. It just
needs to be really clean and really efficient.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So fast forward.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
We've been doing a lot of work since two thousand
and nine. You know, up until like twenty fourteen, I
was just you know, connecting with a.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Lot of different people. I co called.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
The only person that I knew was a lawyer from
my school, and I was like, hey, can you help
me set up an LC And he's like, oh, I'm
a real estate attorney. I don't really do that. You know,
Like I was like, all right, cool, could you put
me in contact with someone? So we started an open
dialogue to come to find out he was a startup investor,
so he was investing in a bunch of startups, like
he was investing in like early seed and stuff like that.
(30:09):
And then one of his group of investors were investing
in Brocoli City, like they were one of the underwriters
originally for Brocoli City. So like I had seen like
the investment deck and what they were doing early on.
He was like, Hey, I know you're not really in
the investing space, but like I think, you know, there's
a lot of really good synergy between what you're doing
and what Brocoli City's doing. I was pretty tapped into
(30:32):
like the DC you know kind of music scene, and
you know, Marcus in Brandon in Brocoli City would always
be like that kind of event that kind of stood out.
You know, there was a lot of events here, you know,
Howard Homecoming and a bunch of things that happened in
the city that are kind of flagships that have you know,
program and activations around that. Broccoli City really stood the
(30:54):
test of time. When I started paying really close attention
was like two thousand and four were teen fifteen for me.
The artwork for those festivals were so different, you know,
and so artistically creative.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
They just didn't look like anything.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
Else that was out there from like a music offering.
I was like, man, like the Broccoli City people got
it right. Twenty fifteen, I started event production company, so
we got this warehouse in Sterling where we operated, and
I'm just more focused on, like really folks working with
certain brands like Brockly City and my own brands, and
(31:32):
just working with some of these other clients. So that
warehouse was really like an incubator for like a lot
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Would Hugo bring a new perspective to Broccoli City. The
team through a successful twenty fifteen campaign and were able
to capture robust digital content to further grow the brand,
but the team was starting to feel stagnant. Dozens of
others festivals were popping up across the country, and many
of them were booking bigger acts. If Broccoli City wanted
to compete, they needed to lock in an a list
headliner for the twenty sixteen festival.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
At this point, you know, you start noticing other festivals,
you know, what I mean. You start looking at other
cats and what they're doing, and like, how can I
get some of these huge, huge acts that these cats.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Have, And like I said, you know, you just try
to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
And they also your consumers are looking at other festivals too,
and they're like, yo, I love Broccoli City, but so
and so got you know whatever that you just artist
is at that time. But I think that we kept
our community pretty good because you know, we just curated.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
We curated some pretty good vibes. To be honest with you,
I never really had.
Speaker 5 (32:36):
Admirations to like build a festival, you know what I mean.
It was just more so about the community. I think
that it helped because it got to like kind of
show off our curation in a sense, just in terms
of the type of acts that we were booking, because
I could look at a festival and just be like, oh,
they just had money.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
So twenty sixteen that was when like we had built
up enough capital in the agent industry, right the agents
knew who we were a bit our name was making bills.
There was one agent, Caroline I think at the time
she was working for ICM. This was at the start
of Futures Rise. At that time, it was like you
(33:16):
just got to get the right talent. It was like, yo,
it was talent first and then work backwards. I'll never forget.
It was around twenty fifteen Christmas time. I was doing
a Christmas light like you know how you walk through
the Christmas light little thing. I was with my daughter.
She was very young, She's probably two years old. And
(33:36):
I'm out there with my wife feet and were walking
around and the calls me, like, yo, Caroline about to
call me about future And she calls and I think
we had put like a seventy five thousand dollars offer
on there, which was more than we had ever paid.
And she gets on the phone and she's like, yo,
I just taught this futures management. They're willing to do it,
(33:57):
but they need one fifty So this is well more
than anything we had ever spent. So now I'm like
walking away from my family right I'm at this Christmas thing.
I'm walking away. I feel I feel my wife be
like literally mad as fucking me, like because I'm wandering now,
I'm casing because now because we got to make an answer,
like we but we also can't look weak on the phone,
(34:19):
because if she senses it's anything wrong with our money,
then it puts us in a position to where she's
not gonna have confidence. So I'm like on my phone
trying to do math, trying to figure out, like, Yo,
how do we make this work? And I remember like
being on mute and I go back home and I
was like, Yo, Carolina, can we get a little bit
more time? I was like, but I think we can
(34:39):
make it work. I just need to mess with the
budget real quick. We'll call you back in like a
few hours. So I called me back and I'm like, bro,
and Bee's already feeling it. He's like, Yo, fature the
biggest shit out here, bru. If we can get this motherfucker,
it's gonna sell. Like it will sell, Bro. We end
up just fucking cash flowing that shit. We end up
negotiating negotia. She had the first deposit in two payments,
(35:03):
so we had to put We had to do like
a thirty and like a thirty five. So it was
like we got under the deposit, we got on sale,
sold some tickets, got some money back, aid the rest.
You know what I'm saying. Made it work. She ends
up selling out it was one of the greatest. I
personally think it was like one of the best lineups.
Anybody who was at that festival will tell you that
(35:24):
shit was special. Anderson Pat Jane Ico, like the Internet,
like the the vibes to have that come together. Yeah,
that shit was. That shit was special. And then from
there it was like, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
The Future booking came at a perfect time, fresh off
the release of his critically acclaimed DS two. Future was
one of the hottest acts on the planet. Locking him
in as a headliner established Broccoli City as a premier festival,
and it got the attention of Live Nation, a part
that would soon be able to help them elevate their booking, marketing,
and production.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
The same way we were getting everybody else's attention, we
was getting their attention. We knew we needed more marketing,
but we didn't have a cash I ended up getting
connected to this cat, Mark Mangle, who ran the Feel
More and ran a bunch of the theaters in the
DC market. End up getting connected like, Yo, we got Future,
we got Jay, ain't we got this? How can we
(36:28):
do something marketing? How can we get y'all support? He's like, man,
I love what y'all are doing. See y'all building be
hearing about it. He's like, man, let's just do something,
give me a dollar ticket back in done. Ended up
doing a marketing deal, was able to get some emails
and some support from Live Nation ticket Master that helped
us put us over the top. We end up having
(36:48):
to pay them a dollar ticket on the back end.
Through that, people in the Live Nation building started kind
of connecting with us and started kind of watching what
we were doing. And then this is twenty seven seventeen,
we get a call from Mark and this other guy like, Hey,
it's guy Sean Ge, manager of the Roots. He want
(37:09):
to connect with y'all. He also do roots pitting it.
So we thinking like he about to be on some
hater shit, be honest with you, you know what I mean?
We like, Yo, the fuck motherfucker's about to be hating,
you know what I'm saying. So he hiss us and
he like, yo, my wife's family is from DC. I
come to DC every holidays. When I come, I asked him,
(37:30):
I asked, like, all the young people, what do I
need to be looking out for? Like who's hot? And
they like yo, Rocky City. Shit's going crazy. He like,
what what the fuck is this? He's like, this is
the second Christmas today done mentioned us. So he like,
let me dig into this, digs into it. Impressed. He's like, Yo,
I'm gonna be in I'm gonna be in DC over
the holidays. Come sit down. I go meet him at
(37:50):
the Rich Carton in Georgetown. We do a couple of drinks.
He's telling me about his plans. He was gonna be
getting a new venture Underlive Nation, and he was like, man,
I love to make y'all the first thing under our venture,
but it's gonna probably be late twenty seventeen before I
have a deal in place. He's like, so, I want
to see what y'all do in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
But in order to secure the partnership with Live Nation,
they first needed to impress the president of its urban division,
Sean g with their twenty seventeen festival. The pressure was on.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
We had a twenty seventh teen festival. That lineup was crazy.
It's the first time we try to do two stages.
We're still in the hood at this fucking mental institution
or whatever it is. It rains in classic Broccoli city form, right,
It's rain and it's cold, but people was out there
still so shan jee there he calls like, y'all, I'm
(38:46):
back to the festival. He's like, yo, walk me through.
We walking through. He's like, Yo, this shit is late,
damn Like this motherfuckers has really got some shit. Two stages,
people going back to back, go back to the back stage,
were in the little artist area. It's clean, it's done.
He's like, Yo, shit was good. Now, mind you, I'm
already known we didne lost a couple in a thousand,
(39:07):
Like I'm already knowing this going into the event, Like
I'm knowing this, but I'm walking around like shit, sweet,
you know.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
As with any festival, rain results in money pouring down
the drink. The twenty seventeen festival was a heavy loss financially,
but the team did enough to impress Sean g in
Live Nation and it set them up for a brighter future.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
We sent back down and start talking about how we
can pull a deal together and what that would mean,
and at that time Sean hadn't like he was pretty
much just following our lead, like yo, getting us who
we wanted? I think the only name he pushed back
on was like Nipsey Hustle because Nipsey wasn't really he
didn't have no history. But we were like very tapped
into Nipsey because B's in La. We just was watching it.
(39:50):
We were like, nah, Nipsey, I'm telling you. So he like,
all right, you think so we end up doing Nipsy.
Then he like, yo, something is missing. He like, listen,
I got a relationship with Cardi B. She had just
done a management deal with QC. I think he like yo,
I think I can get Cardi.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Twenty eighteen featured headliners Migos Miguel and Cardi B. Broccolely
City was now able to get the A list headliners
at the top, but the overall curation remained the heart
and soul of the festival, so further down the lineup
you could still find Grammy Award winners like Nipsey Hustle,
Her and Daniel Caesar, local DMVX, and a variety of
exciting vendors and artists. Live Nation also provided more than
(40:33):
just bookings and production support. They had some very talented
employees as well.
Speaker 7 (40:40):
So Broccoley City is the most unique organization I've ever
worked for. I teld people this all the time because
they are very free flowing.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
This is Jacqueline Auston, currently the chief of staff at
Broccoli City. At the time, she was being mentored through
a Live Nation training program called femet Forward.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
So I come from a corporate environment.
Speaker 7 (41:00):
You know, everything's pretty structured, and you know you have
certain ways of doing things, and Brocoley City is almost
the opposite of that in a great way.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Right.
Speaker 7 (41:10):
Growing up, I always wanted to work in entertainment, but
because I went to North Carolina A and T, which
is also marcusist alma mater, I studied communications and journalism
and also study that for my graduate degree at John Hawkins.
My plan was to be in entertainment. Somehow, I did
a program called them Forward. It's by Live Nation and
(41:32):
it's actually pioneered by Hedelori, and they pair you with
a mentor in a field that you're interested in. They
paired me with a mentor name of Shavn.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
She's the s VP of Live.
Speaker 7 (41:42):
Nation's curated program. She became my mentor in twenty twenty one,
and I told her that I had a history of
doing event planning and communications and tech and all of
that stuff, but I wanted to start a transition into
festival spaces, and she said, well, do you happen to
know the founders of Brox City. I said, I've never
met them, but I know the festival, and so she
(42:04):
introduced me to Brandon and I took it from there.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Jacqueline started working on projects with Broccoli City and would
eventually join the team full time as chief of staff.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
I had spoke to Jackie.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Jackie was just looking for some opportunities to work in
the live space. She already had a job, she was
already good. And I remember the first conversation I had
with Jackie. I felt like I knew her my whole life,
you know what I mean. And honestly, she was just
the sweetest person ever, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
And she's so like on it.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
From a project management perspective, from a you know, just
an organizational perspective, man, yeah, I honestly don't even know
where we would be without Jackie at this point.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Twenty nineteen saw Childish Gambino, Lul Wayne, and Gunner Grace
the stage, further cementing Broccoli City is one of the
most exciting festivals on the East Coast, but the COVID
nineteen pandemic in twenty twenty would prove to be their
toughest test yet. With live events shut down, the team
had to rethink their entire business model and figure out
how to expand the brand beyond just festivals. So they
(43:07):
turned to Hugo in his Warehouse Content studio.
Speaker 6 (43:13):
That Warehouse really like saved us during the pandemic because
we were able to create a bunch of tools on
the virtual side that we still use to this day.
We were so known for festivals and live events that
we had to pivot and have like a different identity,
and I think the identity that we did have was
like a very relevant cultural voice that I thought was
(43:34):
really interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
COVID really made us take a step back. We decided
to really center ourselves around people who was like smarter
than us from like just a brand and just like
an overarching standpoint. So we surrounded ourselves over COVID around
like some really smart people to really make us critically
think about what value proposition we want the brand to
have on culture. It was just this concept that we
(43:56):
came up with that BC Broccoli City for Black change
right and really leveraging our brand to create real valuable
change in a lot of different ways, right, Obviously social
impact and community involvement being important, being able to use
our platform to provide information about issues and challenges and opportunity.
(44:19):
We just understood that we just we played a unique
space in terms of who we connected with. But then
also too, like always pushing culture and being able to
leverage like our Live Nation and trying to get big
artists and trying to push big productions for people of
color in our events.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Yeah, I mean, yet again, it was always about education
for us, right, it was always about community.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
And I had a lot of people.
Speaker 5 (44:40):
Hitting my line like Yo, man, how y'all do this festival?
I got this idea for this festival, and I always
wanted to be willing to help, you know what I mean,
just like a regular person, right, Like you just want
to help somebody out. So I'll be like, all right, man,
just shoot me over a debt or something, you know,
just shoot me like a little one sheet. And the
Hallmies was like, what's a one sheet? What's a I'm like,
(45:00):
oh shit, okay, so you know what I mean, Let's
start this with scratch.
Speaker 4 (45:04):
So that was the idea of doing the conference.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
So we started a conference called the Broccoli Conference Broccoli
Conference short.
Speaker 6 (45:11):
One of the things that I'm really proud of, the
broccolikon digital over two days, we had almost seven million
people view that stream.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
And then on the flip side, we also knew that
a lot of people within our community couldn't necessarily afford
festival tickets right and never like Broccoli City was a
super expensive festival, but when you think about the people
that we cater to, you know, one hundred and fifty dollars,
two hundred dollars for you know, a day festival ticket
to see a couple of music acts, that's a lot.
(45:39):
You know what I mean, if you got two kids,
if you got you know what I mean, you got bills.
So we had created this campaign called the Power of
One campaign where you can volunteer in the community, whether
that's Southeast DC, Northeast DC, wherever, and then be able
to earn a free ticket to Broccoli City.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
He looks to the future, the possibilities are endless. They've
mastered live events, can create digital content in house, and
are launching some incredible initiatives to help their community.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Marcus says the best.
Speaker 6 (46:11):
He's like, we just want to be different Coachella does
it a certain way, Dreamville does it a certain way.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Everyone does it a certain way. Like we just want
to have our own lane.
Speaker 6 (46:19):
I'll take our Broccoli City team against any team, you know,
just because like we've been doing it together and separately
for so long.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Really just thinking about the long play and really just
really just making us say, like, man, our brand could
be so much more valuable if we position it as
something that is a platform for change and not just
the annual event.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
I mean, that's really it, man, Like it's the brock,
you know. And we're gonna keep going. We're gonna keep
doing what we do.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Broccoli City story is a testament to the power of
community collaboration and constant elevation. Initially a local celebration intended
to promote climate change awareness and the black comunity, Broccoli
City has evolved into a global brand, and they've done
it with integrity and a constant commitment to their founding ethos.
As a combination of opportunity, creative ambition, and market forces
(47:11):
compelled the company to evolve. They've expanded into digital content
and developed righteous programs to give back to their community.
With every facet covered broccoly City has become a three
to sixty brand that would make any music festival green
with envy. For Idea Generation, I'm Noah Callahan Beverer. Thanks
for listening to the All Angles Podcast presented by will
Packer Media. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate
(47:35):
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This episode was brought to you by Will Packer Executive
produced by John Balachik and Helena Ox. Original music by
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(47:56):
hosted by me. Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan bever Idea
Generation's All Angles is a Whelpacker Media podcast
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