Due to circumstances beyond our control, the senior staff were unable to complete any posts for today. Thankfully (?) Intern Tobey was able to step in at the last minute to write something. As usual he has been edited extensively for spelling and grammar, but not content or relevance.

Yo, it’s Intern Tobey, back again like the DJ hit rewind at the club and also the repeat button, you feel me? Now I know it is not often that Bruce and Alex allow your boy to drop science on their blog, which is fine since I usually have better things to do than write about sad robot music for no stacks. But with those fools not speaking again due to a very undignified screaming fight about which of them likes Yaz more, it’s once again time for Tobey Starks to impart some fly wisdom to the dozens of readers who check this site annually.

Now the question all of you must want to know the answer to is how you can be as successful in industrial music as Tobey is in the rap game, cars, models, Rolex watches, all-you-can-eat buffets, that diamonds and guns lifestyle. Tobey hears you, and has a plan for any artist to succeed, probably not as much as him (P-Tobes is one in a million once every century, which equals out to a hundred times a million, which is a lot of zeroes) but enough to get booked in Germany or whatever it is people who make shouting goblin music want.

So get out your notebooks and turn down the system in your ride, it’s time to play close attention to INTERN TOBEY’S TIPS FOR ARTISTS

GET A FEATURE ON YOUR ALBUM
This one is mad obvious. You remember when you bought an artist’s album and it was just them rhyming on every track? That shit is stale. What you need is a popular MC to come in a drop a hot 16 (for those of you who don’t listen to rap, a hot 16 is when an MC raises the temperature in the booth by sixteen degrees due to the hotness of their lyrics) on the track. And if they’re popular enough, you don’t even have to get them to rhyme, remember when Lil’ Weezy was singing hooks on every album, even though dude can’t sing? It’s a simple equation, zero (your band) plus one (music people actually like) equals one! That’s true mathematics they don’t teach you in school. Also, I should mention your boy is available to drop a verse on your song. 2 Chainz charges 100k for a feature, but I only have one chain, so it’s 50k, which is mad reasonable. Hit me up dogg.

ALBUM COVER OF THE YEAR, YOU'RE WELCOME

PUT A MINION ON THE COVER
I can’t even believe I’m blessing you with this Life-of-Pablo-Tidal-Exclusive genius idea, I should be saving this for my own album, HU$$$tlemania – The Prequel: The 2nd Coming, but the god is generous. If you’re like Tobey you spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook keeping tabs on what’s hot in the streets. And if you do, you might have noticed there are two things people love right now: President Ernie Sanders and Minions. I don’t even know what a Minion is, I guess it’s from a movie, but not Scarface, so I don’t fuck with it. But what I do fuck with is money, and who has more money than little kids and old people, the two kinds of people that love Minions the most? Make sure the minion is doing something tough though, like holding a gun or being a vampire, so that people know your music isn’t for kids, it’s a real life documentary but about something cool like the Terminator.

GET BLOG COVERAGE
Now Tobey (aka Scrollz of Wizdom, aka Swoll Einstein) has to be as clear as possible about this one, because suckers don’t pay close attention to the blessings of knowledge that are constantly shooting out of his brain and into the keyboard and then onto the internet, shouts out to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, mourn you ’til the day I join you. You want to get your song on a blog people read: that means no industrial music blogs! Try Noisey, they don’t pay the writers so you can offer them a sandwich or a taco for a write-up. Or Pitchfork, but they less hungry so try including a whole pizza with your demo, or maybe some coupons for Olive Garden? Be creative G.

BE CONTROVERSIAL
This one is mad crucial! People love to be angry about things more than they love to love things (I call this “The Player Hater’s Conundrum”, trademark Starks Concepts LLC), and there’s nothing people get angrier about then when an artist says or acts controversial. And being controversial isn’t that hard, mostly it’s saying the first thing that comes into your head like “I liked Batman v Superman” or “Blutengel are the best industrial band”, it doesn’t matter as long as most people don’t agree with you. You can also be political, like dressing up like Kim Jong Un in your photos, or call your record “AMERICA IS BADDD” (the extra d’s let people know it’s the bad bad, not the good bad like Michael). Bonus tip: if you say your band is not political then no one can say anything about your art or lyrics, because you said you aren’t political! Another gem for your melon.

BE UNSUCCESSFUL
I can hear you all gasping and yelling “BUT TOBEY THIS IS A BLOG ABOUT BEING SUCCESSFUL AT MUSIC ISN’T THAT THE OPPOSITE OF THE THING YOU SAID, ALSO CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH?” The answer is yes, and also yes you can. Because what a student of the music industry needs to understand is that being unsuccessful is a form of success if that’s your goal. Trying to get signed is hard. Making songs is hard. Finding new samples from Blade Runner and Aliens is hard. But you know what’s easy? Not doing those things! And if you say that was what you wanted to do all along, congratulations, you’re a success! That’s next level paradoxical thinking fam, I got philosophies I can’t even put here because my thoughts are mad elevated and it would give you vertigo to read them, for real.

That’s it! Be on the lookout for my new mixtape Tobey or Not To Be III, and also if anyone knows how I can get my music off the computer and into a record, get at me. I’m on that paper chase, only instead of chasing the paper the paper chases me and I let it catch me. Pretty Tobey in the cut, holler!