The Comment

The fourth quarter of 2014 then yielded Apple an astronomical €12bn profit. A harvest which leaves me wondering what it would've been like to spend the 12 days of Christmas with the tech giants top directors? And, subsequently, wondering whether the lower level staff refer to these Directors as the 'pips' of Apple, or not?... 

Anywho! The same fourth quarter saw myself in a much humbler light. At one point, operating under the effects of Ryan Leslie. High off the sounds of 'I Gets Money', scribbling an attempt at briefly summarising his unorthodox approach to the music industry. Highlighting the fact that you can drop him a WhatsApp message just as easy as Apple can break quarterly profit records.

Despite my preaching of his revolutionary stance against the universally understood construct that celebrities are, in some way, higher forms of humans, I didn't however, place myself among those who were reaching out to the man. 

In my defence, I am somewhat technologically challenged currently, with a phone that still has actual buttons, and a torch light function which is not so much a torch as it is the screen simply being as bright as it can be, hence an inability to use or even join the rest of the world on WhatsApp. Despite this disablement though, it's still just as easy to shoot off an email.

So I'm somewhat unsure as to why I didn't try and message Ryan. Perhaps this was owing to an absence of words; what do you say to someone who appears to live solely in your iTunes? Or maybe there was a subconscious feeling of unworthiness; we do after all look up to these people. In essence though, it didn't really matter as I gave it little or no thought at the time.

Step up Alex P. An honorary Miller brother for more years now than all five of us possibly realise. Upon reading my R. Les post, he did decide to contact the man...apparently.

Fast forward a week or two and I'm in a frantic state of excitement and disbelief. A routine check of the emails was to reveal a comment notification from the blog, and having not had a single comment by this stage, it took a minute or two to realise what it was..

Incapable of stillness I make a way to my Brothers. Call it a B-line if you will.. Trying and failing to act natural in telling them, all of us were utterly bamboozled by what had just transpired. The next step, of course, was to inform Alex..

"So I got my first comment on my blog today and who did it come from? Gimme 3 rapid fire guesses"

"Ryan Leslie.. Please be Ryan Leslie.. It was! He just emailed me!" 

Now at a higher form of bamboozlement, Alex owns up to emailing Ryan the details of my blog and asking him to have a quick read. What a boy Alex! 

Break down Leslie's thought process and you'll discover the simplistic genius of it all. The number one issue facing the music industry, indeed, the entertainment industry as a whole, is the illegal download of its produce. But how can you solve such an issue when the basis of all technological advancement is a constant expanding of boundaries and limits. One cannot foresee such a reigning in of today's technologies to tackle such an issue. It simply stands in direct contrast to the constitution of technological development.

Perhaps understanding of this, Ryan, through direct comments, WhatsApp & emails, is evolving the Celebrity/Fan relationship. Forging a much greater degree of loyalty from fans. For it is this loyalty alone which shall take the fan to iTunes to purchase legally. Or to those seeming relics of the past, the local record store.

Think of it like this. Ryan Leslie can sit amongst your friends, family, and local kebab house and taxi company which you keep in your phone contact list. Engaging in a quick interaction now and then in a similar fashion to past university friends. 

This'll have you calling him Ryan, as opposed to Ryan Leslie or 'R. Les'. He's now your homeboy. You understand he's a busy man, nonetheless, there's a relationship there. So, come the release of his new album, MZRT, how can you possibly search the web for an illegal download? You don't steal from your homies. 

So perhaps rather than 'evolving' the Celebrity/Fan relationship, Ryan is 'creating' it. And as exemplary products of this, Alex and I stand. Having purchased four tickets to the London stop on his world tour in just a weeks time, we will go to support our famous buddy. With money in our wallets, knowing there may be some merchandise to grab as a result of Alex's contact with Ryan's team, Renegades NYC, we will be only too happy to, in the words of Kendrick Lamar, 'blow it like Coltrane'.