Most people would like to be more creative, and some would like to make a living with their creativity. Though without legendary role models, particularly those who are willing to get real and go deep about their experience, it's hard to learn what it really takes. In today's dialogue with Nasri, you're going to learn about it and a lot more.
In this episode of Follow Your Different, it is all about Nasri. His music has been streamed over 4 billion times to date. He's a Grammy Award winning songwriter, producer, and singer who's worked with literally the biggest names in music today. Nasri has won a Grammy Award for his works, including Best Latin Pop Album for his work with Shakira on her record Eldorado in 2017, and Best R&B album for his work on Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. record.
His band Magic! released three successful chart-topping albums with RCA Records, and he's probably best known for their international smash hit “Rude”. He also just released a brand-new EP, a solo EP called “Here for You” to much critical acclaim.
This is also Nasri’s first podcast experience, so join him and Christopher as they discuss Grammys, working with great musicians, and making sweet, sweet music for a living.

On Nasri Winning the Grammys
Christopher starts off with the biggest one, and asks what it was like winning the Grammys. Nasri shares that while he has been on projects that have won the Grammys, he hasn’t had the trophy itself yet. It turns out you have to have a huge chunk of the project contribution in order to take home the trophy, but he does get credited along with the other contributors.
That said, he is nominated again this year, and he hopes to bring home that trophy.
He also adds that nowadays, producing music is different than before. It’s normal to see five or more people being credited in one song, and that’s okay. All of it is necessary to create great music. Though it is understandable why some might be confused when they see the credits.

“Now when you make music, everybody has a little piece of everything. It's kind of confusing when you see four or five names on a credit, or even seven or eight, nine names on a credit of a song. It's confusing to the audience to like “Seven people wrote this song?” No, seven people didn't write the song. Two or three people wrote the song, and then it goes through a process of like, “hey, let's team up with this sound designer”, and they also want a piece of the publishing.” - Nasri  

On Creatives Self-Producing
Christopher brings up his experience on publications, and on why he chose to self-publish later on. Nasri agrees with the sentiment, and points out that it’s not a bad idea to work with a company first before trying to publish or produce on your own. At the very least, you’ll get some much-needed experience from them first and commit less mistakes when you are on our own afterwards.

“I think the beginning stages, if you look at why you may need a publisher, it has made me learn a couple things, you know. To see kind of what the scope of marketing for this medium is, and that's what I went through. In the band Magic!, we were signed to RCA Records, and I was like, “Okay, cool.” When I went now to make my solo project, I felt like I had a pretty good grip of how to market something.” - Nasri

He’s also glad that he got into self-production. He talks about how he’s not on other people’s clock but his own, and he is more than willing to take his time.

“I'm in no rush. I own the master. I have nobody telling me in some sort of meeting that is not moving fast enough. That's (part of ) what I didn't like.” - Nasri

Nasri’s New EP
Speaking of producing something, Nasri recently released his new EP, “Here For You”. Nasri talks about how it came to be, and how much fun it was to create.