Subtitles section Play video
I think making it in music, yeah, for example, my career, for me to make it happen, I had to be deluded.
There was a long period of time I was just deluded, thinking like, because bro, I'm going against the grain.
It's rare.
It's the same like love.
It's definitely rare.
Maybe I'm a bit pessimistic.
I don't know.
But it's like you're going against the grain, trying to secure something rare.
I feel like you just have to be a bit deluded.
During his recent appearance on Emilia de Moldenberg's Chicken Soup Date, the comedic talk show provided an unlikely source for a real gem from Central Sea about how he obtained his goals.
An artist who has experienced one of the most meteoric rises in recent memory, the 24-year-old
London-based rapper lesser known as Oakley Neal H.T.
Cesar Suh is now exhibiting signs that he can boldly go where none of his countrymen have gone before by breaking America.
A gifted emcee with no shortage of natural charisma and subtle self-assurance, Sench's prospects have skyrocketed since 2020.
And while his music is obviously a vital piece of the puzzle, what has set him apart from his contemporaries is the way in which he applies marketing principles to every facet of his career.
In effect, he's getting the acquisition of fame and fortune down to a fine art across his output, visuals, and his accompanying social media accounts.
In that chat with Emilia, we see that even before he'd made it, Sench conducted himself as if he had.
Here, we have the first piece of guidance that his rise provides, and that is always to move as though you were destined to do this.
In step number one, carry yourself like a star.
Coming from humble beginnings, Sench knew that the odds were never stacked in his favor.
But at every turn, he led with not the hope but the knowledge that he'd strike gold at one time or another.
After all, how could he not when he found himself with a natural aptitude for plotting intricately planned rollouts that any megastar would be happy to have in their portfolio.
Leaving nothing to chance, Sench's career trajectory hasn't been the product of good luck, but of steadfastly monitoring his own progress.
All the while, he comforted himself in such a way that when the pieces finally came together, he already had the aura of a star.
Now if you yourself would like to start a full-time career and learn how to market your music to become a full-time professional rapper just like Central C, visit the video description box for our six-week amateur to artist program where we'll teach you in just 30 minutes a day exactly how to market your music and even start your own record label if that's what you're interested in.
You can get more information by that by visiting the video description box below.
So when his earlier dealings with the autotune wave didn't lead to a tangible connection, he pivoted.
After the breakout track, Day in the Life, led him to embarking on a new drill-oriented path, it paid off and then some.
Considering that he'd been preparing for this moment, it meant that he was ready for it and the courtesy of the extracurricular work he'd done on the marketing side, it also ensured that he was ready to capitalize.
It was only a year ago I dropped my first song that picked up.
It was a lot of years prior to that I was making music but it just didn't happen to really pick up for me.
So a year ago it started going crazy.
I dropped a tape in March this year and that's what everybody appreciated the marketing for.
We didn't really do too much.
In my head I got a lot more ideas, I got a lot more in stock but they appreciated it nevertheless.
Telling the face after the track's release that I gained like 30,000 followers in a couple of weeks so I was like cool, this is what they're gravitating towards, just rapping straight rap.
Sench quickly took to his role as a new force to be reckoned with in UK hip hop.
And in another ingenious piece of marketing, the tracks buzz would be coupled with a project saluting his area known as the wild west.
At this point his declarations of fealty to the area made him the face of a region, something that wouldn't have been possible if he didn't already have the air of somebody around him.
I'm a product of my environment so my area made me who I am.
He informed Colton and it's been a wild journey.
Always filming my area and named it that because the tape is bigger than me, it's for my area.
From his meticulously executed IG with color matched images to his strategic reluctance to do many interviews which enables him to keep a hold of his mystique, Sench's considered conduct in the public eye whether dropping tracks or sparingly posting on socials helps to assign a high value to everything he does and it all comes down to the fact that he looks at it almost like he's managing a luxury brand as opposed to simply promoting himself.
This is something that any would-be rapper should try to learn from.
As this level of objectivity and mindfulness over the commonalities in how industries work will be invaluable when it comes time to put yourself out.
Business in general, I like to think there's a lot of similarities no matter what the field.
Sench remarked in an interview with Hot New Hip Hop,
It's almost always the same traits or characteristics or like moves or strategies that keep people on top.
It's probably pretty simple and really truly then you don't have to think about it too much.
Now possessing more IG followers than the GRM daily platform that gave him his big break by sharing a day in the life, Sench knows now that he can convince the world of his merits and that he deserves their attention.
As a result, he's undeterred by starting at a lower rung again, stateside, now that the formula has paid dividends.
I'm where I was two years ago in the UK, but in America, he explained during an in-depth interview with Hot New Hip Hop.
Understand that I need to go through that whole process again, which I'm excited to do, he says.
Happy to enlist every trick in the book, Sench knows that even the most tried and true tropes in the marketing textbook can work to your advantage if you are employed as a part of an enticing package.
It is one of the familiar apparatuses that we find sees next teaching, and that is to remember that provoking a reaction out of an audience is always going to work in your favor, even if it feels like a calculated risk.
Step number two, harness controversy.
The first line is just, it's kind of like, and somewhat controversial, like it just sounds like something I'm not supposed to be able to say.
I think it's the opening line, the Doja Cat line, like TikTok just ate it up.
There is an age-old adage that controversy creates cash, and with his biggest hit to date, Central C proved that this remains the case even within the modern turbulent era.
Part of an overarching trend of enlisting other artists in the titles of tracks in order to conjure up interest, Sench's Doja combined a nostalgic sample of Eve and Gwen Stefani's
Let Me Blow Your Mind with instantly quotable lyrics that raised their fair share of eyebrows when initially ingested.
Pause.
In the process, his position as the face of the UK hip-hop scene was cemented when he made history as the first British rapper to cross the virtual pond and appear on Cole
Bennett's lauded Lyrical Lemonade channel with a video for the track.
A tastemaking outlet that helped break everyone from XXX Yawn and Ski Mask the Slump God to
Juice WRLD and Lil Skies, the fact that the video for Doja was spotlighted on that platform informed the world that a new star had arrived.
And what's more, the general fervor surrounding the track and intrigue that it conjured up were the next crucial steps in his march toward world domination.
While that now iconic opening line could've majorly backfired within a culture where outrage is second nature, Sench leaned into it and made it abundantly clear that it wasn't left up to chance.
Soon, he unveiled a radio edit that rallied against the censorship.
You know when you ask Central City for a radio version, they send you something like this.
Go play it.
I need a clean version for radio, I ain't got s*** to say.
They want me to change my lyrics, but it won't hit the same.
This guy's trolling me, didn't he?
We're still gonna play it.
Explicitly referenced on his LA Leakers freestyle as he spit controversy cells, Sench later expanded on it with a social media-exclusive second verse and appeared to spark a cultural conversation about hip-hop's intolerant attitudes into the bargain.
I feel like homophobia is almost embedded in the culture.
Rap music, personally, homophobia, I think it's so weird.
You see when I see people that are moving, that are so hateful towards, like, why do you care what other people are doing?
That's mad to me, I don't.
A true cultural moment in 2022, the track's muse even got in on the action to share her thoughts.
I wasn't gonna say anything about the Central City thing, but it's really funny that somebody just said, I'm not trying to endoja that.
That's very funny.
Endoja that is funny to me.
I'm sorry, it is.
It's funny.
Shout out to that.
Along the way, every new wrinkle expanded the controversial song's life cycle and by consequence, did the same thing for Sench's popularity and profile.
By aligning an inherently catchy beat with a similarly attention-grabbing, discourse-sparking lyric, Central City showed us that sometimes there's an upside to putting yourself in the firing line because, in all likelihood, there's probably a lot of you who never knew his name until you did.
A shrewd move disguised as youthful flippancy, Sench doesn't treat any line nor public outing as incidental.
Instead, he looks to make the most out of everything that comes his way, and this is another thing that we'd all do well to cull from his playbook.
Do you thank COVID in any way for your come up?
Do you feel like maybe it gave you time to focus on your craft more and figure out?
Yeah, it was perfect timing.
The song that popped off for me was in June, right?
I had the song maybe in March though, or earlier than that, and it was just all perfect timing, but it was a blessing though, yeah, for sure.
I came up during Corona, it's rare to everybody else's come up because I haven't even had a chance to perform.
I've done all of this, and I haven't really, I haven't touched the streets in the UK at all.
I haven't done any shows.
I haven't really got to meet my newer fans, which is the majority of my fans.
So it's different, yeah.
In this clip from No Jumper, we see how Sench's mentality is one that is always geared toward making the most out of every conceivable situation that's presented to him.
Whenever possible, the rapper will seize opportunities, turning adverse circumstances into periods of immense productivity and seemingly normal press obligations into seminal moments for his career.
Case in point is L.A. Leaker's freestyle from 2022, a performance that spawned no shortage of reaction videos, which improved his reach tenfold.
His appearance on the high-profile radio platform was anything but pedestrian as he used it to create something truly newsworthy.
Taking inspiration from Smiley Culture's famed Cockney translation to serve as a rapping duolingo and decode UK slang for American listeners, Sench knew that this would garner far more attention than spinning a random 34 bars over some recycled beat.
I thought it would be a good idea to do the same thing with Americans.
When I had the idea to do the Leakers, I thought, yeah, why not?
I should probably try to practice that idea I had and bring them together, he told Hot
New Hip Hop.
I'm on an American platform.
I'm from the UK.
I know the stigma a lot of American people have, and I don't know, I just thought it would be a good idea.
I understood the assignment.
Unashamed and unafraid to make himself the moment, Central C's approach to marketing is a shining example of how to move in the digital era in that, rather than following what someone else does to the letter, you take the opportunities that are presented to you, as well as the tools at your disposal, and use them in a way that's beneficial to your own particular journey.
I definitely analyze the game a lot.
I see what people do right and what people do wrong, and I take it and do my own thing.
It's weird.
It's like a mixture of watching other people's thing and just not watching it, as well.
I don't really watch no one's thing in a sense where I don't ever cap myself, so I don't really aspire to it.
A lot of people would always ask, when I'm going to some of these meetings back in London, they'll be saying to me, what kind of trajectory do you want to go in?
Who's a blueprint, like another artist or whatever?
I could never answer that question.
There's no other artist that I would really aspire to go down the same road or really be like.
I think seeing is believing, though, as well, so what people see, people do, they believe they can do.
But if they don't see no one do it, then they just believe it's impossible.
I never really saw it like that.
Positioned in a way that no other UK-based MC, other than expats such as Slick Rick,
MF Doom, or 21 Savage, you remember that, ever have been stateside, Central C's journey is one that proves that if you've got all your ducks in a row and have a robust sense of who you are as both an artist and online entity, then the only ceilings you can encounter are the ones you enforce.
As a result, his journey into the mainstream is a joy to watch and in all likelihood will yield plenty more gems for us to pour into in the years to come.
That's today's video.
I appreciate you watching.
It's the Big Homie Drew.