The Lane Is Open. Why Isn't Anybody Filling It?

The message of the day I opened episode six of Inside The Screen with was simple. If you're waiting for shit to be perfect it's not gonna be perfect, and when it finally is you're not gonna know what to do with it because you skipped the part where you learn. The instructions in the manual get built through the process. I said that to chat at the top of the show and I didn't know yet that the whole episode was gonna end up proving it.

Who we had on

Our guest was Ah'Mari. If you're in the Valorant community you might know him from his streaming days and I introduced him that way on purpose, because human beings evolve. We weren't talking to a Valorant player that day, we were talking to an upcoming artist. His music story started from a subathon. Chat hit the button for a karaoke stream, he did it, he had fun with it and I was seeing it on TikTok and telling him he needed to keep doing those. Now he has a debut album called Revelations on the way, nine tracks, two covers and seven originals. Which he told us he recorded at the Orlando Public Library in one of those booths you can book on the second floor with a little handheld mic. Nobody handed him a studio, he found one at the library. I wrote the full Ah'Mari profile here.

The lane is open

About 30 minutes in I had to say something I knew he probably wasn't gonna love, and I told him that before I said it. SoFaygo is one of my favorite up and coming artists. I have a homie who I feel like sounds like him and is good. And guess who isn't putting out that much music? SoFaygo. And guess who is making music? My homie. However he's not promoting it enough to actually take that audience and that's the whole problem in one sentence.

Then I took it a step further with Ah'Mari. There's an artist I'm not even gonna name and let's just say he's gone. His audience is still there though. Those fans didn't disappear when he did, they're just sitting there with nobody to listen to and I told Ah'Mari straight up he needs to be putting out more music, more content and taking that audience. He doesn't have to sound like that artist either because the market is the market.

I tried to put it in gaming terms because that's where he came from. When Sentinels was the best team the market saw it, believed it and carried that through. When 100 Thieves fans knew the team was struggling they knew it and carried that through too. Fans decide what's real based on what they keep seeing. I'm not gonna lie I lost my train of thought halfway through on the pod and Ray had to sum it up for me. There's an open fan base right now that doesn't have an artist and it needs somebody to fill the shoes. That's it, don't overcomplicate it.

Why talented people leave it open

You might be asking why somebody with real talent wouldn't just go take it. Ah'Mari answered that himself. He said he's been so tied up in the studio trying to finish the album that he's been neglecting content and actually posting. And I get it, something gotta pay for that studio. But this is the trap right here. A lot of people treat the song like the work and the post like the extra and nowadays the post is half the work. Nobody can become a fan of something they never saw.

Ray had the practical side of it too. Put the music on TikTok and switch up the vibe every upload because every video puts you in front of somebody new. It doesn't even gotta be live either, record the process and put it on YouTube. As your first show, your first studio session and your first open mic are all content if you let people see them. If you need the tools for it, start with the creator apps I'd use in 2026.

Be addicted to it

The other thing I told him, and I had to fix my wording on this one on the pod, is you need to be addicted to this. Shout out Nine Vicious, his whole label is literally called Studio Addicts and that's the energy I'm talking about. Ah'Mari already does shows on Fridays so I asked him when's the last time you did a karaoke stream? IRL stream the Friday shows. The thing that started his music journey was chat pushing a button, so why would you stop letting chat in now? Streaming and music already cross over, look at Plaqueboymax getting a Grammy nomination.

Don't critique yourself out of the lane

When it was time for feedback on his first single I wanted to end on one thing because I think he's in a great spot. Stay on the road of putting the work out. Because once you start critiquing your own work you start to overthink and when you overthink you stop putting out. Your subconscious mind and your conscious mind are two different things and the conscious one will talk you out of posting every time.

And the beauty of that song in my opinion is the strain in his voice. That's the egg cracking. That's what makes it pure and I told him he's gonna make songs like that again in the future but he'll never make that exact first one again.

I compared it to your favorite show. Season one the graphics ain't that good. By season four and five you're getting better fights with better animation, but your favorite season is always gonna be season one because season one is what introduced you to the thing period. Your first song is somebody's season one. Let it be what it is and go make season two.

This goes way past one artist

I would be crazy if I didn't say this applies to more people than Ah'Mari. Streamers, editors, designers, writers, whoever. Every corner of the internet has an audience sitting there waiting on somebody to show up consistently and most of the time the person who wins it is the one who kept posting. Quality matters and I'll never say it doesn't. But quality nobody sees doesn't move anything.

So I'll ask you what I asked him. What are you sitting on right now that you could post today? Drop it in the CXM Discord.