Howard University Welcome Week with Culture Fusion Agency- Music Industry Discussion featuring Ghazi Shami
In honor of Howard University’s annual welcome week, HU Campus Life has partnered with Culture Fusion Agency, Amazon music and Rolling Loud to conduct a panel discussion about financial literacy, the music industry and Hip Hop’s place in culture.
In the Blackburn Digital Auditorium, Ghazi Shami, owner of Empire Record label which signed artists such as MoneyMan, Migos and Tyga, joined students to discuss how he incorporates the music industry and new financial technology such as Bitcoin, NFT and circle, which allows money to be sent using a coin called USDC.
This panel discussion highlights hidden financial information that has hindered the Black community in efforts to promote Howard students to continue to learn skill sets to ensure financial growth in an ever-changing economy.
Ghazi Shami has been featured in Rolling Stone’s “Future 25” which celebrates the brightest, boldest ideas tearing up the floorboards of the music industry right now. As mentioned earlier, Ghazi Shazi, who operates his own music distribution company and record label, Empire, was established in 2010 but has grown into a global company with influence in Nigeria, Asia and Jamaica.
Shami comes from an Arab background and started making records at 14-years-old as an honor roll student. In his early years, he excelled in computer software and landed a white-collar corporate setting job at 18-years-old, but by night was in the studio making records. Shami accounts this experience as what allowed him to judge character by seeing different sides of life.
Ghazi Shami accounts his success from continuity and hard work. Shami, even though he is a CEO of a large corporation, has met with every single person who works in his company. Shami made a conscious decision to hire on character, not on skillset. His reasoning behind this is “I can’t teach character, I can teach skill set.”
When asked about Howard students who want internships at companies like Empire and how they can make themselves stand out in the hiring process, Ghazi responded “Accountability followed through with integrity and professionalism. Poise is also something we look for in character because the music industry is very high pressure and a lot of people can’t handle it. We see people act on emotion rather than logic and acting on emotion often times can cost millions of dollars.”
When working with investment, Shami leans on foresight and understanding and then takes that into the follow-through process. As crypto being a new form of currency this online transaction allows 24-hour financial access. This access creates culture and financial freedom. Users can bypass the bank using crypto because as long as people have a crypto wallet they can send money in 30-seconds to a minute. It’s all about consumer confidence which will develop over time.
Ghazi Shami also is very skilled in NFTs. NFT is non-fungible tokens, which are generally created using the same type of programming used for cryptocurrencies.
Shami describes NFTs as the partnership of digital and physical media which creates
a certificate of authenticity. He started investing in his own company and then went into investing in other companies. This became quite a large workload for someone with so many responsibilities on his plate. Shami explains to students that leveling up also means taking a small step backward.