Since the public launch of L3MON, our team has been blessed with the opportunity to wake up each morning and enjoy building this new branch of the company we all love: Lyrical Lemonade. Behind the scenes, we’d been building out our new tech branch for over a year and were overjoyed to finally share our work with the world in late March. After our first full quarter of operations, we’d like to take the time to recap these first few months.
On March 28th of this year, we began to release information to the public about L3MON; the new tech branch of Lyrical Lemonade. We slowly released more information on new social media profiles and curiosity from the outside world began to build. The launch of our Discord server saw a massive spike in traffic and interest for L3MON. Prior to the server launch, the only way for Lyrical Lemonade supporters to interact with the team and with one another was in the comments section on social media sites or at the in-person events we produce over the course of each year.
The team had intentionally been vague in its explanation of what L3MON was during these early stages and every new bit of information was more exciting than the last. Once folks learned that Lyrical Lemonade was taking the jump into Web 3, the race for whitelist spots became red-hot. In an effort to maintain fairness, we decided to offer whitelist spots for “The Carton” collection via multiple methods; Discord giveaways, trivia contests, in-person giveaways, and proof of prior Lyrical Lemonade merch ownership. Some of the most exciting moments during the whitelist process came from our in-person giveaways; The L3MON team had members in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Melbourne giving away spots over the course of 5 days. When all was said and done, 380 Cartons were minted via whitelist. The remaining supply of the 500 Cartons was split amongst public sale and internal mint. 46 of the 500 Cartons were minted to the internal Lyrical Lemonade team that is made up of employees, friends, and frequent collaborators. On April 5th, the remaining 74 Cartons were put up for public sale and sold out in under 10 seconds for 0.5 ETH each.
After the minting process concluded, the holders of the new 500 Carton NFTs waited patiently for the reveal of the unique, 1-of-1 artwork that each NFT displayed. On April 6th we hosted a Twitter Spaces with our good friend Faze Banks to reveal the art and chat in depth about L3MON and the potential for Lyrical Lemonade to have a massive impact in the world of Web 3 for years to come.
With the NFT mint and art reveal complete, holders were now shifting their focus to what their newly-minted Cartons allowed them to do in the world of L3MON & Lyrical Lemonade. The utilities attached to the Cartons include: 3 years of access to the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash music festival, access to holder-exclusive Lyrical Lemonade merchandise drops, access to the private holder-only discord server, and whitelist access to all future Web 3 drops that L3MON/Lyrical Lemonade release. Just one day after the Carton artwork was revealed, Lyrical Lemonade and SPKRBX announced the dates and lineup for the 2022 Summer Smash music festival. In a matter of days, holders began to see instant proof of concept and the potential associated with holding a Carton NFT.
Fresh off an exciting couple of weeks around the Carton release, the L3MON team continued to deliver value to holders in ways that other companies have not. As the team prepared for the Summer Smash festival, we began to reveal some of our other groundbreaking plans for the Carton collection. On April 26th, Lyrical Lemonade debuted its first ever music video with Justin Bieber titled “I Feel Funny”. Working with Justin was an incredible opportunity for the Lyrical Lemonade team but the holders of the Carton got a chance to participate in the video as well. For the first time ever, the 3D rotating carton that is featured at the end of each Lyrical Lemonade music video was different from the traditional blue and yellow Carton; it was one of the 500 unique Cartons from our inaugural NFT collection. Holders were ecstatic to learn that their very own Carton now had a chance to be featured in a music video on the Lyrical Youtube channel with almost 20 million subscribers (accurate as of August 2022).
Starting with the “I Feel Funny” video, every Lyrical Lemonade music video going forward will have an NFT Carton at the end. As of time of writing, we’ve released 6 music videos with Cartons in the end credits. Some of these videos include songs from Justin Bieber, Don Toliver, BabyTron, Kid Cudi, Denzel Curry, J.I.D., Central Cee, Nardo Wick, and The Kid Laroi.
The integration of L3MON and the existing Lyrical Lemonade ecosystem began with the Summer Smash and music videos, but the merge between the two spread into merchandise as well. The original utility promises for the Cartons included access to exclusive holder-only merchandise but in early May we decided to take things a step further. On May 6th Lyrical Lemonade released its “Back to Basics” capsule featuring a wide assortment of clothing in highly sought-after colorways. L3MON granted Carton holders early access to the site prior to the launch of the public sale. Yet again holders were excited to see their Carton ownership going above and beyond what was originally promised to them. Since the Basics capsule, we’ve enabled early access to holders for all Lyrical Lemonade merch drops including the instantly sold-out Minions collab drop.
The month of May was important for the L3MON team as the weeks leading up to the Summer Smash festival in June dwindled down. From May 20th to 22nd we had the blessing of joining a friend of ours in Minneapolis; Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary has been considered a friend for quite some time now and this new Web 3 journey provides us with yet another opportunity to put our brain power together. In 2018 Gary and Cole sat down to chat about their journeys in both life and business and now it is almost 5 years later and we’re still seeing the relationship grow. Gary’s success in Web 3 with his VeeFriends collective comes as no surprise to us given his business track record that spans decades. His first annual “VeeCon” was a massive success and we’re blessed to have been participants in the NFTLand installation that was sponsored by Pepsi. For 3 days, the L3MON team got the chance to meet thousands of folks from across the world with interests in tech, media, music, collectibles, and entrepreneurship. Many thanks to Gary and his team for the opportunity!
June got off to a great start with the launch of our revamped website. The new version of our site featured a “Connect Wallet” functionality that will be critically important in the future. Our first use case for the functionality was our token-gated merch website for holder-exclusive drops. The first holder-exclusive drop featured 2 crewneck sweaters and a t-shirt that we gave to holders for free. As we continue to grow our Web 3 portion of the company, this wallet connectivity will be increasingly important with the development of token-gated media and community access.
With the festival around the corner, the Lyrical Lemonade and SPKRBX teams continued the tradition of hosting Community Clean Ups at Douglass Park, the park where the festival is hosted each year. It’s truly a blessing to spend some time with the community and share a meal and conversation with the folks who allow us to utilize their beautiful park for our festival.
On June 6th, Carton holders were sent the message everybody in Web 3 wants to read: “Check Your Wallets”. L3MON airdropped Carton holders their NFT tickets to the 2022 Summer Smash, further fulfilling the utility promises associated with Carton ownership. Holders were able to get their wristbands at will-call during the festival at the holder-specific booth on site.
Since the launch of L3MON, the team has been intentionally hesitant to do any press or interviews for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that we would rather allow our work and track record to speak for us before we start chatting with folks publicly in the space. After the first few months passed, we felt it was right to sit down and chat with the team at Boardroom to talk through what L3MON is and what our future plans are for the Carton collection and beyond. The interview can be found here.
The week of Summer Smash is always a hectic time with the entire team putting all hands on deck to ensure a successful show. After all, the festival is the pinnacle of our in-person event programming annually and each year we’ve seen measurable growth in both attendance and quality of production during the 3-day festival. This year, we hosted a Carton holder event the week of the festival in hopes of being able to meet some of our holders in person prior to the madness of Summer Smash. Holders from all over the world attended the event and got to meet the team and other holders in person during a night of great music and conversation. During the holder event, we debuted the “Honorary Carton Club” with a vote amongst the holders that were present. The team drafted 5 new Cartons that were not part of our genesis collection and displayed them to the attendees. At the end of the night, the favorite Carton was recorded and airdropped to all Carton holders as the first token in the Honorary Carton Club. L3MON created the Honorary Club as a way to expand the Carton family in the future with some of our frequent collaborators. Honorary Cartons do not carry the same utility as the Carton Collection but signify the inclusion into the Lyrical Lemonade/L3MON family.
Summer Smash 2022 was our favorite weekend of the year and we’re beyond happy that we got the opportunity to share this time with some of the holders who came out to the festival. In future years we look forward to expanding the Carton holder experience at the fest and meeting even more holders next year!
The day after Summer Smash came to an end, the L3MON team headed up to New York City for NFT NYC 2022. We teamed up with Afterparty and MV3 to put on a night of great music and conversation at Marquee with tunes coming from our friends Gordo (FKA Carnage), Daniel Allan, Keyboard Monkey, & more. We loved every moment of the night and look forward to putting on more events in the future that merge the groundbreaking conversations typical of Web 3 events with our love of live shows.
After an exhilarating first few months of L3MON being live, the team took some time to decompress and evaluate how the first stretch of time went while also continuing to form an execution plan for the months and years to come. At the time of writing, we are in our next phase of planning for yet another stretch of constant execution for both Lyrical Lemonade and L3MON. Even during this ideation phase, the team continues to execute and provide value. On July 18th we launched yet another product on our token-gated site; a holder-exclusive Lyrical Lemonade can. The Lyrical Lemonade cans hold an extremely special place in our hearts as well as the hearts of our most diehard supporters. The release of an exclusive can further show that our team is constantly searching for ways to execute and elevate the Web 3 space each and every day.
The first 4 months of L3MON have taught the team valuable lessons about Web 3, our holders, and ourselves in a way like never before. This feedback is incredibly important as we continue to form plans and execute our goals day in and day out. We’re thankful for the first few months and look forward to the decades of continued growth and innovation with the people we hold closest to our hearts and minds.
EXECUTION>HYPE
-Toni 🍋🌐
