Three months ago, my journey into Web3 started with a DM that said, “Hello”. I was at Coca Cola, working to make ends meet, but I was miserable. I was that guy stocking shelves at your local grocery store. Although I was working to provide for my son, I was far from where I wanted to be.

I go by Hallway. For years, I blogged emerging music into mainstream consciousness before having to give it up to make a decent living. Now I’m at a place where I can make sure nobody ever has to turn away from curating to survive.

I was part of the team at illRoots.com, an institution for anyone familiar with the golden blog era of hip-hop that helped propel stars like Drake, Kendrick, J. Cole, amongst many others into the stratosphere. On a daily basis, I would dig through piles of music to find the kind of artists that make you want to take off your shoes, lean back a bit further in your chair, and feel the weight of their music on your soul. I remember the first time I heard a Cudi hum or the crisp air between a Dom Kennedy vocal.

Interviews were fun. I would record them on tape and then type them at my college media lab or on my Verizon Chocolate phone. Although many of the artists I covered would go on to become stars, I loved being able to go through the process of curating music and presenting it in my own words to anyone willing to listen.

The remnants of the blog era can be found in the unpolished piles of communication left in the crawl spaces of defunct social networks across the internet. The streaming era impacted music writers like me as much as any independent artist. I miss the long chats with fellow bloggers over AIM chat and BBM, a secret society of pleasure seekers who all loved digging deep into the ground and unearthing gems directly from the soil we were standing on.

Those times are coming back.

Now AIM has been replaced by Telegram chats and Discords. The band is getting back together on platforms like Substack and Mirror. But now, my hours of searching, listening and curating, can have both intrinsic and financial rewards. With NFTs I can now invest in my discoveries in ways I never could before. Curation can now be a PAID PROFESSION!

At the other end of that welcome message was Team Phlote. After a couple of conversations, I knew my current situation was about to be my old situation so I decided to ask some of my vendors to take shots of my final days throwing freight at grocery stores on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. **
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Things are about to change and I want to start documenting my life and transition into Web3.

This was fun, because at the time, the future felt bright, but uncertain. Since then, I jumped all the way in the deep end to help build what I believe is truly revolutionary.

To mark my freedom in this new world, I’m giving you my Free Hallway collection.