From Hype Beast Radio, I'm Jeff Staples, and this is the business of hype,

a show about creative entrepreneurs, brand builders, innovators, and the realities behind the dreams they've built.

Man, shirt is a weird one. It's hard to define him. To me, he's a true artist, and he's merely showcasing his art form in the form of rap music right now.

Occasionally, he'll cross over and incorporate other elements of artistry into his music as well.

Now, I've known shirt for a long time. Full disclosure, he used to intern at Staple and work at Readspace.

And back then, he was honing his craft as a lyricist. He'd make really

interesting music videos, some t-shirt graphics. He'd make social political statements about

street culture, hype culture, sneaker culture, and just art in general. Have you seen those shirts

that have an Adidas and Nike logo on them? Yeah, shirt made those.

So this guy, George, aka Shirt, he's been writing rhymes for years and doing little appearances here and there.

And I mean, everyone listening to this podcast probably has a friend who dreams of being a rapper, right?

Well, Shirt, in my opinion, I always knew there was something special about him.

I knew he'd blow one day. And if it hasn't happened yet, it's only because the world hasn't

caught up yet. And recently, one major part of the world actually did catch up. Jack White of the

legendary White Stripes, who owns the infamous Nashville-based record label, Third Man Records,

announced that their first hip-hop signing will be none other than shirt.

So the reason why I wanted to get shirt at this exact moment is because of where he came from,

which in all honesty is not much, and how he scraped and hustled to where he is now,

and how everything he has learned up until this point will affect what might happen in the future.

You get to listen to this moment, and then observe in real time what no one knows the answer to,

what will become of the artist named shirt.

All right, so let's start.

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