Interview: Diddy Talks Casting For Revolt, Why He'd Want Pharrell to Work For Him, and Burning Man

Do you have what it takes? We talked to Diddy about what it actually takes to work for him.

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Complex Original

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Yesterday, Diddy announced a world-wide on-air talent search for his latest endeavor, Revolt TV. In true Diddy fashion, he posted a quick video outlining all of the rules for submissions, and described exactly what makes someone the perfect fit for Revolt.

"I'm doing the biggest global talent search for on-air talent," he said in the video "I want young fresh faces...We want it to be fresh and innovative and fearless."

In June, Diddy announced the creation of Revolt TV, which will be carried by Time Warner Cable, which he says is the "first channel of the social media age." In other interviews, Diddy has mentioned that he wants Revolt to be the "ESPN of music" and hopes that it will "fill the gap left by MTV after it stopped playing music videos seven years ago."

In light of yesterday's announcement, we got on the phone with Diddy to ask him what it actually takes to work for Diddy, what rapper he wants to have work for Revolt, and just how life-changing his Burning Man experience was.

Interview by Lauren Nostro (@LAURENcynthia)

A lot of people have auditioned to work for you over the years and you even had the reality show “I Want to Work for Diddy.” What is something that would disqualify someone completely from working for you?
Especially with Revolt, it would be if they are just taking this as a job. Going back to the days of the VJs, we want people that love music and have a very diverse musical taste and will take it seriously. I don’t think media outlets take the art form of music as seriously as the artists who make it do. The people that are covering music should take it just as seriously as the artist.

I don’t think media outlets take the art form of music as seriously as the artists who make it do. The people that are covering music should take it just as seriously as the artist. Someone taking this as a job would disqualify themselves right out of the gate.

Someone just taking this as a job would disqualify themselves right out of the gate. We want people that looks different, we don’t want anyone that looks like they would be on air for any of our competitors. We want kids that look like teenagers or 20-somethings. Not saying we won’t have people on air that are older, but we want kids who look like the audience that actually love music.

We don’t want models, not saying we won’t have good looking people on air, we want some ugly people, some skinny people, some fat people, some Asian people, some white people, some Jewish people, Muslim. We want diversity.

We also want them to be fearless, and we want to invest in them because the first couple months of Revolt are going to be pretty fucked up. We’re going to be making a lot of mistakes, but it’s gonna be great TV to watch. You can’t get to the future if you don’t invest in the future. So that’s what were trying to do with this search. Even if someone didn’t go to school for broadcast journalism, they are still one of the front runners because they are raw and they are honest. I want the truth. 

If you want it to be so close to the actually art form of music, pretend a ton of rappers applied to be on-air talent. If you were going to have one rapper working for you full time, who would you want that to be? 
That is a hard question. It would probably be Pharrell. Pharrell has been so consistent on what he does and how he sees music. He’s made us dream. People don’t realize that he is the reason people are able to do Magna Carta...Holy Grail or Yeezus or the collaborations you see or the style. And he came from Virginia, he didn’t come from New York! The South wasn’t even hot when Pharrell came out.

It would be him because there is an intellectual aspect, a passion, and an artistic side to him that translate from the hood to the trap to wherever. He’s the definition of a festival producer, which is an eclectic group of music. I don’t want to oversell why it would be him.

People don’t realize that Pharrell is the reason people are able to do Magna Carta...Holy Grail or Yeezus or the collaborations you see.

You just went to Burning Man, and from the looks of it you had an amazing time. Did you take anything away from Burning Man that you will use in your business tactics at Revolt? And did you meet any future employees?
I went to Burning Man as a person in search of knowledge and positive energy and new experiences. I didn’t take anything out of it for business, I took away more that would apply to my personal life. Positive energy, positivity, and caring are the most powerful attributes that you can give and receive in the world. I want to keep the rest of it private, but the way I answered it is the way I feel about it. I try my best to be discrete and hide. By the third day people knew I was there and they treated me great. I didn’t have any security, I was there with two friends and it was just beautiful.

In order to audition for an on-air talent position head over to Revolt for more information on the contest.

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