Aloe Blacc is a musician, entrepreneur, and activist from California. He is most known for the songs, 'I Need A Dollar' and 'The Man'. Aloe founded Major Inc, a company focused on engaging with research for major breakthroughs in life sciences and biotechnology. Major Inc's mission is to bring solutions to the world that will improve the quality of life for all.
Aloe Blacc talks with Forbes Assistant Managing Editor, Diane Brady, about his history in activism, the music industry and his newest venture into the biotech world; Major Inc.
Aloe Blacc talks with Forbes Assistant Managing Editor, Diane Brady, about his history in activism, the music industry and his newest venture into the biotech world; Major Inc.
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00:00 Hi everybody, I'm Diane Brady. I am here with Aloe Blacc, who of course we know as the Grammy-nominated
00:07 recording artist, singer, songwriter, also activist. Aloe, you're an entrepreneur.
00:13 Let's start with that, because you and I met at Founders Forum not long ago, where you were talking about Major Inc.
00:19 I'm so intrigued by this business named after your dad. Talk about the genesis of that, and welcome.
00:26 Hi, thank you so much. Great to be here. Yeah, I named Major Inc. after my dad, because my dad retired from the
00:34 United States Marine Corps after 30 years of service, and he just epitomizes a can-do-anything type of mentality.
00:42 So I named my company that because I want my company to be able to do anything when it comes to curing
00:49 infectious disease and creating solutions for major problems. And I was lucky enough to find some brilliant
00:57 professors at the University of Houston, Dr. Ben Guo and Dr. Gomika Udugamasoria, who work in a special class
01:05 of molecules called peptoids. Not many people know about peptoids, but I'm so excited about it.
01:10 I feel like we're in a mRNA 15 years ago situation, where it's just a burgeoning kind of new technology,
01:18 and people are becoming aware. And I'm trying to share as much as I can, but we found that peptoids can have
01:25 an impact in infectious disease, in longevity, in arthritis, and potentially in sepsis, is the most recent indication
01:34 that we found, which is groundbreaking because sepsis is a major killer in hospitals, and we don't have a cure for it.
01:41 Yeah, no, it's killed some of my family members, so I think that's very exciting. One of the things that
01:47 intrigues me is how did you come to this from an entrepreneurial perspective? Because some people would give money
01:54 to it from a charitable perspective, but you are building a company around this. So was it inspired by COVID,
02:00 or what brought you to it? Yeah, well, believe me, I tried to do the philanthropic direction,
02:08 but I quickly realized that it is almost impossible to do biotech as a philanthropy. Even when you get to the regulators,
02:15 they want to know what your business plan is. How will you commercialize this drug and make it available
02:19 and sustainable? Why should we even give you an approval to deliver it to humans if you can't sustain it?
02:25 So I had to pivot from philanthropy to founder, and I ultimately had been vaccinated and boosted,
02:35 but I still fell victim to COVID, and I wanted to find a prophylactic solution, something that could prevent
02:41 the disease rather than just boost my immune system. And I had an idea. I looked it up in Google,
02:47 and I found the paper that was published by these amazing scientists at the School of Pharmacology at Houston,
02:56 and I contacted them, and they didn't believe that was really me.
03:01 They said, "Aloe Blacc calling. I'd like to support your research." Yeah, how did they react to that?
03:07 They held off on responding for a couple of weeks until one of the scientists asked his daughter to vet the email for him,
03:16 and she said, "Well, you know, it seems real. Look, his assistant's name is there with his website, so maybe that's – just try it."
03:24 And I had a conversation with them, went to go meet them in Houston, and since then, we've been off to the races.
03:30 We did some really significant proof-of-concept work. I sponsored some research that was successful,
03:38 and then they just kept showing me more and more patents that they had for other indications,
03:45 and I just started realizing, this is not a COVID solution. This is a platform company for multiple indications,
03:53 and I'm going to do my very best to help you translate from bench to bedside.
03:59 It's interesting because being a founder, obviously, you're not doing a lot of the cutting-edge research,
04:05 so talk about what is your involvement in the company? How has it evolved?
04:10 Because it's clear you're doing more than giving them money.
04:14 Yeah. Well, it starts with operations. Someone has to make all the phone calls. Someone has to cut all the checks and continue to push forward.
04:24 You're making phone calls?
04:26 I'm sorry?
04:27 You're making phone calls?
04:29 I do make phone calls. I've found myself squarely positioned in this business almost on a full-time basis.
04:37 I still make music, but music is sort of on autopilot, and this has taken my interest.
04:44 I'm super, super passionate about what is possible with this company and this new class of molecules.
04:53 It's interesting because we talk so much about the influence of AI in health care.
04:58 Is technology really helping to drive this at this moment in time?
05:04 I know certainly COVID has raised attention to this class of drugs,
05:08 but what are some of the other factors that have made this the perfect moment to be doing it?
05:13 What's interesting is that my investigators have engaged a strategy and a methodology that predates AI,
05:23 and their system at this point is still better than AI.
05:27 We believe that if we work with the right technologists, we can find ways for AI to aid us,
05:33 but they've turned drug discovery on its head in a fantastic way, and I know that AI will be helpful,
05:41 but for now, the system that we use is really robust.
05:45 I mean, they tell me two days.
05:49 I like to say it's about a week to discover the proper candidate for any said indication,
05:56 which is way different from the timeline in traditional drug discovery.
06:02 You mentioned an interesting point, which is that the speed of innovation
06:07 and the speed of regulation are very different.
06:10 So what have you discovered about this whole process with, you mentioned the FDA,
06:15 where are you in it and any thoughts of how it can improve?
06:21 What I've discovered is that there is an education process.
06:25 You know, as I mentioned before, with mRNA, regulators didn't know about it.
06:31 Investors didn't know about it, and many scientists didn't know about it.
06:36 The ones who did, who were working on it, understood the potential,
06:40 but it took years to get into the clinic, to get first in human,
06:45 and I find myself speaking to pharmacologists at the FDA, the government grant institutions,
06:52 BARDA, ARPA-H, NIH, and NIAID.
06:56 I'm talking to investors across the biotech spectrum,
07:00 and they are all now just learning, really learning about what peptoids are capable of.
07:05 And so I find that the speed of innovation, the speed of regulatory approvals,
07:11 really comes down to an education process.
07:14 And there's so much that needs to be done to validate what we're doing,
07:18 but what we see in the lab and in vivo is so convincing that I hope that with the proper funding,
07:26 we can do the battery of tests that will convince anybody.
07:31 So you mentioned that this is taking up a lot of your time.
07:34 You're still doing the projects as recording artists.
07:37 Has it influenced your outlook or your approach to music in any way?
07:43 Oh, I don't know that it's influenced my outlook on music.
07:47 It has influenced my approach.
07:51 You know, having a little bit of celebrity and songs that people know offers me the opportunity to make any phone call,
07:57 almost get into any room.
07:59 So that's been wonderful.
08:05 It makes me want to make a couple more hit songs so that I can have even more outsized impact on the business,
08:14 the business side of the business, the networking side of the business, the fundraising side of the business.
08:19 And I think it's helped so far.
08:23 I think it's going to be even more advantageous to have a couple more hits under my belt.
08:31 You know, I want to step back a sec because one thing that's always fascinated me about you is you're such a Renaissance man.
08:36 Even the fact that you started your music career and then you went to University of Southern California
08:42 and you did what linguistics, I believe in psychology.
08:45 I did. Yeah, I did.
08:47 Talk about it. And then you worked at EY.
08:49 You've got such a fascinating background.
08:51 And what inspired that? Because you were on a track making music.
08:57 What made you stop or not or not hit pause?
09:00 You continue to do it. What made you decide to pursue the degree?
09:05 So I've always been an academician.
09:09 My parents are immigrants from Panama.
09:12 They were very, very adamant that I do well in school and I go to college.
09:19 And so I did really well in high school.
09:21 But while I was in high school, I was also making hip hop music.
09:24 I was an artist. I was recording, you know, the garage band kind of thing that a lot of high schoolers do.
09:29 It was always a hobby. Never thought of it as a career.
09:32 Did really well in high school.
09:34 Got a full ride to USC and did really well at university.
09:40 Went to the Annenberg School of Communication, but then wasn't enough.
09:43 I wanted to do a neuroscience major, but they didn't have it.
09:46 So I was able to do a second major that was kind of interdisciplinary.
09:50 I got to put together the classes that I wanted.
09:52 Spent a summer in Michael Thompson's neuroscience lab, you know, working on localizing memory in the inner positive nucleus.
10:01 And was fascinated by science, but I had also an internship with Ernst & Young in the summers.
10:11 And so when I graduated, sort of the easy thing to do was to walk into that job at Ernst & Young as a consultant,
10:17 which was great because it gave me, you know, sort of an acumen and a vernacular around corporate America
10:24 that I don't think I would have had otherwise if I'd stayed in the academy and just done science or something like that.
10:32 And a couple of years into my Ernst & Young stint, I was laid off.
10:38 But before that happened, there was an amazing moment where they had an annual meeting
10:46 and all of the new hires had to, there was like a hazing process.
10:51 All the new hires had to tell a poem or a story or sing a song or do some sort of interpretive dance.
10:56 And I decided I'd sing a song. And this is before I really became a singer.
11:00 I was still a hip hop artist, but I'd written a song that was called "Mama Hold My Hand" about the relationship of mother-son.
11:09 And after I got off stage, standing ovation, one of the partners at the firm came up to me and goes,
11:14 "Kid, I think you might be in the wrong business."
11:17 Oh, that's influential. That's very funny. I wonder if you go back and, you know,
11:23 they have these big, huge events like the Strategic Growth Forum.
11:27 They'll be lucky to have you back as one of their major artists, I'm sure, to perform.
11:33 Oh, I'm sure it'll happen.
11:35 Let me ask a little bit about some of the other projects you're doing because you're also,
11:39 I know you've been quite an activist and everything, criminal justice reform, malaria.
11:43 What are you working on now on that front or is that on pause?
11:48 So on the front of activism and philanthropy.
11:52 So I've been working with organizations like Stand Together,
11:59 who is a conglomerate of organizations that are sponsored within Stand Together in the criminal justice reform area.
12:07 They were really helpful in getting an op ed in the USA Today on qualified immunity.
12:15 Qualified immunity was what I felt was a really important piece of reform in our justice system.
12:25 It is a doctrine at the Supreme Court that basically offers immunity for any egregious violations of civil rights that are that occur from a federal side.
12:43 And it trickles down to state and local police.
12:47 They basically qualify lawmaker, police and agents of the state or government to be immune from accountability.
12:57 And that I felt was a cultural poison for law enforcement.
13:06 Yeah.
13:07 Because it offers the opportunity for the God complex to say, well, you know, I'm above the law.
13:12 I don't have to worry because if I do something bad, I can't get sued.
13:17 And if someone tries to sue me, the judge will throw it out because they know that their higher courts will will say it will point to qualified immunity.
13:26 This doctrine at the Supreme Court.
13:28 So I thought I thought it was important to spread the word so that citizens voting citizens knew about it so that we could influence our lawmakers to to push to transform this.
13:41 And I think that's a really important piece of reform.
13:44 And I think that's a really important piece of reform.
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15:29 I want to use my music to be the soundtrack to people living their best lives.
15:31 I want to use my music to be the soundtrack to people living their best lives.
15:33 I want to use my music to be the soundtrack to people living their best lives.
15:35 I want to use my humanity and my activism to inspire others to stand up and be a support for those who need it.
15:37 I want to use my humanity and my activism to inspire others to stand up and be a support for those who need it.
15:39 I want to use my humanity and my activism to inspire others to stand up and be a support for those who need it.
15:41 I want to use my humanity and my activism to inspire others to stand up and be a support for those who need it.
15:43 I want to use my humanity and my activism to inspire others to stand up and be a support for those who need it.
15:45 And I want to motivate youth to recognize their potential in the world and to be someone of note.
15:47 And I want to motivate youth to recognize their potential in the world and to be someone of note.
16:09 Thank you for joining us, Alo. I look forward to continuing the conversation and also look forward to seeing the further developments at Major Inc.
16:17 Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
16:19 Thanks for... Cheers.
16:21 Cheers.
16:23 Cheers.
16:25 Cheers.
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