Joyner Lucas and his manager Dhruv Joshi spoke with HipHopDX about their app Tully, how it came to be, and their recent key investment from Sony Music Entertainment.

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“Artists need to have control over their work,” Lucas says. “We sweat and bleed for this stuff, and it means everything to us. I built Tully to make it possible for me to have that control, know where all my stuff is and never have to rely on anyone to tell what’s mine and who owns what or how.”

Lucas and Joshi created the app in 2015. 

“As a manager, I have to juggle a lot of relationships for every song that Joyner creates,” Joshi notes. “You have to get clearances and split sheets from lawyers, producers, collaborators, everyone. You have to make sure that you have the rights for beats and samples, and you have to do that all while making sure that Joyner has what he needs to make it happen.”

He adds, “I had never found a way of doing this that didn’t end up costing a lot of time, a lot of money, and not be easy to track. It could get really hard to get a song to the finish line so, when we designed Tully to give me the controls I need to get it done and keep Joyner in the loop. It’s a game-changer for the industry.”

Later this year, Tully will release its Artist Management Platform, which will expand on the premise of the app and help manage artists’ workflow. You can learn more about the app on Tully’s website.

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Every so often, the temptation to indulge in petty revenge comes a-knocking. The wiser course of action is to simply ignore those dark urges all together, satisfying though it may be to succumb. Yet Joyner Lucas opted to throw caution to the wind and lay the foundation to his empire upon the very name of a former foe. 

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Following news that Joyner's "Tully" app recently secured funding from Sony Music, the rapper took to Instagram to reflect on his latest milestone. "As the co-founder of @tullyapp I am proud to announce my partnership with @sonymusic," he writes. "I been building this app for years with my manager @anonymousinnovator and I knew it was going to revolutionize the music game and change everything."

Yet this house was not entirely built on wholesome ground. Joyner would soon go to reveal the Tully name initially came from a former substitute teacher, one Robert Tully, who became somewhat of a nemesis. "The irony of this whole situation is where the name “Tully” came from," reflects Joyner, in a Twitter post that may very well find itself deleted should the namesake come a-knocking. "I had a substitute school teacher named “Robert Tully” who had it out for me & literally failed me every semester he was teaching. Lol because I’m petty I decided to name my app “Tully." Hi Robert." 

Is there a moral of this particular story? If so, can it be anything other than pettiness pays? 

Uber is pledging 10 million free rides and deliveries of food to healthcare workers, seniors, and others in need. 

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The company announced the decision on its website.

“Uber Health is providing free transportation for frontline healthcare workers, helping them get to and from patients’ homes, as well as between healthcare facilities… We’re providing free meals on Uber Eats to first responders and healthcare workers in US and Canada, in coordination with local, state, and provincial governments.”

The company will also be transporting goods with Uber Freight: “While the federal government’s emergency declaration is in place, shipments of critical goods in the US will be transported with zero profit pricing by Uber Freight,” the website reads

The delivery fee for orders completed through Uber Eats has been removed for restaurants across the US and Canada.

A spokesperson says Uber is “working to distribute these meals and rides at scale in the coming months and tailor the offering based on the most pressing, local needs,” a spokesperson said. “And we’re covering the costs associated with delivering food, meals and rides: including free Eats meals, the cost of the ride or delivery of food from a food bank, payments to the drivers and couriers, etc.”

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Yesterday, Byte, the spiritual successor to Vine, officially launched on iOS and Andriod.

As of late, Uber has been pushing for its drivers to be labeled as independant contractors in California, and their latest feature serves to drive that point home. The ride sharing app is currently testing out a new feature in the West Coast state that gives drivers the ability to choose their own ride prices instead of charging the default price. This feature allows drivers to hike up individual fares in 10% increments, and the prices are capped five times higher than what Uber’s set price would normally be for the ride. Currently, only drivers making trips to and from the Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and Sacramento airports have access to this feature; however, the feature could expand to the greater Los Angeles and San Francisco areas if the trial run is successful.

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As expected, the drivers who set lower prices for a ride would be most customers first choice, while drivers with higher prices will get the bulk of their customers during periods of high demand. Uber is also testing another feature in California, that would allow passengers to assign themselves “favourite drivers” to schedule rides with. The feature will also give passengers the opportunity to give drivers vital information about each trip upfront before accepting the ride. 

By offering increasing opportunities for drivers in California to have more freedom, Uber is continuing their attempts to prove that their drivers are independant contractors, in order to save millions of dollars by not providing benefits to its drivers has lead to an increasing. This increasing urgency to give their drivers more independence comes in the wake of California’s recently enacted law that takes issue with Uber’s stance.

Almost everyone knows of a Tinder date gone wrong. Some dates may have been more comical while others not so much as it turned out to be a bad situation with someone you hardly know. The latter is the reason why Tinder is upping it’s safety features on the app by introducing a panic button and check-in, The Wall Street Journal reports.  

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According to the publication, Match Group Inc. (Tinders parent company) is set to rollout Noonlight by the end of the month. The new feature will track a user’s location and will have the ability to notify the police. Before a Tinder user goes on a date, they simply have to log information on details of where and who the person they are meeting. If an alert is triggered, Noonlight will share the information and location with the police. Once you hit the trigger, Noonlight will ask for a code. If a code is not entered, a text will be sent. If the text does not receive a response, the user will receive a call. If there’s no answer (or if there is and help is needed) police will be sent to the location. 

“You should run a dating business as if you are a mom,” Match Group Chief Executive Mandy Ginsberg explained. “I think a lot about safety, especially on our platforms, and what we can do to curtail bad behavior. There are a lot of things we tell users to do. But if we can provide tools on top of that, we should do that as well.”