“I wanted to put my album on a USB and sell it with action figures,” he tells Adweek. “But even then, people didn’t really understand.”

With only a fraction of the industry clout he has now, Scott lost the battle to publish Rodeo on a thumb drive, but he did release the accompanying action figures—a move that got the attention and respect of hip-hop legend Nas. “I was like, ‘Damn, I wish I could have thought of that,’” Nas told Scott in a conversation for Playboy in 2019.