A new decade in a new millennium calls for a new approach to the music industry. Enter Street Mindz Entertainment, the new movement in urban sounds that’s set to blow worldwide. Street Mindz is a full-service record label boasting a fresh, online-focused approach, gradually building a massive real-life fan base, one Tweet, Facebook post, and YouTube video at a time.

Though the label is based in Louisville, Kentucky, it’s been truly worldwide since its beginning, and more street than most could ever hope to be. That’s because its 25-year-old CEO, Lonnie Rogers, founded the company back in 2008 while serving his country overseas in Baghdad.

Raised in a musical household with a DJ father, Rogers had always loved music, but it was his time spent criss-crossing the globe in the military that opened his eyes to the power of music’s infinite reach. “At one point, I was in a small town in Peru,” he recalls, “and I saw that people knew about artists like 50 Cent. I realized then that with