City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Joshua Eferighe that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.
I was lucky to catch Dayneeia Thrash and Cat Sanchez, cofounders of Chicago-based creative agency 3V, for an interview. They only had a short window for a Zoom sit-down, between the February 28 installment of TheGr8Cypher at Never Have I Ever Bar and their trip to South by Southwest in Texas. Their agency oversees the former—a community hip-hop event hosted by one of its clients, local collective TheGr8Thinkaz—and at the latter, 3V represented four artists who were performing.
Not that Day and Cat, as they’re usually called, were having an especially busy time, at least by their own standards. Their agency is involved in ten to 15 events per month on average, and that doesn’t factor in services they offer such as brand management, Web design, and show booking. Since 3V took on its first client in 2015, it’s grown its artists’ careers and created a business model that gives them a more sustainable path to success.
“We’ve had managers tell us that we do way more than an average manager,” say Cat and Day. They tend to finish each other’s sentences—and when they do, they laugh. They’re both 29 years old and both from the south side: Cat hails from 96th Street, and Day (who DJs as Love Day) is from 87th Street. Their agency currently claims eight artists as clients, including TheGr8Thinkaz (who’ve performed as far afield as Amsterdam and Berlin), rap duo Mother Nature (who’ve opened for Killer Mike and shared the stage with Rapsody), and DJ Cymba of TheGr8Thinkaz (who’s been booked by a Chicago Apple Store and by Navy Pier). Other affiliated artists, among them J Bambii and Freddie Old Soul, consult with 3V for show booking, business development, and release rollouts.
A 2018 survey by the Music Industry Research Association and Princeton University found that 61 percent of musicians cannot meet their living expenses with music-related income alone. And since COVID, the situation has only gotten worse. That’s why Day and Cat go the extra mile—and why 3V prioritizes financial sustainability for its clients.
Day explains that 3V makes sure to provide artists with a foundation, a step that often gets skipped. “We’re providing you with the things that you need to set up, even if you feel like they don’t matter now,” she says. “We have hands in everything. We’re getting your LLC together; we’re getting your finances together; we’re getting your personal finances together. We’re getting your branding, your press, your music, your touring, your events, your team, publishing—everything.”
The more difficult it gets to make money with music, the more important it is for musicians to diversify their potential sources of revenue. Many of 3V’s clients already embody this philosophy, pursuing ventures outside music: Gr8Sky sells Gr8Juice, his Gr8Thinkaz comrade Jeff K%nz runs the Think & Paint community art gatherings, Mother Nature teach the educational curriculum the Miseducation of Hip-Hop, and DJ Cymba organizes an event series called the Cymba Sessionz.
“We genuinely empower our artists to understand the business and branding, to be an entrepreneur on their own, because the music industry fluctuates so much,” Day says. “It’s not ideal for an artist to try to live off solely their music or their art, which is why the brands that they have are important. So we try to figure out ways to expand the artists’ brands and ideally get them to a point where they’re investing in something greater than just music and art, whether that be property or a franchise.”
Cat and Day met in 2014, while students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They were both working at an Urbana music venue called the Canopy Club. Day, who majored in business management, graduated in 2017, while Cat graduated in 2018 with a major in advertising and minors in public relations and sociology. “Originally, we both just had a shared passion for Chicago music, and specifically, we wanted to have our own music venue on the south side,” Cat says. “So we literally just had a moment of like, ‘Oh, that’s why you’re working here.’ And like, ‘That’s where you’re from?’ And we just became best friends.”
While employed at the Canopy Club, Cat and Day were also part of a student organization called Canopy’s Club that helped promote shows at the venue—they wanted to book more hip-hop and increase student engagement. They began using the 3V name for that organization in 2014, attaching it to events at the club much as an outside promoter would. “We changed Canopy’s Club to 3V because we were trying to make it something that was not directly connected to the Canopy Club—undercover almost,” Cat says.
“Most of the people that were part of our org were artists,” Day adds. “We gave a lot of the artists their first opportunity to perform on the stage and talk about their projects.”
The Canopy Club is deeply entrenched in 3V lore. It’s where Cat and Day met Klevah of Mother Nature, who’d introduce them to TRUTH, the duo’s other half. The two of them became 3V’s first clients in 2015, kicking off Cat and Day’s careers in artist management. Klevah also introduced them to Nova, who worked as part of 3V till 2019.
After graduating, Cat and Day took the 3V name with them, bringing their booking and event expertise back to Chicago. “When we created the organization, we were doing school stuff, but we always worked in music,” Day says. “We both started working at a major festival doing admin stuff. And then when we came back to Chicago, we worked at different venues. Like, I worked at Concord [Music Hall]; she worked at Metro. Chop Shop was post-graduation [for Cat]. So we were already hella in the music scene and freelancing festivals and stuff.”
In March 2020, 3V filed paperwork to organize itself as an L3C, also known as a low-profit limited liability company. They merged the artist-management work they were already doing with event and booking services. “As an L3C, you have to have some element of social good,” Day says. “Our InnerG program is the educational and wellness portion of 3V. That program is what makes us an L3C.”
InnerG aims to teach 3V clients how to maintain healthy careers, with or without the agency, and it stresses the importance of mental and physical wellness in a business that can be corrosive to both. It also has a public-facing side, with workshops, speaking engagements, and more. ”That bridge between education and culture—Vessels, Visions, Vibes—those three things are what makes us different,” adds Cat, unpacking the Vs in the agency’s name.
Today, 3V operates in large part through partnerships and collaborations that expand its reach, rooting its business model in community. Gabby Alston from Acid Houzze helps with marketing for 3V clients, including newsletters and social media; Tiler “Tea Murda” Thompson of Qualitea Pubz Music Group works with publishing and uploads; Beleshia “Lyrical” McCulley of Lyrical Eyes Management and 323 Music assists with talent management. Depending on who’s pitching in, the 3V team can consist of ten to 15 people on any given day.
As much as Day and Cat trust their collaborators, they’d love to bring more services in-house. They also want to own a physical space. At this point, they don’t own or even rent; they do their 3V work out of various south-side cafes. Both founders also have day jobs in the field—Day is a booking coordinator for Live Nation, and Cat is a manager with marketing agency Groundswell Experiential—but they hope to build up 3V until it’s all they do. They run the agency almost like a full-service record label (except for the part where they don’t release music), and they plan to maintain that approach.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever seen ourselves as a label, but we are passionate about Chicago,” Day says. “So if there’s ever a point where that may come into play, it would be because we have so much passion and love for Chicago being a global leader of music.”
“Our vision is to have a brick-and-mortar venue, creative space, like a whole building on the south side,” Cat adds. “That is what brought us together—to have a physical space where we do all of the work and even further impact Chicago.”
Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate community-driven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond
Update Fri 3/28 at 1:52 PM: This story has been amended to clarify that the student organization at the Canopy Club was called Canopy’s Club. It has also been corrected to reflect Nova’s departure from the 3V team in 2019.