Grant “got into” the internet in 1996 when, as he puts it, “no one cared, it was too young”. But with his Madison Avenue experience, he could divine a “huge opportunity” with domain names.
“I thought to myself: these IP addresses – which essentially create brands like cars.com – may eventually have value as the internet grows. I began to buy them.” Flexing his real-estate experience, too, he realised that people looking for property would search “intuitively” for the geographic region. “If you were interested in Miami Beach real estate, that’s what you type in. And this was long before we had Google or any of the mature search engines. I had this profound revelation that if I could acquire all of these generic descriptive domains, I could literally create a franchise.”
Grant began “buying up all the major cities” to prefix their names to the domain name “realestate.com”. He turned his attention to Europe and did the same. Then Latin America. He went “essentially around the world, acquiring what became the largest privately held real estate [domain name] portfolio. To this day, I have this portfolio where I’ll selectively sell off domain names when the price is right. And I’ve been doing that now for the last 25 years.”
He gives me an example. He registered torontorealestate.com for two years for $75. One year later, he was offered $5,000 for it. Intrigued by that sharp uptick, he gambled on holding. Two years later, he was offered $75,000. “Make a long story short, I sold that domain for $145,000. Now, that’s one domain from a collection. At one point, I owned 10,000 domain names.”
To this day, Grant is “sitting on a big catalogue of these really valuable generic domains like tropicalfish.com. I go into a vertical and select what I feel is the best descriptive domain and acquire it.”
Hence Rob Grant having the foresight to register nepodaddy.com. He’s not only having the last laugh. He’s having the first laugh, too.
Lana, Chuck: How will you feel if some people view your dad as the first musical Nepo Daddy?
Lana: “You know, he’s fucking trolling them half the time. And then the other half of it, I don’t know what [he’s doing]… But I’m a real go-with-it girl. You could tell me to jump into the LA river if it was full enough, and I’d be like, let’s [do] it.”
But you want him to be taken seriously as an artist on his own merits, not because of who you are?
Lana: “Doesn’t matter. Because look at what people say about me. If I believed [that], I would have jumped off the fucking bridge a long time ago.”
Chuck: “Yeah, I would have stopped doing photography if I thought that it mattered.”
As Del Rey says: look at what people have said about her. Early in her career, she was accused of all sorts of things. Of being fake. Of being an industry plant. Of being a rich girl whose daddy somehow purchased her a record deal.
“Our family, honestly, has been plagued with all of these allegations,” says Grant, sighing slightly. The slurs against his daughter are the only thing that even vaguely cloud his perennially sunny disposition. “She had to endure all of that conspiracy theory. It’s so hard for the public to understand that a young girl could actually have accomplished it all entirely on her own. I mean, yes, we were supportive. But the theories that were floated out there, that I bought her record label contract – absolutely absurd.
“It’s typical of our culture,” he goes on, “that people find it really hard to be able to give someone credit. And I’m already experiencing that. I had a friend, just 48 hours ago, who felt that the fact that I could produce music and make an album was something that happened because of her.” Grant throws up his palms, mildly.
“You just have to tough it out. I know we’re gonna get all kinds of pushback. But I do want to set the record straight for Lana: she did all of that on her own.”
The family, he adds, have become used to such snark. At the same time, though, he can now see at play what he describes as karma. “This persistent mythology that she was somehow helped by a rich father,” he begins, rightly pointing out that he doubts a man would have had to contend with such digs, now has an echo, in that “the Nepo Daddy is going to face the same criticism. But I love it!” he says, flashing a pearly smile. “Because that’s life, right? And while I listen to all those comments, I will be selling Nepo Daddy hoodies, crop tops and T‑shirts, ha ha!”
Are you ready for your close-up, Mr. Grant?
“Ha ha! I am! You saw me out there [during the shoot], right? I’ve just taken to it very naturally.” He mentions the video for Lost At Sea, directed by Chuck. “They had cameras in my face and we shot it on a 55-foot ketch [sail boat] off Marina del Rey. Gorgeous. Yeah, I’m totally ready. I’m having a ball.”
For this ineffably chill man, though, blessed with a lifetime of success and a high-achieving, talented family, there’s one thing about this late-life pivot that gives him pause.
“Oh, God, yeah, I’m on TikTok. You have to be. Have I taken to that readily? No! But I know it’s something you’ve got to do. I’m comfortable with Instagram and Twitter. But TikTok’s new and I’ll have to grow into that.
“Really, though, all of this is new – first interview, first main shoot. But I’ll tell you what: I’m going to approach all of this with a wicked sense of humour. And I’m just going to enjoy the hell out of it.”