Many musicians, waiting for their new record to be pressed, have mused to themselves about starting a vinyl manufacturing business, but John Lombardo actually put a real plan together with 3 other friends to create Smashed Plastic here in Chicago. John pieced together this coalition from his life and times within the music business as a record store guy, a tour manager, and with his own bands in the Cleveland music scene and it has seen unbelievable success despite the slow downs in manufacturing since the pandemic because of supply chain issues among others. Smashed Plastic set out to create a new standard of ordering online transparency between artist and manufacturer instead of the long-standing model of little communication and no sense of progress through the process. Illuminating rap with a hard working change-maker.