Executive Profile: HansTolo’s Tone Lopez & Raphiki Rhodes on Tour & Production Managing Chris Brown, Monica, Cardi B & More

The Force is strong at HansTolo Enterprises in Los Angeles, where Tone Lopez and Raphiki Rhodes are growing their business from a small production house to a full live events services agency ready to add global brands to their client roster. Word of mouth about their work ethic has made that roster sparkle with stars. HansTolo tour-managed Chris Brown’s “Breezy Bowl XX” stadium tour, which grossed over $296 million in four months, and is currently tour-managing Monica on Brandy & Monica’s The Boy Is Mine Tour.

The company is also doing both tour and production management for three tours in progress: Aminé’s Tour de Dance World Tour, the U.S. leg of Earl Sweatshirt’s 3L World Tour and Danny Brown’s Stardust Tour. In 2026, HansTolo will provide production management for Cardi B’s Little Miss Drama Tour, which begins Feb. 11 at Acrisure Arena at Greater Palm Springs in Palm Desert, California, and concludes Apr. 18 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, GA.

Lopez and Rhodes appeared on the production panel at Pollstar Live! 2025 and appreciated the opportunity to meet and connect with colleagues in person, a rarity when their work keeps them on the road. It was a joy to speak with them about their projects and future ambitions.

POLLSTAR: Are either of you on the road with Brandy & Monica right now?
Tone Lopez: I am. I’m tour-managing Monica.

How has that been? Monica is one of my favorite artists who I’ve ever interviewed.
Lopez: She’s amazing. Such a beautiful soul, man, a great person. I love working for her.

What have you sensed about Brandy and Monica’s friendship along the course of the tour? Has it really deepened?
Lopez: It’s very professional. They hold hands when they walk to the stage, or if they don’t walk to the stage, they hold hands when they get there. They walk up into the lift together. You could just tell they’re happy to be on stage performing, doing what they do best.

It must fill them with joy to be doing it. They’re making history!
Lopez: They deserve it. I love to see this in our genre, that they could still go out, pack arenas and display what they did. Because these ladies, they basically ruled the Nineties.

You also did tour management for Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl XX, which landed in our top 10 of highest-grossing tours of 2025, ahead of some really major global acts.
Lopez: It’s a testament to not only his talent, but the fan base that supports this man. It’s just good to see in his own world what he’s accomplishing, especially when the industry turned their backs on him. He stayed persistent, kept loyal to his fan base and his craft. And it’s just paying off for him. I think everybody in his circle is extremely happy for him.

He’s crushing it. I mean, people doubted it. I think there were only a couple of people that really believed in it besides himself. Some people were like, are you sure this is going to do well? I’m talking about people within the Live Nation system that believe in him, that work with him and were like yeah, this is going to work. They know who they are. I think it’s just good to see what that did. We had just toured the U.S., I don’t think it was a full year, and then he went in the stadiums and did that [in 2025] —  that’s special. And really, really cool to be a part of to see it.

What were the demographics of the audience?
Lopez: It’s a very young crowd, and it’s a predominantly female crowd. And you got a lot of kids that come that are babies, like 10, 12 years old. You can tell they want to be the next performers. They’re in the crowd dancing, like how you saw when you look at documentaries of Michael Jackson. You see kids impersonating what he was doing.

I was just about to say, I’m getting Michael vibes here.
Lopez The tour felt like if we were touring with Michael Jackson on the [Jacksons’] Victory Tour back in the day, or Bad. That’s what I equated that to — like, man, imagine somebody that was on that tour back then. This is exactly what this is. I know he doesn’t throw that out a lot because he respects what Mike has done. He wants to create his own accomplishments. But he’s the modern day version of that, to be honest with you, from talent to singing to performing, everything. Dude’s just amazingly talented. I think if he wasn’t singing, he’d probably be playing basketball in the NBA or playing corner in the NFL or something.

You’ve got Cardi B’s Little Miss Drama Tour starting in February. She just had a baby and is hitting the road, talk about a work ethic! What can you say about this tour?
Raphiki Rhodes: This is a new client for us, so we don’t know much about her. But the one thing that we can tell is that she wants to perform, she wants to work.

It’s good when we see clients that we bring in that become part of our roster that start giving off that same vibe of, you know what? I know I just had this kid, but I want to do this show and I want to go to rehearsals. That makes us feel good, because we love what we do and we’re very passionate about what we do. When we’re with clients that have that same energy, that same passion, it just makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable.

That’s a new client for us, so we can’t talk too much about how she is as an artist. But the preliminary ideas that we’re getting shows that she wants to work. She wants to get out there. She wants to get in front of her fans and put on an amazing show. So we’re just taking that energy and making sure that we match it on our end with making sure we’re executing things that she wants to have happen.

You also have Earl Sweatshirt on the road right now — how’s that going?
Rhodes: His tour’s doing really well. It’s great energy. He’s another one — he shows up on time and knocks his show out. These are the little things that help us, when artists are on time and want to perform for the fans and want to give 100%. It’s always nice when we catch those kinds of clients.

Danny Brown’s another one. We’ve had Danny Brown for over 10 years. He’s got a really good tour going right now, and he’s another guy that is always on time. He’ll beat you to the lobby call and he understands touring, so it’s easier to talk to him about production elements and logistics and all of those things.

Aminé is another tour we have out. He’s in Europe now. He just did his U.S. run and he went to Europe and then he’s got Australia at the top of the year. He’s another one that we’ve had for almost 10 years.

How was your experience attending Pollstar Live! 2025 and participating in the production panel?
Rhodes: It was a really good experience in terms of being part of a group setting of peers that you really don’t ever really get to see unless they’re in your immediate circle, because in touring, we’re on the road most of the time. I was able to meet a couple of people there that I’m very familiar with their company and what they do, but I didn’t necessarily know them.

It was good to be on a panel and to share our experience and knowledge with like-minded people, and then there were obviously people in the audience that might be looking to get into the business — that was really cool. And just to see the amount of heavy hitters that were actually at Pollstar: owners of companies, presidents, VPs. It’s definitely something to check out for sure if you’re in the touring world.

What are some of your goals for HansTolo?
Lopez:  We’re trying to be more of an agency-type company, where we can facilitate and do more corporate stuff. We’re trying to get it to the point where business is 70% corporate and 30% artists. We want accounts like Nike and Puma and Tiffany and Co. and BAPE. A lot of these companies do a lot of installations and it’s basically production-driven. We would like to get into that world, but we have to do some things and keep doing what we’re doing to be looked upon in that light.

There’s other things that we have in mind as far as facilities that we want to have in-house, from trucking to buses. We cannot compete with the big boys that are out there in the industry, but we could be able to supply it for our team, and then if the team isn’t using it, they could also be rented out. If we can create something we can keep in-house and the artists we’re working with directly benefit from it, then it just makes sense.

Do you want to do anything around the Olympics when it comes to LA in 2027?

[Both Lopez and Rhodes laugh]

Lopez: I’m going to let you answer that, Ra. Boy, that’s funny!

Rhodes: It’s so funny! I have been trying to manifest the Olympics for years, and it kind of came from a story. One of my first tours, when I was starting out, there was this stage manager. He was an older white guy. And he said, “Yeah, this is my last tour. I’m taking off after this. I’m retiring.”

I asked, “What have you been doing?” He was like, “Oh, man, I toured with the Stones for decades.”

He just starts giving me game on all the touring that he’s done in his life, and I was picking his brain. And I was like, well, what are you coming from right now? Because I know the Stones weren’t out.

He said, “For the last five years, I’ve been moving the Pope around. Every time he goes to a different country, there’s a structure that comes with him. We got the vehicle. We set up his little podium structure.” He said, “I’ve been doing that in every country,” and it made me think, this is a guy that went from being a roadie to a stage manager for the Stones and whatever that encompassed to ending up running staging for the Pope randomly. It made me open my mind up.

I remember I was talking to Tone about it, like, man — we need to get the Olympics! I said, I don’t care if we’re just moving around the janitorial service from one place to another. I was just joking. But ultimately, I want to be able for our company to have some sort of footprint in the Olympics doing something. It doesn’t really matter what, to be quite honest. And so it’s just ironic that you actually brought that up because it’s something that I’ve just been trying to speak into existence.

I think where we’ve gotten to so far is based on us speaking a lot of things into existence. We recap at the end of the year between me and him: what we did well, what we want to do better, and then where we want to go for the next year. We’ve been staying on that ladder of success, if you will. So the fact that you brought this up is crazy, because I just feel like at some point it’s going to manifest itself.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.