I want to start the week with shout outs to the folks that made ProHipHop’s first full week in action a surprisingly gratifying experience.

Special thanks go to the hip hop bloggers who know me from earlier projects and mentioned me in their blogs or sent mail.  In particular, I want to thank Hashim Warren for being someone with whom I can discuss what I’m doing and what I hope to do without having to explain much of anything about topics like hip hop, weblogs, online journalism, domain mapping and why I moved across the country when I got an offer of (relatively) cheap rent.

Lucy Beer, of Elemental Consulting, helped me get the early word out to a variety of sources, from online hip hop publications to publicists for hip hop businesses.

I also want to thank Cabal, an award-winning hip hop artist from Brasil who also has a company named ProHipHop.  Rather than lashing out at someone displacing him from the search engine rankings, an option many artists and businessmen in almost any field might choose, he reached out without any demands to see what ties were possible.  I look forward to the possibility of interviewing Cabal and finding out about the difficulties of music enterpreneurship in Brasil for my upcoming interview series tentatively titled, "Talking Hip Hop Business."

ProHipHop has many challenges ahead and I have much to learn.  I look forward to being schooled by business people, hip hop people and hip hop business people.  It’s on!