Billboard’s Gail Mitchell takes a larger view of the practice of breaking and marketing albums in strip clubs than I’ve taken in my previous entries on the topic but makes it clear that it all goes back to the South and, most likely, Uncle Luke:
Urban music’s working relationship with strip clubs dates back to the late ’80s, when Luther "Luke" Campbell and the 2 Live Crew first gained notice. The dancers who worked with the censorship-threatened performer onstage and in his videos were strip club dancers. "I didn’t have a big budget where I could hire regional people," Campbell recalls. "I had to be creative and use all the different avenues I could think of."
Jermaine Dupri claims that "strip club airplay is (more influential) than radio airplay in Atlanta" and that "strip clubs are definitely a good place to meet people, learn things and see what’s happening in other people’s worlds. I’m probably the only label president there every other week."
An anonymous exec feels that "you can often gauge how hot your record is by the number of times strippers request the song during a given night."
But the biggest evidence that strip clubs are becoming a more important focus for rap marketing is the organized approaches that are starting to emerge. For example:
Two principal DJ collectives have sprung up that target the strip club circuit — the Hen House in Detroit and Atlanta-based Hittmenn DJs, a 72-DJ collective established three years ago by Robert "Kaspa" Smith, now president, and CEO Greg Street. "Right now our DJs reach 32 million people in 29 markets," Smith says.
Major label execs involved with urban promotions see strip clubs as fitting into an already existing dynamic. Interscope’s Kevin Black states:
When we work records, we work lifestyle venues like barbershops, beauty shops, skating rinks, bowling alleys — anything with a culture to it. And strip clubs fall into that category.
In a similar vein, Universal Motown’s Troy Marshall says that:
Word-of-mouth is still one of the biggest promotion factors out there. . . That has helped turn strip clubs into big business.
Such perspectives allied with adult entertainment’s current growth and increasing legitimacy means that more hip hop will be marketed through strip clubs, though efforts still seem focused on Southern artists. For example:
Universal Motown’s Marshall is coordinating a promotional strip club tour in June on behalf of "Go Head," a new track by Ali & Gipp. The plan includes visits to venues in 17 cities, including Houston’s Onyx.
Of course, Luke Campbell continues his efforts as he promotes his upcoming box set Uncle Luke: My Life & Freaky Times with an Are You Ms. Freaky Soul 2006 competition at strip clubs nationwide.
Interestingly, the article doesn’t get into Luke’s own plans to start a chain of strip clubs called Luke’s Cabaret, about which I haven’t heard in a while, but Luke has been very clear in the past that his involvement with such businesses and related projects is not about being a pimp:
Never got in the pimp game. People thought I was a pimp because I always had girls at strip clubs and all my girls hustle. What I do is not pimping because I don’t take their money. I pay them to dance for me. What they do on the side while they are at a party, at a club, at a show and what they do on the side is their thing. They pimping theirselves and I aint mad at that. That’s their business.
On hip hop "pimps", Luke says:
All they need to do is define what a pimp is. A pimp is a person who prostitutes women. The women sell their body and they make their money and give it to the pimp and the pimp gives the girl what he wants to give the girl. All these guys are claiming that they pimps and their not pimps. On one song they say they a pimp, the next song they say "oh Ima take you shopping, buy you clothes, buy you this. That makes you a trick and a pimp. I don’t get that, so I think it needs to be said because aint nobody else saying it.
Word.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Hip Hop Research & Marketing in Atlanta Strip Clubs
Jermaine Dupri’s Strip Club Research
