Jermaine Dupri’s Young, Rich, and Dangerous on Strip Club Research

Crain’s New York Business.com has an article about Jermaine Dupri that includes excerpts from Young, Rich, and Dangerous: The Making of a Music Mogul.  In particular Crain’s found Dupri’s thoughts on strip club research worth noting.  Check the links at the end of the post for prior ProHipHop coverage of this fascinating topic.

Jermaine Dupri writes about strip club research:

Strip clubs are basically a way into that street life…Magic City and The Body Tap are my special music laboratories. These are the places where artists and records break, especially in the South. In strip clubs the music gets nice and grimy. People can lose their inhibitions so you really get to know how they feel about the music. I’d even say strip air play is stronger than radio air play in Atlanta…

If the girls are requesting the track and shakin’ it to the beat you know it’s gonna cross over into radio. It’s like the girls are hit detectors. That’s why guys wanting to get their demos heard try to pay off the strip club DJs to play ‘em. They know some cat like me is sitting in the club studying how the ladies and the audience react to their song.

Strip clubs are for real down an’ dirty grassroots marketing. Young Jeezy broke in strip clubs. Rick Ross’ song "Hustlin’" did well–strippers made money off of it. They moved so well they made their customers happy and got more bills thrown at them.

I’m probably the only top label executive in the world who goes to a strip club at least once a week. Puffy goes once in a while, but you won’t see L.A. Reid or Jay-Z in the clubs. But for me it’s necessary. That’s where I meet people, learn things and see what’s happening in other people’s worlds. The clubs are like a gumbo of life. All together in one building you can find the straight white corporate guys listening to rap in their suits, alongside the hardest thugs who killed 10 people. You get NBA guys mixing it up with artists as well as regular dudes. It’s my chance to be in the thick of it all.

For me musically the strip club is equivalent to the whole mixtape scene in New York. You get exposed to records you’re never gonna hear on the radio.

Via Sit Down Stand Up.

Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Jermaine Dupri’s Strip Club Research

Hip Hop Research & Marketing in Atlanta Strip Clubs

Hip Hop Research & Marketing in Strip Clubs, Pt. 3