BusinessWeek Puff Piece on Hip Hop 2.0

BusinessWeek has a lightweight celebrity focused Hip Hop 2.0 article and slideshow.

Take a look and tell me if you think that's even worth mentioning.  I think I need to stop promoting MSM outlets that don't actually add to the conversation cause we're past the point of waiting for the media to take hip hop seriously enough to cover it and now need to start pushing for the media to take hip hop seriously enough to cover it well.

[Note: BusinessWeek is basically a business-themed entertainment media company so maybe I should just give them a break...Not!]

Fortunately there are a few points worth considering.

Point of Interest 1:
Photo of Russell Simmons on a traditional phone with a cord and everything!

That's funny because I've always meant to do a blog essay about how the signifier of the hip hop businessman began with Russell Simmons and the cellphone.  Almost all his early candid coverage showed him with a cellphone and he epitomized the early hip hop businessman.

Then the cigar became big and you could pick a lot of candidates from Suge Knight to Jay-Z.

Now I'd have to consider if Russell Simmons is about to change the signifier game again or whether or not that landline is just another anachronism like the Pimp Cup.

Point of Interest 2:
AllHipHop is Hip Hop 2.0 now?

That would work if there was some kind of rational reason for its inclusion or some passing reference to online forums being a precursor to social networks but AllHipHop is described in the article as "multimedia-heavy" and in the slideshow as "one of the original hip-hop destinations on the Web".  The writer isn't even trying.

But why bother with such details?  Chuck Creekmur's a successful black entrepreneur living in New York and that's Hip Hop 2.0, right?

Point of Interest 3:
There's a Global Grind spam comment below the article!

Dumbness or a competitor setting up a competitor?

Have a real interest in Hip Hop 2.0?

Take a stroll through ProHipHop's Hip Hop 2.0 and Social Networks categories.

For a wider range of hip hop social networks, check out:
Hip Hop Social Networks: XXL, Indie HipHop Online, DaHoneyHouse.com?, RapHappy, Loud.com, Global Grind?, iNTERNETS CELEBRITIES?, List of Priors

By the way GrandGood says AllHipHop is the winner among the beauty pageant slideshow participants.  All I've got to say is that, by the time they're done, DanceJam should stack way more skrilla than any of these other operations [i.e. DanceJam will outperform its Hip Hop 2.0 competitors].

Taking a Closer Look at AllHipHop:
I decided to take a closer look at AllHipHop after checking out this nice press release rewrite in which it's revealed that "AllHipHop.com has learned" about this press release.

Hip Hop 1.0 tricks aside, if you scroll down you'll see that AllHipHop has added comments to their articles and that's a Web 2.0 thing for a news site to do.

They also have an embeddable Amazon store and that's kind of 2.0ish.

AllHipHop might actually be an interesting choice to consider how older sites are making the transition to a Web 2.0 world.