Flo Rida x AdultFriendFinder.com Partner for Touch Me

Flo Rida and AdultFriendFinder.com join hands to promote his new video featuring Trina and the "AdultFriendFinder girls":

To coincide with the premiere of Touch Me, a video release party is scheduled for Friday, October 23, 2009 in Flo Rida's hometown of Miami at LIV in the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. The video will then premiere exclusively on AdultFriendFinder.com on Monday, October 26, 2009. Following the premiere week, the video will be released to major online music channels including YouTube.com and WorldStarHipHop.com as well as MTV and BET.

I'm betting the free level of AdultFriendFinder.com will allow access but that's just a guess!

Over at Hip Hop Press:
Hip-Hop Artist Flo Rida Partners With AdultFriendFinder.com for His New Music Video Touch Me

NSFW or ProHipHop: Ghostface Killah's Stapleton Sex, Young Ruga's Talk Radio

TeemYee.tv:
Ghostface “Stapleton Sex” Video Premiere!!!

YouTube:
Talk Radio (Diss)

Each controversial in their own way as Ghostface shares his interest in deviant sexuality while Young Ruga turns homophobic insults into weapons against homophobes.

Over at Hip Hop Press:
Young Ruga Releases the Most Controversial Song of '09
Targeting Homophobic, Right-Wing Conservative Talk Radio Hosts

YUHMM: Online Adult Mag w/Hip Hop Connections

YUHMM is a digital magazine/blog for adults, particularly males, that is definitely Unsafe For The Typical Workspace but is tasteful and relevant enough for mention at ProHipHop.

Many of the models could qualify for hip hop honey status, which may or may not be a compliment depending on your perspective, and certain individuals appear who often get mentioned in hip hop media such as Kim Kardashian, including a photoshop expose via Complex, and Suelyn Mederios, who appears in music videos by Ludacris and Young Jeezy.

A surprising number of non-model hip hop content also appears inclduding the topic of Kanye's ghostwriter, a Pharcyde video and 15 Explicit Hip-Hop Album Covers.

Definitely worth a look whether you're a consumer or are checking for well done examples of adult web publishing.

Khia & OhMiBod: iPod Powered Vibrator Contest

OhMiBod: iPod or Music Player Powered Vibrator

Khia and OhMiBod are holding a contest in which the winners will receive an iPod powered vibrator, perhaps the classic OhMiBod model pictured above.

OhMiBod has a fascinating range of music powered vibrators including ones for cell phones.

Khia - Nasti Muzik

The contest, which is almost over but simply requires sending in an email, gives me a chance to post Khia's Nasti Muzik album cover which is meant to be part of this copromotion.

Interesting idea with a good fit between artist and product but something's missing here in terms of contestant involvement that would make this less of a novelty item and give it some depth and open up possibilities for news coverage.

The novelty item issue is a problem for Khia so that's something that should be taken into account with any such move at this stage.

Lil Wayne's Strapped Condoms Ad Rebooted

Lil Wayne for Strapped Condoms

Strapped Condoms has switched ads to the above featuring Lil Wayne after the first version below got lots of flak due to the homoerotic vibe on which many bloggers, forum writers and photoshoppers jumped with glee.

Lil Wayne for Strapped Condoms

Strapped Condoms doesn't seem to have a YouTube channel but you can find lots of their earlier shout out video/commercials via this search.

New ad alert via Real Talk NY.

Eve's Stripper Pics Expand Her Adult Industry Resume

So apparently Eve was a stripper and I recall a variety of sexual documentation of a woman that may be her floating around.

I bet she'll get more flak for legally giving others pleasure than any of these a-hole drug dealers who killed and destroyed so many individuals, families and neighborhoods.  I understand that lots of young drug dealers do what they feel they have to do but being grown and proud of the drug game has pretty much runs its course both socially and artistically.

Real Talk NY says, "I mean it isn’t like she was a prostitute."

ProHipHop says, "At least she wasn't a crack dealer."

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

Snoop Dogg Contributes Exotic Erotic Fee to Healing Circle

Snoop Dogg Contributes to The Healing Circle

[Photo L to R: JT The Bigga Figga, Sheila Burton, Mattie Scott, Snoop Dogg and Judy Hughes.]

Snoop Dogg has contributed his $45,000 performance deposit for a scheduled appearance at the Exotic Erotic Ball to The Healing Circle:
Snoop Dogg will perform live at a benefit concert at the Cow Palace on Friday evening, October 26, 2007, during the hours of the Exotic Erotic Expo. The Ball's initial $45,000 deposit for Snoop's services was committed to The Healing Circle in a personal presentation made by Snoop on August 12, 2007.

Additional funds for the Healing Circle will be raised when Snoop Dogg performs live on Friday, and then returns Saturday night at the Ball, where he will join Tera Patrick and Danny Bonaduce as judges of the Ball's World Famous Costume Contests.

Also from the release:
The primary mission of The Healing Circle Soul Support Group is to promote sharing, healing, education, and action for survivors of homicide and victims of inner city violence.

Vivid Buys Kim Kardashian, Ray J Sex Tape for $1 Mil

Box Cover of Kim Kardashian Superstar

Technically speaking, I guess the sale of an adult video featuring Ray J and Kim Kardashian to Vivid Entertainment for $1 million is more of an RnB thing but I feel it's important we up the sleaze factor at ProHipHop in 2007!  Besides, it says right there on the cover he's a "Hip Hop Star".

(Photo courtesy of vivid.com)

Verification Option For FeedBlitz Newsletter Publishers

Since the issue of adult content will continue to be an important one in both hip hop and in online publishing, I think it's cool that my newsletter service, FeedBlitz, now offers the option of asking subscribers a Yes/No question such as "Are you 21 or over?" in order for them to subscribe.  Though folks  can always lie, it does give publishers (from bloggers to adult website owners) a basic tool for responding to concerns that I haven't seen before from such a service.

I don't know what else you might want to ask instead but the form of the question is up to you.

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

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

Hip Hop Research & Marketing in Atlanta Strip Clubs

Though not everyone accepts the idea of the strip club as hip hop research and marketing center it certainly seems to be catching people's attention. In some cases, it's also raising issues as what many see as a Southern phenomenon moves to other locales, for example, when Lil Jon hosted a listening party for E-40 in New York that made some members of the press feel uncomfortable.

Richard Fausset from the LA Times recently took a look at hip hop and strip clubs in Atlanta and discussed the connection between rappers and strippers:
Two decades ago, strip clubs were among the few places that would play the nastiest Southern rap records. As Southern rap went mainstream, the connection between club DJs and musicians has grown stronger. And so, Monday through Wednesday nights — when Atlanta’s professional class most likely is sleeping — undiscovered hopefuls descend on three of the city’s best-known strip clubs, promoting their dreams and demo CDs in the presence of live nude girls.

One such spot is Magic City's "Magic Monday" where hopeful artists are said to have paid the dj as much as $200 to get one play of their song during the evening. At Body Tap’s “Richlife Wednesdays”, fees start at around $50 and "the rates go up as the night wears on and more big shots roll in."

Another Atlanta area spot is Stroker's where Tosha Love, Atlanta's WVEE music director, oversees Tuesday's "Looking for a Hit" night:
The disc jockey plays one song by each of the first 10 unsigned artists who walk through the door, so long as they tip the dancers during their numbers. Then Love gives each artist a free critique. From time to time, she finds a trendsetting song at Strokers and adds it to her station’s playlist alongside the music of more established rap and R&B performers.

As Love points out, a strip club "can feel like an odd place to do business" because:
You have to get used to the strippers walking around, but this industry is basically built on the street . . . You have to get back to the street to know what’s hot, and in Atlanta a lot of times that means the strip clubs.

In fact, Ludacris states, "strip clubs is just the place here. . . It seems they get all the good music first."

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

Adult: G-Spot Chronicles, Sex Sells, Heather Hunter

I'm often surprised to see the interesting sites that link to ProHipHop. A lot of them are really cool and deserve more attention than they get, but I thought it was especially fun to be linked from G-Spot Chronicles, The Book. Many authors have blogs for books in progress and to promote books once they're out, but few have blogs that are this unsafe for viewing in the workplace!

DJ Bijal and pornstar Julia Bond are releasing Sex Sells, billed as the "first enhanced mixtape to feature porn."*

Blo Records has released The Unexpected, a rap album from pornstar Heather Hunter with production from Scott Storch, Freedom Lyles and DJ Premier. Previous ProHipHop coverage.

Available from Amazon:
Heather Hunter - The Unexpected

[*dead link removed]

The "Grand Sex Auto" Controversy

In a move that's evoking memories of Tipper Gore, Senator Hillary Clinton has gone on the offensive against what are claimed to be hacker modifications that allow for sexually explicity activity within Grand Theft Auto. However, the Dutch creator of the downloadable code has said that it simply unlocks images embedded within the game. Apparently this controversy began back in June, so I guess the Times and Hillary [and me] are just catching up.

So far the best part seems to be the renaming of Grand Theft Auto, "Grand Sex Auto." It's a fun little controversy that will eventually be unraveled, whether it's a modification or something programmers put in for fun. I'm pressed for time, so if you run into information from gamers and/or programmers that seem to shed additional light, please post it in the comments section.

Adult: Heather Hunter's Album, DJ Vlad's DVD

Adult film star Heather Hunter is releasing The Unexpected, her first rap album, July 12th on Blo Records with production by such folks as Scott Storch and DJ Premier. You can download mp3s and also check out a video in which Wyclef Jean appears and also, I think, Akineleye. There's also some kind of earlier connection with N.O.R.E., though it may have nothing to do with this album.

Freedom Lyles also produces and he and Heather are interviewed at Beat Talk while Heather is also interviewed at ThaBiz.com.

My understanding is that Hunter had an earlier attempt at house music as a singer and this is her first rap release, but I'm running low on research time. I only checked out one track but it was as good as a lot of what I hear on the radio and I like her voice. Given the current marketing of women in hip hop, her past may well be an asset though it's the music that will make her something more than a novelty act. It's really tough for porn stars to make it anywhere else, so best of luck, Heather.

In related news, DJ Vlad is releasing a dvd that explores the themes of hip hop music, porn stars and crack heads called Hot In Here: Sex/Drugs/Hip-Hop. AllHipHop.com has more of the sordid details.