Food for Thought: "Stop Jockin' Lincoln"

Adisa Banjoko's Battle Tactics for Presidents' Day

Beginning with quotes from Abraham Lincoln himself, Adisa Banjoko points out that old Abe wasn't against slavery but felt that ending slavery was key to holding the Union together.

That's why Adisa says, "Stop Jockin' Lincoln."

LupE.N.D.: Lupe Fiasco Headed for Disaster?

I know I should go back and find a legitimate source of news for this item, since Angry Ape takes news but doesn't tell you where they got it and you know they weren't on the scene, nevertheless, since nobody really cares about such things, what about that Lupe Fiasco three disc retirement album?

Not only is it kind of sad when a young artist claims, while they're practicing an art form, that they are going to quit while they're still young but, anytime an artist goes past a single disc, it's typically a sign that something's wrong inside of them and they're in the process of making it worse.

SXSW: Matt Sonzala is Sick of Us "Lazy Ass Media" Folks

Matt Sonzala seems to be going through some post-SXSW angst partly in relationship to media coverage of the festival focused on celebrities:

"Every f*cking writer that hit me up about this sh*t had the same questions. They weren't asking things like "What's the deal with these Norwegian rappers you are bringing?" "Who's SouthBound and Ryno & Slim Gutta? Are they cool?" No they asked me how to get in touch with Ice Cube, Clipse and Bun B. They barely even gave a sh*t about Dizzee Rascal or Devin."

"Then I sit and read the blogs and the papers and the magazines and it's all about all the bands you would expect them to be about. It's sad, cuz when I was growing up we had about 1/10th of the magazines, 1/16th of the radio stations, no internet, no satellite radio, and I think back then more music got thru to the masses than is getting through today. You can challenge me on that if you want to, but I pay attention and all I am seeing is a bunch of copy cat lazy ass motherf*ckers all clamoring for the same thing..."

"That my friends, is my biggest beef. The lazy ass media."

Well, that should help improve future coverage!

On the one hand, I'm sympathetic.  On the other, the media's focus on the obvious isn't all that new and given the financial realities that now challenge professional media, it's only going to get worse.

And, given the fact that all the upstart bloggers who are making money have figured out that it's all about celebrity gossip, short bits about breaking news and audio/video drops, it's only going to get worse.

And, given the fact that you can't go to SXSW if you're not getting paid, unless you're paying out of pocket, the focus on things that get people paid, i.e. celebrities, will only get worse.

And, given the fact that the people Matt list don't seem to be reaching out to mid-level bloggers like myself, it's only going to get worse for them.

Honestly, anybody that thinks you can book celebrities and not-so-famous people at the same festival without the celebrities sucking all the air out of the room is setting themselves up for disappointment.  And I don't care how many bands you book, once the celebs start showing, it changes the game and SXSW has changed in that regard and Matt is part of that process.

The lesser known artists that build both online community and buzz are going to get the attention online and, to be honest, I don't see or hear anything from the artists or their people that Matt name checks in his post as deserving more attention.

He mentions Dizzee Rascal as someone that didn't get much coverage though, as you may recall, he got quite a bit when he first came through SXSW.

I've been following Dizzee Rascal, writing about him occasionally and almost always positively, posting his videos and so forth since he did his first show at SXSW, which I attended and wrote about, and I have to say that I never get any pr on him that hasn't been a generic outreach and I've seen less pr work for this visit than ever before.  The buzz has died for Dizzee, though I hope the Def Jux involvement helps, but without buzz you don't get coverage at SXSW.

I should note that being on Def Jux makes it even less likely that I'll get any kind of direct outreach regarding Dizzee.  I've given that label and that label's artists more attention than any other indie label since I started blogging over 5 years ago and they've never reached out directly though I do get on certain publicists' mailing lists.  But those lists are all managed by people to which Def Jux outsources their pr.

I should also note that as soon as news got out regarding the Dizzee Rascal/Bun B video for Where Da G's, lots of bloggers picked it up.

Hmmm, maybe dropping an embeddable video a bit earlier would have changed a few things for Dizzee's SXSW appearance?

Nobody can count on getting online attention just for putting in work, especially offline work.  You've got to put in the right work.  Today that means doing things like dropping cool videos and being in touch with folks.  But to expect bloggers to play Alan Lomax and search out folks they're not hearing about is wishful thinking.

I posted the K-Rino video Matt dropped at Houston So Real over at Hip Hop Logic and at VidRap but do you think anybody's going to even say anything if I didn't point that out?

Will they say anything now?

Will K-Rino's people start sending me pr material?

Will doing that help me fund a future visit to SXSW?

No, probably not, no, no.

But I'm glad I posted that video cause it's meaningful.

I'll be honest, I've had some limited contact with Matt from a distance and it's all been positive.

But I've posted links to his blog lots of times and do I get any mentions on his blog?  Do I get any email about what he's up to?  Does he send me any videos, even via a generic email list, of artists that he's repping?

No on all accounts.

Love is at least a two way street but I don't need love from artists and their people.

I need acknowledgement.  I need information.  I need videos.

Plus I need a reason to give a damn.

And just because you do something cool in public doesn't mean that folks are going to pick up on it or care.

I've experienced that plenty of times at ProHipHop when I've done something I consider special and had no one seem to even notice.  I even had a former writer scoff when I referred to "my work at ProHipHop" which includes things like exposing lies from people's heroes, sharing useful information for up and comers and making strong political statements that work against my bottom line.

So I have to accept that the things I do to make money, all involving celebrity coverage, have obscured the more meaningful things I do at ProHipHop.

I've also boosted countless blogs and blogger project for years.  But when I did an Ebay auction to try to make some much-needed cash off some hip hop domains did any of those people link to me even after I made a separate post asking for support?

No.  And after healing my wounds, I had to accept that my needs did not catch their attention in a meaningful manner.  I guess I should have reached out individually but I was as hurt and surprised by the lack of blogger support as Matt seems to be by his recent SXSW media experience.

So if you want to get that attention for yourself or others, pay attention to other people's needs, not your own, and reach out in a manner to which they're receptive.

And if you invite a celebrity to your party and everybody keeps paying more attention to them than to you and your buddies and that hurts your feelings, maybe you shouldn't invite the celebrity next time.

But we all know that next year will bring more celebrities to SXSW and less coverage of folks who don't have considerable buzz going in.

And anybody that doesn't see that coming is playing themselves, no matter how right on and heart felt their feelings about the situation might be.

Related ProHipHop Coverage:
What Should Future SXSW Bands Do to Maximize Impact?

Editorial: Justice Denied Due to Judges' Stock Ownership

Can I tell you that I'm really upset by the abusive actions of the California Supreme Court?

"For years, Braxton Berkley was exposed to chemicals while helping build top-secret military planes at Lockheed Martin's storied Skunk Works plant. He says those chemicals made him ill - but his case reached a dead end at the state's highest court."

"The California Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal not on legal merits, but because four of the seven justices cited a conflict of interest because they controlled stock in oil companies that provided some of the solvents at issue in the case."

""It's unfair and I am very disgusted with the courts," said Berkley, who worked at Lockheed during the height of the Cold War and is now a minister in Pacoima, Calif. He suffers from diabetes and arthritis that he says were caused by the chemicals. "A lot of my friends died because of the toxic chemicals we handled.""

These guys should not be allowed any investments at all and this is a very clear reason why.

Want To Get Famous? Mount a Guerrilla Attack on Gizmodo!

Now's your chance to get famous in the blogosphere and possibly beyond if you've been working on that one without success.

Whatever you think about Gizmodo's pranks at CES, there's a lot of attention right now on a crew who's only used to dealing with oddball programmers who got lucky, tech bloggers, bourgeois presenters and venture capitalists, know what I mean?

Somebody with a hard core approach and a keen eye for the legal details could now mount a nonviolent, legal, offline guerrilla attack on the Gizmodo crew and get a lot of attention and support.

They've removed any reason to be hands off so they're very vulnerable right now.

Just take some time to analyze the legal implications of whatever you do and take into account the possibility that Denton will sue if he's seriously embarrassed.

The people that support Gizmodo can't really say anything at that point without getting all mucked up in the details which they're currently able to skirt by laughing.

The people that are angry at Gizmodo will, at worst, shake their heads at your childish response but some of them will say, Gizmodo had it coming!

All who know will find it difficult not to write about you.

GET FAMOUS!  DISRUPT THE GIZMODO CREW!

This feels better.  Getting moralistic about pranks isn't my usual path, though I haven't fronted about any of my opinions, I'm just working through the implications at the moment.

But leveraging the positioning of other pranksters is something about which I know quite a bit.  And that too can be a community service if done correctly.

Related ProHipHop Coverage:
CES: Gizmodo Staffer Permanently Banned, More to Follow

Fantasy Land: Music Industry Crashes, Music Gets Better!

Seriously, I hate to be rude, but Slumping Record Sales Good for Real Hip Hop Artists?  That's crazy talk!

According to Charles Jones:
"This current recession in the hip hop economy will be a good thing if it runs off all the rappers and potential moguls who only got into the game for the money, hos and clothes. In fact, it seems like recently hip hop has retreated aesthetically and sentimentally back to the hood. Some of the biggest songs of the last half of 2007 like "Duffle Bag Boy" and "I'm So Hood" and even "Crank That" have been directly and definitively made for the hood."

"Artists are trying less to cross over into White America and more to gain their respect and notoriety from people who look like them. And that is a beautiful thing because hip hop first and foremost is a street culture and rap is street music. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new golden age one where the culture controls, exploits, and owns its image and therefore directly reaps the financial benefits."

This variation on the fantasy land argument that if there's no money to be made real artists will return to the forefront has little historical basis, at least, none of these people ever give historical examples and I don't know of any.

In this case, the idea that music for the hood will not be about stacking dollars when the basic idea is that the real hood is full of poor people who want to stack dollars is crazy talk that ignores the actual products coming out of the hood.

Didn't Mr. Jones pick up on the content of Duffle Bag Boy?  Sentimentality for the hood or for those big bags of money?

But even in situations where people aren't poor but don't emphasize money in their lives, you don't automatically get good art.  If you spend a lot of time in truly grassroots settings where people are making art for the love of it, you still get as much bad art as you do good, sometimes more.  I was in that space for many years.  I listened to a lot of stupid poems and lousy musicians in between the occasional worthy act and that was fine most of the time.

It wasn't about great art, it was about community.  And that made some not so great art quite meaningful but it didn't have anything to do with how much money other people were making through their art.  It had to do with our values and where we focused our energy.

We can't make change if we're disconnected from reality.  Come on, people!

A Note to Survivors of Abuse

While the Chris Stokes/B2K media circus plays out, you'll have to listen to a lot of nonsense from fools who think they know something about the subject or who just want to share their "common sense."  Some of them don't actually mean to be hurtful but I know that doesn't change the effects.

Stay strong and remember that a lot of folks really do care and are on your side.

- Clyde

Should Artists Focus on Making Art?

The swift chancellor report offers an interesting take on the widespread assumption that rappers can and maybe should be full-time businessmen as well as artists.

After invoking the relationship of Busta Rhymes and Chris Lighty:

Often times the spirit of entreneurship breeds self reliance which often mutates into arrogance. That arrogane often leads the artist to take on responbility they are simply not trained to handle...like booking, marketing, contracts, merchandising...

An artist who does all the aformentioned duties loves to fancy himself a renaissance man. I call him or her naive. Your primary job is to write rhyymes and songs. Inspire and be inspired. Be the icon. The candidate. Of course you must have a working knowledge and/or supervise the nuts and bolts but that is not what you are built for. No more than I am built to kick 36 bars to a crowd in Dusseldorf...

Play your position.
Let the plumber fix the pipes and let the exterminator kill the roaches.

And maybe we'd get better art if artists focused on making it!

Why Artists Need Technical Knowledge

That title should actually read:
Why Artists & Content Producers [& All Non-Technical Business People] Need As Much Technical Knowledge As They Can Stand to Develop [& More if Humanly Possible]

I just got out of a meeting in which an engineer made an exaggerated claim about a technical challenge in order to, as he later revealed, test the client's need for the feature.

In this case, the engineer's machinations were revealed by the engineer himself who seemed totally unaware of the implications of what he had just done.  That's not usually the case as most stories about deceptive maneuvers by technicians who have alternate agendas reveal.

For example, a friend of mine was the field producer at MTV a few years back for a very successful show that involved primary production at ever changing locations.  She would be on the headset asking for a particular shot, the cameraman would say it couldn't be done and then, since she had all those skills, she would explain to them how to do it as they went.

That kind of thing cut down on the unprofessional behavior she encountered regularly from male cameramen who made certain stupid assumptions about her abilities, not that they would ever openly cop to that kind of behavior.  And that was MTV.

Seriously, it's a buyer beware scene and absolutely any speck of knowledge you have will make it much less likely that you and your work will be undermined by people that are not really on your team.

ProHipHop's Official [Belated] Stance on T.I.'s Arrest

In the original version of Mixtapes Go Legit: DJ Drama - Gangsta Grillz: The Album I discussed ProHipHop's take on T.I.'s attempt to buy a bunch of guns and his possession of a bunch of marijuana.   But I realized I should pull that out into a separate post for the record regarding T.I. and the response to his activities.

On the T.I. tip, the official ProHipHop stance is that T.I. is a rich gun nut who digs ganj.   That's about it until I see some real evidence of real crimes being planned or carried out.

I had a close relative, now deceased, who I recently found out always carried a concealed weapon when he was out of the house and had at least four more guns concealed in his vehicle at all times.  He had a concealed carry permit but I don't know about those other guns.  Another close relative, who I don't believe knows the full story, said the man wasn't worried about anything, he just liked guns.

I'm not a huge fan of guns myself but I know a lot of people who, if they had T.I. money, would have a much more startling collection than T.I. was building.  For that matter, I knew teenagers in the 90s who were buying illegal automatic weaponry and hand grenades at gun shows, an outlet that has only been shut down in a serious way (supposedly) in recent years.

This is America.  We built a gun nut nation and hip hop helped.  Seriously, if you listen to a lot of music featuring guns and watch a lot of movies featuring guns, i.e., support gun-focused media with your money and/or attention, and then went and blogged about your disappointment at T.I., you need a very deep reality check.

He broke laws but he didn't do wrong as far as I can tell based on the culture in which I'm a 24/7/365 participant observer.

A Note to 50 Cent & All Hip Hop Homophobes

I can't speak my mind freely here, despite how it may appear, so I've responded to 50 Cent's new attack on Kanye West at Hip Hop Logic:
F*ck 50 Cent & All Homophobes in Hip Hop

I just want to make sure people know where I stand in case this goes where I think it's going.

Update:
Here's the diss as requested via Miss Info.

Media Pros: Paul Conley Says It's Time to Choose Sides

Paul Conley has an inspiring call to independence for B2B professionals called All You Need Is Love that is relevant to all media workers:

Close observers of B2B media have seen two very different visions emerge of what it means to be in this business. First, there are the new voices -- standalone journalists, bloggers and others who write because they feel passion for their subject.

Second, there are the new investors -- private equity firms and leveraged-buyout specialists who look at B2B media as a series of "properties" and "products" that need to cut costs, grow revenue and then be resold again and again.

In the middle are the professionals of B2B -- the editors, reporters, designers and other foot soldiers of our industry.

And to those people I say the following: It's time to choose sides.

ProHipHop to Sidestep Hip Hop Cultural Correctness

Though the temptation is mighty, ProHipHop is taking a public vow to avoid the following topics due to the risks involved with disrupting the forces of Hip Hop Cultural Correctness.

ProHipHop will not be discussing Lupe Fiasco's recent disrespecting of the elders because we are attempting to avoid involvement in religious disputes.

ProHipHop will not be discussing the excessive posting of RZA's videotaped discussion of The Heart Gently Weeps because we do not believe that RZA's depth can save a boring track.

Finally, ProHipHop will not be discussing KRS-One's recent attack on Kanye West and endorsement of 50 Cent cause that's just wack.

Thank you and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Upon further reflection:

Lupe better do something fast cause his brand is melting.

RZA is still the man.

KRS-One has been doing a great job of seizing the old school moment, raising his visibility and strengthening his brand.

Carry on.

Are Stats Killing Hip Hop?

On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to those who are feeling 9th Wonder's comments about fans being fascinated by stats and the effects of such fascination on the art of music.

On the other hand, who's to tell fans what to enjoy?  They're the fans so they should define their fandom as they will.

One has to wonder if 9th Wonder would be so concerned about stats if Little Brother had sold more records.  One also has to wonder how you would get guys to not ruin something with stats.  I mean, it's almost impossible to have a good discussion about sports without having to listen to this or that litany of numbers that are ultimately beside the point.

Given that hip hop is incredibly male dominated, it should be no surprise that a stats aspect would emerge that seems irrelevant to one's appreciation or not of a piece of music.

Doing Hip Hop Business in a Hostile Environment

Some of the best people I know are involved with hip hop business.

Now the good folks are going to have to bear the brunt of a moral panic that I did not believe was coming.  But somewhere between hip hop getting blamed for Imus and then for Michael Vick, I started to feel the avalanche of public opinion headed in our direction and I think that this game is going hardball.

It's one thing to bury the N-word in an old school media event and it's quite another for politicians to begin examining $3 billion in "New York State's investment and pension funds" devoted to the entertainment industry for signs of support of content deemed offensive.

Though Stanley Crouch gleefully describes this investigation as a "spear" that is "being prepared for the hip-hop dragon", the senators from New York are not specifying hip hop.  But the Grouch and I both recognize that hip hop will provide the rationale and the focus for much of what will come if Senators are targetting "material that is hostile to a given ethnic group and to women".

[Of course, I'll be able to leverage the situation by expanding the Harris Publications File and putting it in the right hands cause you know I'd snitch.]

Hip hop business people aren't the only ones who should be concerned, since the gaming industry will also fit the bill quite nicely but, in times of moral panic, people take action against things they don't understand and therefore misinterpret, like Swizz Beats' It's Me Snitches.

I think we're going to see a lot of "kill them all and let ___ sort them out" behavior in the days ahead.  Given that the Republican party is in disarray and the Democrats are always happy to follow a trend, politicians need a common foe to mobilize support and hip hop is all too easy right now.

If you're trying to stack dollars from hip hop related businesses, consider diversifying as rapidly as possible unless, of course, you've learned to monetize demonization in a hostile environment.

Update:
Here comes Rev. Al and the National Action Network with a new chapter of the organization in Chicago:
The first initiative of the Chicago chapter is slated as The NAN Decency Initiative national "Day of Outrage" against the continuous use in the music recording industry of the words "n*gga," "b*tch" and "ho."  Reverend Sharpton, who has persistently challenged the entertainment industry on denigrating lyrics, will lead a protest in 20 cities including Chicago on August 7th to call for the withdrawal of public investments from companies that won't clean up their act. In many states billions of dollars from state pension funds are invested in the entertainment industry. The overall goal is to establish a single standard that will be adopted by media and entertainment entities that will respect all people regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation.