ProHipHop: Hip Hop Marketing & Business News

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.

Editorial: Paul Birch of Revolver Records is Not Very Smart

According to Idolator, a board member of the IFPI is harassing Andrew Dubber for linking to a post on another blog criticizing the RIAA.

Dubber is the New Music Strategies blogger who recently offered a free white paper of interest to industry types not focused on keeping their heads up their, well, you get my drift.

If you think about it, Andrew Dubber's trying to help the music industry while Paul Birch of Revolver Records, the cretin in question, is just showing his ass.  Unfortunately for Paul, nobody wants to see that monstrosity, except for his RIAA buddies.

Birch provides Dubber with the link to the objectionable post on another blog he doesn't like (The Download Squad, an AOL property with big mean lawyers, no doubt) and then writes: "Above is the link, I am not sure how I navigated to it from your blog."

Well, duh, let me see how this InterTubes thingie works and I'll get back to you Mr. Birch. 

By the way, Birch is "anxious that Individual managers within our trade association...not to be publicly hounded."

Given that he attempts to threaten Andrew Dubber's career, the career of a man who seems much more helpful to both musicians and the industry than Paul Birch could ever be, I'm quite happy to note the following coverage of this stupid man's stupid moves:
Head of Revolver Records shoots self in foot while making threats
Record exec to academic: stop criticizing us or I'll tell your university
Record Exec: Experts Cannot Criticize Our Strategies

The Download Squad responds to this weak tactic with a well-reasoned post that makes it clear that Birch is a bully without traction who just got knocked on his ass.

Ow, hope that hurts!

Imus is Out & Many Turn To Question Hip Hop

As Imus becomes a bitter memory, at least, until he signs a big deal with Mark Cuban or another of his apologists out to bank on intolerance, the issue of appropriate language in referring to other humans, especially black women, turns to hip hop.

Hip-Hop On The Defensive After Imus Incident; Sharpton Calls For 'Dialogue' With MCs
Obama Compares Rappers to Imus
Blacks say Imus used slurs like hip-hop's

Al and Jesse are one thing but Obama has folk's ears without the appearance of a shady past [I consider Jesse shady, but I haven't looked that closely at Al].  While his criticisms will certainly be described by some rappers as selling out to get the white man's vote, that kind of weak defense seems unlikely to last much longer.

The debate over what is appropriate in hip hop is getting closer to the day when African-American criticisms from outside the African-American dominated sectors of the hip hop subculture can no longer be ignored as they join the voices from within.  In particular, the voices of Black women in America have been slowly rising as more women who have hesitated to speak out about a musical genre that both attracts and repels them under the pressure of not turning on Black men in America are starting to realize that they've lost out in that unwritten agreement.

My general rule of thumb in trying to understand a social issue is to turn for insight and leadership to those who are getting the worst deal.  In hip hop, that would be black women.

For issues related to portrayals of women in hip hop to be resolved in any kind of positive manner, Black women in America will have to gather their forces and lead the way.  In doing so, they will have to find ways to work across the many divisions that fracture the black community, most especially the divison of class.

I'm not attempting to predict what will happen but, unless we have strong leadership from black women on this, I don't think these issues can ever be fully resolved.  Unfortunately, even if that leadership emerges, the resistance to change from within hip hop is massive and the pleasures of not changing are quite seductive.

Update:
With a number of hip hop artists already rejecting the possibility that rap has anything to answer for, not surprisingly, Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis have their backs:
Ones intention, when using the power of language, should be made clear. Comparing Don Imus’ language with hip-hop artists’ poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship.

Let me make it clear that ProHipHop does not support censorship but does support community action against anyone, whether or not claiming "poetic expression" as a shield, who seeks to benefit from the exploitation and oppression of other humans by adding insult to injury.

ProHipHop On Michael "Kramer" Williams & "The N-Word"

I wasn't going to write about Michael "Kramer" Williams and the debate over the use of the term "n*gger" and the closely related variant "n*gga" as well as the term that's ok for us white people, "the n-word".

I wasn't going to write about this topic because I don't feel free to speak honestly about it.

But check Dick Gregory and Adisa Banjoko for some useful thinking on the topic.  They're the closest thing I can find to where I'm at.

Editorial: Considering The Effects Of Latino Immigration On Hip Hop Business & Marketing

I've always been interested in the impact of Latinos on hip hop, from Puerto Rican bboys to Cypress Hill to reggaeton.  I've never claimed to be the most knowledgable about these topics but, then again, I've noticed that so many hip hop bloggers who claim expertise don't seem to have much to say either.  Which should tell you something about their "expertise".

Unfortunately, my involvement in the exposure of Aztek Escobar as a fake was misinterpreted by a handful of Latino hip hop fans as an attack on Latinos.

As you'll notice in some of the comments, this short sightedness deeply offended me, yet the comments also reveal aspects of the tensions in hip hop between Latinos and African-Americans.

I'm bringing this topic up now partly because of being tipped to the research of Paula D. McClain et al regarding Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Latino Immigrants’ Views of Black Americans, that is currently available as a free, full text PDF download from The Journal of Politics.

I'm not sure when I'll get to take a closer look at this study but I do want to use the discovery to introduce the topic in a more serious manner to my ProHipHop readers.  For so many reasons, I expect tensions to continue to rise between African-Americans and the Latino community as both Latino immigrants and long-term Latino residents flex their growing power, and I believe such developments will have a profound impact on the conduct of hip hop business in the United States.

In hip hop, this tension will only grow, especially as the more ludicrous agendas come to the forefront, such as XXL's quite visible support of widely noted anti-Latino hate blogger Byron Crawford who outsources his more controversial statements to ByronCrawford.com.

If you examine XXL's site even fairly superficially, it becomes obvious that XXL and Harris Publications are quite happy to use the classic "wink and a nudge" technique in order to feed off such hate while periodically dropping Latino rappers like Pitbull a bone.

Though such antics are treated with widespread approval in the online hip hop world of hate, it's obvious that the days are numbered for this radically disingenous approach.

I wish to be quite clear that, though many people in hip hop seem to find all this quite funny, I believe that it will come back to haunt hip hop businesses who are incapable of recognizing that whether or not they serve the Latino community directly, we are all going to have to adjust to fresh shifts in the population that will affect the nation's culture in a deep and profound manner.

I look forward to looking more closely at this topic in direct relationship to hip hop marketing.  If you're interested, please drop me links, email, etc.  I'll appreciate your insights whether you agree with me or not.

On that note, I do typically remove racist comments and any related stupidity in order not to provide a platform for hate speech.  No, that's not censorship, that's called, "take your bullsh*t and get the f*ck out of my house."

Clear enough?

I was alerted to the research report in a post at The Rap Up.

Note:
I will soon be moving certain specific posts to the new Latinos category but you'll find related coverage throughout ProHipHop.

Related:
Brand Destruction Research Opens Harris Publications File

In Closing: Why Meetings Are Not For Me

See you Sunday!

Current MySpace Concerns Are An Educational Opportunity

I think a lot about MySpace and track all the news I see but most of my thoughts aren't about marketing so I haven't been writing much about the company.  For what it's worth, I want to make a quick point about the lawsuit against the company by a 14 year old and her mom.

Here's the short version:
A 14-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by another user of MySpace.com sued the social networking Web site Monday, claiming it does not take sufficient steps to protect underage members.  The girl says a 19-year-old man lied in his profile about being a senior on a football team to gain her trust and phone number.

Assuming she was assaulted, how was MySpace supposed to protect her?  What if he had been a senior on a football team?  Would that have protected her?

To be honest, I don't think MySpace is handling these concerns very well and they're setting themselves up for a lot more problems in the days ahead.  These kinds of concerns have been raised repeatedly in relationship to online meeting spaces such as AOL's chat rooms and Yahoo groups.  MySpace does need to put additional controls in place but they also need to educate their users about safe use of such services and reframe current concerns in relationship to past examples.  These issues are not new by any means.

We should also consider the fact that our society oscillates wildly between overprotecting teens from the world and overexposing them to the world.  Parents and educators have to take some of the responsibility if they are not educating young people about how to conduct themselves in a safe manner with both old and new contacts.

The last time I checked, young people were most likely to be abused by people they already knew, often by trusted members of the family or related institutions.  Telling kids to behave, monitoring their media consumption and emphasizing abstinence without educating young people to take care of themselves when they have the opportunity to choose for themselves is a fool's game.  Its hurting young people much more than its hurting those who refuse to educate them, whether that refusal comes from parents, school boards or MySpace.

Update: I just registered at MySpace as a 15 year old and see that they do post safety guidelines and require you to check a little box saying you've read them, sounds like a lawyer approved method that will not reach young people.  I've heard that they're also doing PSAs but havent seen them.  MySpace may need to be targeting parents and educators and offering educational materials as well, perhaps in a public/private partnership.

Let me say that I recognize that I don't have an easy solution and this is not a simple problem.  But, so far, I feel that MySpace is trying to look good without truly addressing the issue.  That will help them in court but it does not address the real problems at hand.

More News: MySpace Restricting Adults' Access To Teen Users

Chris Lighty and Rap's PR Problem

Rap has a PR problem that's often ignored by those causing it due to the profitability of exploitative sex and meaningless macho violence.  Like crack rock, abusive nonsense can be a quick road to profitability, but try building a meaningful career off that and then get back to me when you hit 30, if you make it that far.

For hip hop business folks trying to go beyond moving units like they were vials of crack, it becomes obvious that there is really big (i.e. corporate) money that they cannot access easily because of rap's PR problem, a problem that goes beyond bad art to include random shootings and the inability to conduct oneself properly in airports.

I've been thinking about this topic for awhile but I'm getting into it now due to a new blog post by Chris Lighty entitled People are still taking rap for a joke.  Though I recently critiqued an earlier blog post of Lighty's regarding violence in hip hop, I think he's made some important points in his blog overall and, if you're interested in the industry, you should check it out.

For my readers not familiar with Chris Lighty, check this Sony bio that discusses his success in artist management but, more importantly for this blog, his success in connecting hip hop artists and mainstream products.

In his most recent post, Lighty reflects on a business trip, and is reminded that:
as big as our music is and as influential as our culture is on the world I always look around the room and see few power brokers of color. The presidents of record companies are primarily white and are trying to figure out how to decipher the code. We are pigeon-holed by the power structure that tries to act like they have any clue what is going on in our neighborhoods. . .

I cannot stress how hard it is to crack the corporate steel curtain to either move up in rank with power or have an artist that speaks directly to the consumer just get green light for the deal but because he or she raps its always we need to clear this with the board. . .

The brands on both sides of the fence need to wake up so we can speak a common language and try to do the best job speaking to our community and not down to it.

While I think it's true that more "power brokers of color" would affect the situation, I also think that the topic of why rap is a joke to so many people is well worth considering for a variety of other reasons.  I left some comments on that topic at Lighty's blog that I'm including most of below since they haven't been added yet and because they represent some ideas that are just beginning to crystalize for me.

One angle I'm working is that up and coming business people in rap need support to professionalize their operations:
Rap is taken for a joke by a lot of white people and, though I believe that will partly be remedied by black owned labels, there are actually quite a few black people that take rap for a joke. . .

One thing I've been thinking a lot about is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for folks to become more professional in their endeavors in hip hop.  Adisa Banjoko wrote about this recently inspired, sadly, by businesses asking for his help and then trying not to pay him.

It's sad but business standards in hip hop are really not what they should be. . . For example, the number of press releases I see every week that have numerous mispellings and bad grammar say a lot about what the small fry in hip hop think is competent pr.

So there needs to be a support structure to help up and comers professionalize.

I've also been thinking a lot about what it will take to move rap out of its currently violent state (beyond ending poverty which would help quite a bit but doesn't seem to be high on most people's agendas):
I think there also needs to be a related support structure for artists as they leave the limits of the hood behind and see new vistas before them.  One problem is that, if you come from violent poverty, your vision of what's possible is always constrained.  Once you leave the poverty behind, if all you can see is what you can buy, you haven't gone very far.

Reading Lighty's comments also led me to something that's been gradually becoming clearer to me:
On a related note, all these shootings make hip hop look like a criminal enterprise.  No wonder white people want to profit off that while keeping those involved at arms length.

The reality is, if you're viewed as a representative of volatile, dangerous, criminally minded musical acts, no one wants you on their team because you're their buffer zone.  They need you outside of their enterprise so that they can keep the people you represent at a distance.  If they can do business with you and everyone profits without causing PR difficulties, it's all good.  But based on the kinds of things that many rappers do on a regular basis, it would not surprise me if companies could do well in such partnerships and then turn around and not want to do any more, i.e. get out while the getting's good.

Whatever your criticisms of their music, there's a good reason that the Black Eyed Peas are in constant demand for endorsements and related deals with an even rosier future in store.  They aren't viewed as potentially dangerous thugs who may act nice for the moment but make bank on the fact that they keep it real by claiming that they're ready to kill.

A Shoe Controversy & the Abandonment of Africa

Oliver Wang shares his take on a limited edition shoe controversy that involves an Adidas Y1 HUF designed by a "half-Chinese" (and half what?) artist who often addresses racial stereotypes in his art.  The image has inspired protest against the use of what appears to be a racist image of an Asian figure on the tongue of the shoe.

I'm both sympathetic to Oliver's well reasoned and thoughtful discussion and, yet, have real problems with many of Oliver's statements.  But you can judge for yourself.  I stopped digging into that kind of thing once I realized that very little of what I used to put forth at Hip Hop Logic had any kind of impact and that I felt increasingly disenfranchised when discussing issues of hate speech and imagery with left/lib hip hop bloggers.

But I do want to point to the problematic issue of hip hop bloggers ranking which struggles are the most appropriate ones on which to spend our time.  Of course, such issues aren't limited to hip hop bloggers, but it seems to be the theme with which many hip hop bloggers dismiss issues of language and imagery, which seems really bizarre since they critique such things on a regular basis.

Much more important than my concern with hip hop bloggers who are still a minor force in the media universe (for the most part), it triggers my dismay with the fact that hip hop in general seems to have forsaken Africa, even when they're wearing those groovy clothes, unless they're getting paid to perform in South Africa.

If you're going to start ranking issues of concern and you're involved with hip hop, why aren't you discussing Africa?

What about Darfur in Sudan?
Militias called janjaweed, recruited from Arab tribes in Darfur and Chad and supported by the Sudanese government, continue to attack, rape and kill villagers from African tribes — more than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and two million have fled their homes.

Left/lib leaders abandoned the enslaved children of Sudan long ago:
When the Reverend Jackson—the president's ambassador of democracy to Africa—accompanied Clinton to that continent, he witnessed Clinton's apology to the people of Rwanda for failing to have done anything to stop the genocide there. But Sudan was not included on the trip, as both Clinton and Jackson turned their faces away from the slavery and killings in that nation.

In a BBC report from 2000, it's stated that, at that time, 6,000 Africans were dying each day from AIDS:
more than wars, famines and floods. Millions of children are orphans, many more live with HIV or Aids.

Africans are enslaving each other.

When the West tries to "help", it's a sharply two edged sword:
2/10/05: U.N. Sex Crimes in Congo

I could go on but you get my point.  Many parts of Africa have been a disaster for a long time.  How much of that is due to European colonization and how much is due to the fact that humans generally don't seem to like each other is not my call to make.

I just believe if you're going to object to the things that do get concerned people into action by ranking issues, then you better take it deep.

Update: I got a bit dispersed on this one but Oliver responded in the comments and I think I got clearer in my response, though I ultimately refuse the necessity of having a central point!

More from: CSR Asia and Oliver Wang

Odd Development: The second post by Oliver Wang linked to in the next line above has been removed and he's updated his earlier post.  That's really odd because the follow up post that he's removed was more more convincing than the first and included actual blogger field work.

In his updated post he reveals that he has since discovered via one of the initiators of the campaign that there was good reason to get upset when white shoe industry folks couldn't understand why anyone would find the image offensive.

Now here's why I wish I'd saved the Africa discussion for a separate post, since it connected way too much, too quickly for most readers.  Oliver makes the following argument that is precisely what I've raised around hip hop bloggers who present racist, sexist and homophobic material as humor (and get love from OW for doing it):
My original post above was really about two different issues. One was to ask, "what's the big deal?" and I now understand better why this shoe would rankle so many people - it's bringing out all this latent racism by dumb asses who think it's "cool/cute" to rock a buck-toothed Chinaman on their shoe as well as shoe execs who can't understand why Asian Americans might be upset. Just to make things worse, the people who are paid to know better, i.e. staff at Nike/Adidsas, might be able to defend the shoe on the merits of artistic freedom but instead, their main response has been, "man, these Orientals sure are sensitive." If that's not enough to make you want to lace up some steel-toes and go ass whooping around Portland and Beaverton, I don't know what is.

When hip hop bloggers make "humorous" f*cked up comments, the "sophisticated" readers may get the supposed joke, but when you read the comments section, any intelligent reader should recognize that such blogging is "bringing out all this latent racism by dumb asses who think it's "cool/cute"" to pretend to be racists (and homophobes and sexists).

But, whatever.  It was my mistake for wasting valuable ProHipHop time on this topic in this way.  I can only offer my apologies for also wasting my readers' time.

Does 50 Cent Sound Like a White Racist?

I want to expand on a couple of ideas that are coming up in the comments for 50 Cent Says the South is Hurting Hip Hop.  They're worth checking out and there will be more, I'm sure.  But I know some people don't read comments and I also want to dig into issues of Northern prejudice against Southerners that apparently also exists in the music industry.

In his negative statements about Southern rap, 50 Cent said:
A lot of the music that comes out of the South is kind of simplified and I think it's kinda 'cause they just wanna have a good time . . . They don't wanna think about what [they] just said.

Once you get beyond the obviously bizarre notion of critiquing dance music for being dance music, which is essentially what he's done, there are numerous other issues to consider.  But I want to move the discussion away from 50's issues with anyone that charts with a different style of music with which he can't compete (Kanye, snap music, hyphy's next if it breaks) and his "clear the strip" mentality, because there's the larger issue of Northern (especially New York) prejudice against outsiders (especially Southerners and country people).

A friend of mine related that back when NWA broke, many New Yorkers had a difficult time relating, saying that rappers like Eazy-E sounded "country" because they had kind of a drawl or something.  I also recall a hip hop blogger from New York communicating more than once that he was baffled by the current popularity of Southern artists.  Of course, the New York market is essential to world media domination, so such parochialism has to be overcome and eventually is, whether early critics can understand or not.

But part of this discussion maps on to urban disdain for country people and New York disdain for Southerners.  I believe that if snap music wasn't reasonably fast, 50 would also have slipped something in about how slow Southerners are.

I'm disturbed about the similarity of 50 Cent's comments to those that white racists make about black people.  And, for those who are new to this blog, let me make it clear that I am white and could not pass for black under any circumstances other than writing a hip hop blog.

If you look back at Southern white people's depictions of slaves when they were "off the clock" so to speak, it was often of grinning, happy people, dancing together and just having a good time.  In fact, some believed that blacks were incapable of higher forms of thought.  The perception of shiftlessness  and lazyness was also a major image.

Of course, hardcore racists still say all these things, which is why I have and will continue to participate in anti-Klan and anti-Nazi demonstrations that attempt to shut them down and beat them down if possible rather than standing around being silent or heading to another location (but that's another topic).

If we look at 50 Cent's statements they emphasize simplemindedness, a lack of interest in complex thought and an inability to achieve at a high level.  Damn, he sounds like a white racist to me.  Hey, that also sounds like what Northerners tend to say about Southerners (I know I'm using some broad strokes here but every Southerner who's dealt with very many Northerners knows what I'm saying, whether black or white).

Here's some stuff from Tamara Palmer's discussion with Luther Campbell in Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop.

Tamara says (p. 18):
Hard to imagine now that OutKast have been anything but loved by everyone.  The jeers at The Source Awards in 1995 weren't directed entirely towards the group.  It was also symbolic of how a vocal part of the music industry in New York, the city that claims to be Ground Zero for hip-hop, felt about what they saw as the South's attempts to steal the spotlight.

Luke has numerous tales to tell about touring with Northern artists (p. 18 and 19):
I remember one time we was in St. Louis on a big New York tour, because we were probably one of the first ones to go on tour with New York artists . . . They'd make us go on last, even though we wasn't the headliners.  We'd go on last and all the New York artists would leave. . . . All of 'em: Fat Boys, Salt 'N Pepa, Kid 'N Play.  They'd get in their cars and leave.  Go to the next city, without even looking at us. . .

There was a time in Mississippi where they said, 'You all only got three minutes on stage.' . . All New York groups, Eric B and Rakim, Run-DMC . . . We were like, three minutes on stage? Okay, this is what we're gonna do.  We'll cut a Jam Master Jay record for three minutes.  f*ck y'all.  So we did stuff like that and then had to fight, literally had to fight. I remember beating up Public Enemy's road manager, beating the sh*t out of him in Savannah, Georgia, because of the same sh*t. . .

Going to the New Music Seminar [in New York] and they're, 'Oh that South music, it's just regional.  They only sell in Miami.' . . I'm talking about executives in the room. . . The situation is really deep.  It's like we came through slavery days all over again. . . I still feel a little angry about the industry because the industry hasn't really accepted it.

Now, there are a lot of New York artists I really dig and no one can take away from what New Yorkers have accomplished.  But why is it that 50 Cent and many Northerners sound like white racists?

And where's Stat Quo?

Communication Successes & Tech Failures at MySpace, Meeting Customers' Needs & Wants in a Complex Environment

I've posted quite a bit about Myspace or MySpace or Myspace.com or whatever it's actually called so I thought I'd give a little update on my recent observations, since it is one of the more interesting developments in social networking and music marketing in the last couple of years.

I set up an account recently and decided to be honest about who I was without directly identifying myself, i.e. age, interests and background, which probably makes me kind of an oddball in the Myspace social milieu. But that's good cause it gives me a little distance and keeps me from turning it into a fantasy playland which I think it probably is for some folks.

I was initially impressed by Myspace because the individual home pages had multiple options for customization and various features like blogs and so forth. What I understand better now is that they offer multiple modes of communication that people mix and match. Some people communicate mostly through friends comments or picture comments or blog comments or email or their blogs or their bulletin space or instant messaging (I think that covers it) but everyone seems to use a different combination. Each form has a different level of interactivity, some are more about publishing or broadcasting and others are more about conversation.

Yet each is a specific platform for communication that has discrete technical requirements and that's where the problems arise. In fact, though I should be posting other things here right now, I was just trying to respond to someone's bulletin post and got an error message. It was a new error message which I won't describe but it reminds me that I've seen a wider variety of error messages on Myspace than on any other website or when working with any piece of software. It's amazing how many things can and do go wrong at Myspace. Yet they keep growing!

I often log in very late at night because I'm a night owl. Unfortunately, U.S. based techies tend to be working then and over the last couple of weeks the site has been down for repair at least 7 or 8 different evenings, in some cases for quite awhile. What that usually means is that you can view the site but you can't log in and that's a real pain because it removes most of the functionality.

What's most interesting to me about this situation is that you very rarely encounter serious examination of such problems in the mainstream tech or business media, though if Yahoo was encountering similar problems it would be discussed on blogs and at tech sites and at financial sites and the stock might even take a hit. I'm not sure why a lucrative component (Myspace) of a public company (Intermix) that gets a lot of news for its success is not being scrutinized in terms of its performance. Maybe it's because the people that write about it don't use it and the people that use it don't write about it?

But it's also an interesting example of the fact that there are simultaneous conflicting discourses in business regarding how good your service needs to be, both the services and customer/technical support, and what people really require in order to use a service. Some people claim that only the highest quality service/product will win and if you roll out something not as good as what's available no one will use it. But I was recently checking out iMacs and iBooks for a cheap upgrade and those low-end LCD screens are far inferior to the old iMac's cathode-ray tube monitor, especially when reading text online, yet I've never heard user complaints on the topic and folks seem to love the LCD screens.

What I'm trying to get at is that people will accept dysfunctional technology and spend lots of money on it if the functions that are provided fulfill needs and wants that aren't otherwise filled. People flock to mobile phones yet the actual voice quality and security is far inferior to landlines because they need/want that mobility. People love the LCD screens because they can get larger screens cheaper and they allow cooler design (and probably other reasons that I haven't checked out). People love Myspace because it's a premier hookup spot and it offers lots of features that allow for personalization of both the look and the modes of communication.

This line of thought raises a lot of interesting questions in a business sense and undermines the tendency to assume that a better product will always win (remember Beta format video? - probably not). The question for Myspace becomes whether or not they can get their tech together before their crazy popularity gets undermined by services provided by a company like Yahoo, which can handle the technology and can advertise across its own large network but isn't quite as cool. It's also a reminder that business isn't just complicated, it's complex.

Between services and solutions and branding and lock-in and all the various things that play into business success, one can't simply focus on one factor or even just add the factors together. They interact in unpredictable ways and require attention to both the parts and the whole with an ability to function with both tactical flexibility and strategic vision. That means there are both many ways to win and many ways to lose and no real room for resting on one's laurels, yet it also means that one can succeed without being perfect, since no business can reach perfection in such an environment, and that there's always room for new players if they're willing to adapt to reality.

By the way, this post was also partly inspired by attempting to post comments at BusinessWeek's Blogspotting blog where a writer was discussing being "perpetually in beta", a great concept that's working well for many businesses, and someone commented that customers wouldn't accept tech that didn't work. I'd link to the post but they didn't have much more to say than that and I'm annoyed that their comments wouldn't work and that their trackback system also hasn't been working properly. So I've stopped linking to Brand New Day posts as well because they get the link but I don't get the trackback without writing them and asking them to update it. I know I'm being petty but there's so much good stuff online to share that no one is a must link.

I know this was a rather long rambling post but for folks who think I occasionally have something worthwhile to say in terms of the business of digital media, this hits a lot of what I've been thinking about of late. I'll be back with more hip hop business news quite soon, I promise!

Beanie, Banks, Buck, Foxy and Suge's Legal Problems and a Question About Prison Reform

Consider the following:

After ten months in prison, Beanie Sigel is out and Damon Dash had a marketing moment.

Lloyd Banks and Young Buck were arrested on felony gun charges.

Continuing to drive without a license, DMX may go to jail.

Wanting a better deal, Foxy Brown refused a plea deal in relationship to an alleged assault on salon workers.

Suge Knight got off with just a fine for some driving infractions.

If we step back for a moment from the personal issues involved in such drama and consider the amount of influence the above folks and their friends have on American culture, why aren't any of them actively involved with prison reform, especially since many of them are likely to do time in the future?

Groups like the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and the National Hip-Hop Political Convention have been attempting to reform New York's Rockefeller drug laws and rappers make plenty of noise when they feel they are unfairly targeted by the police. But why don't the big stars get their star power behind serious prison reform?

I was talking to Adisa Banjoko about this issue yesterday inspired by his visit with kids incarcerated in a Bay Area juvenile facility. He doesn't broadcast the fact that he does such things and he shared with me how disturbed he was by some young men's assertion that they weren't afraid to "walk the line" at San Quention, a prospect that seemed inevitable and for which they seemed totally unprepared.

We shared our concern that, once in, kids are conditioned to remain in the system and that prisons in general are horrendous places that are simply producing harder criminals and deepening the social divide. I think it's an issue we'll both get more actively involved with in the future, though we're also both limited for the moment by our attempts to establish ourselves in the world.

So I sympathize with busy people who want to pursue their careers, particularly when they've just gotten out of jail, but I find it strange that folks with so much cultural equity and such a deep understanding of the nightmare of our prison system don't get involved with changing it.

Violence is as American as Making Money

As The Massacre climbs the charts mixing money and violence in a revenge cocktail to fill 50 Cent's Piggy Bank;

As The Source crawls into bed with Al Sharpton to attack anti-Benzino artists who don't advertise with them and Hot 97 joins the menage to cover their history of f*ckups and illegal acts;

As the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network reminds us that they still exist by saluting The Game and 50 Cent for choosing money over violence, I mean, "speak[ing] truth to power" and aging cranks attempt to appear insightful while meeting their publishers' deadlines;

ProHipHop wants to know, where's our piece of the action?

Bankruptcy Bill Bad for Business

Though I typically won't post partisan messages, I believe that declaring current attempts to eliminate many bankruptcy protections a bankruptcy slavery bill is quite apt. I also feel that attempts to squeeze the populace are always ultimately bad for business. The bottom line, as a recent Harvard study revealed, is that approximately 50 per cent of bankruptcies declared in 2001 were the result of major medical problems and three fourths of those folks had insurance. This maneuver is a deadly endgame intended to benefit credit card companies at the expense of both the citizenry and other businesses.

On Benefiting From the Deaths of Rappers, Part 2

I thought I'd follow up on my last post with a clarification, since my humor is often misread.  I hope it is clear that I don't think it's so easy for media people to point the finger elsewhere without implicating themselves.  However, I do think there is a difference between media that profits by glorifying bad things and media that reports the bad things that are necessary to report.

The problem is that hip hop, especially in the form of rap music and musicians, often comes in packages in which the good and bad are all mixed together.  And, like most things in life, it's difficult to separate what's a positive and what's a negative.  You get a job you hate because it pays the bills.  You fall in love with another human and all their faults.

Even more confusing is that genius often comes in rough packages saying things that are difficult to hear.  It's a strange form of entertainment in which realness is prized and the best flow might contain the most toxic content.  Art created in harsh conditions will tend to contain harsh elements.

It's too easy to say that certain work should be censored or that once someone has money they should adopt more "appropriate" forms of behavior.  Especially since history shows us that the shiny, happy elite maintains their power, in part, through a system in which suffering is displaced, often to those poor neighborhoods from which certain rappers have emerged to take their place in fancier digs.

I could go on but if I'm not clear now it ain't gonna happen.  We're at a unique time for hip hop.  We have more social and cultural capital than one could ever have imagined when this stuff started.  There is also a growing concern among those within hip hop culture that things need to change.  And change has to come from inside the ranks.

I'll continue to make strong, biting statements as needed.  But, believe me, my hands aren't clean and I'm not outside looking in.  The outsiders mostly don't understand what they're looking at and part of the ProHipHop mission is to help build bridges across that difference.  But I'm not going to do it by glossing over the problems, pointing outside of hip hop to the "real enemy" in another camp or pretending that I'm not implicated in our current situation.

I'm not saying that hip hop is the source of all of hip hop's problems, but we really do have to start at home while also addressing issues from outside.  Besides, what's part or not part of hip hop is unclear, given that hip hop is now considered by many to be the mainstream and that we sample so much from other genres.  My commitment is to living with the contradictions, rather than smoothing them over.  And if that's not clear, we can always talk about it:
prohiphop(at)netweed(dot)com

On Benefiting From the Deaths of Rappers

With some sort of investigation underway and police searching for The Game and crew while he spills his guts onstage and cops pose with 50 Cent, Adisa Banjoko attacks profiteers who stand to benefit from the possible deaths of The Game and 50 Cent.  On a page full of advertising at AllHipHop.com, Banjoko's editorial decries the fact that "Black America buys its own death right back in any form it can - accept [sic] books."

Find out more about Adisa Banjoko's book Lyrical Swords: Hip Hop and Politics in the Mix or go ahead and buy it at Amazon.

[Disclaimer:  Like most hip hop writers, publishers and related media folks, ProHipHop stands to benefit from the activities of hip hop artists dead or alive, whether taking a positive, negative or highly nuanced stance.  For all of us, it's a win-win situation.]

Editorial Moment: Career Development Behind Bars

With a variety of people upset over C-Murder's creative activities while incarcerated, I'm reminded of the obvious fact that our approach to incarceration is designed for punishment rather than rehabilitation, thus ensuring future increases in crime. While I understand why the families of victims don't want criminals making money from crime while incarcerated, I am also disturbed by the fact that the president of Victims and Citizens Against Crime does not believe that a suspect who is ostensibly innocent until proven guilty should be able to take on productive activity beh