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How to Hustle and Win: A Survival Guide for the Ghetto, Part One
How to Hustle and Win: A Survival Guide for the Ghetto, Part One by Supreme Understanding is due June 19th from Supreme Design, LLC.
Official Sites:
How to Hustle and Win
Myspace: How to Hustle and Win
Check out this fun trailer for the documentary, Lo Lifes: The Story of An American Dream, that doesn't seem to have a release date but was dropped on YouTube 9 months ago.
The Lo-Life story provides some background on the originators of the Million Man Rush while a follow-up interview with Thirstin Howl II talking about a movie coming in 2005 makes me think it's all in limbo.
In any case, the Lo Lifes are an important part of the history of hip hop fashion and street culture and worth checking out.
David W. Dunlap states in his NY Times blog that he was assaulted by a member of a street team that was putting up Rocko posters and objected to him photographing the illegal scene.
Via FishbowlNY.
Trailer for Mr. Untouchable
I don't want to get into glamorizing Nicky Barnes but he does occupy a unique place in business history and there's some biz talk in this trailer and all sorts of rappers worship him so here we go.
Plus Damon Dash is one of the producers and Hi-Tek is providing the music. Mr. Untouchable is due October 26th.
Official Sites:
Mr. Untouchable
Mr. Untouchable @ MySpace
unkut.com on the true elements of hip hop:
You wanna know what the essence of hip-hop is? Racking. Call it stealing, shoplifting or even the Five Finger Discount – that’s the real heart of this here game..
My point is that boosting sh*t is more hip-hop than print hoodies, white sunglasses and tight salmon polo shirts will ever be...
Rolling dudes for their sh*t also remains a staple of hip-hop. From the days of sheepskins, Pumas and gold ropes to the diamond-encrusted watch and platinum fronts era, the opportunity to gank someone’s sh*t off them by fair means or foul at a rap show remains the great leveler.
Well, there you have it. Check the post for a bit more context on the above statements.
Update:
Gotta love stealing till it happens to you.
I was very disappointed to find that "Being Green and Being Profitable: An Evening with Method" was not an announcement of Method Man's new company specializing in environmentally appropriate approaches to growing marijuana.
"The Whistle's Go Woooooo!"
Although the above news segment is apparently a few years old, it's an entertaining look at a street trend and how it can grow quite rapidly with the help of willing small businesses. Oakland area car shop workers talk about whistle tips, metal pieces welded into exhaust pipes that make a whistling sound supposedly audible up to a mile away, and the fact that they'll keep making them as long as they're legal.
It's an incredibly annoying concept but there's some really funny stuff in this video. Via Melatone Music.
Trunk Boiz - Scraper Bike [Final Version]
I posted an earlier version of Scraper Bike by the Trunk Boiz but the topic of Oakland gives me an excuse to post the final version, especially since I really like the song as well as the video by Spencer Fortin and Robb Silverstein.
we always cumming out wit sumthin new n the O,
contagious trends and ideas dat go.
I'm not surprised but sorry to find that there have been numerous racist attacks on the video. That's especially sad in response to an act that geniunely seems to be focused on having fun, something that kids seemed to have room to do more of back in the day.
Trunk Boiz - Scraper Bike
I'm in a weird mood so I'm just rolling with that. Check back later for real hip hop business news. There's plenty of it!
I waited a couple of days before mentioning the Trunk Boiz' Scraper Bike, a video I discovered via 1xtralarge. I intend to follow up in a professional manner and get some official sounding information and come up with something to say that reminds everyone of how deep I can get.
Till then, check out my daring textual experiment at Ski Mask Way:
Yeah, I'd Snitch!
The news that Suge Knight called Snoop a rat struck me as fairly entertaining until I considered an email from Freddy Loc who enthusiastically represents Carson, California.
If I may be allowed to translate, Freddy's core insight is that Suge isn't trying to affect Snoop's album sales or ego by taking a cheap shot, rather, Mr. Loc feels that Suge is sending a message to the streets that Snoop is a snitch so that, a) if Snoop goes to jail he'll have enemies waiting for him inside and b) if Snoop gets off his current array of charges, it will appear to confirm Suge's claims and Snoop will have enemies outside.
Have to say it makes sense to me, especially since I'm currently reading The Architect, a most excellent book about Karl Rove, a man who understands how to connect the immediate and the long term.
I was talking to Adisa Banjoko about the process he's been going through putting together street teams for InFreeDA. The conversation raised a lot of questions for me about how one evaluates companies whose work you don't see and what happens when you take a technique developed for spreading music and adapt it to other products.
If you have any thoughts or experiences related to street teams or applying music marketing to other products, whether inspired by successful or failed campaigns, please comment below or send them in: clyde(at)prohiphop(dot)com
Since Adisa raised the topic in relation to a current InFreeDA campaign, you can call 1-866-388-5838 for free 411 and local info services after a brief ad. I don't use those kinds of services myself but it sounds like a great deal, especially for mobile users.
Though I generally resist the equation of guns/violence/drugs = urban/hip hop, which is why I find the attempt to market ghetto fiction as hip hop lit truly offensive, I am fascinated by such topics as the street marketing of heroin brands.
Though putting brands on drug packaging is nothing new and many of my older baby boomer readers may fondly recall the dancing bears stamped on their tabs of acid, the description of how a business operates in a market in which knockoffs and copycats emerge as soon as a product becomes popular might be of interest to those same baby boomers turned corporate board members as they attempt to navigate bootlegger infested markets:
Dealers selling a popular brand of stamp bags have to stay a step ahead of copycats, Capt. Young said. "The problem is there's no copyright laws, so as soon as you put a good product on the street, people will copy your stamp," he said. "A good dealer will let his customers know and say, 'Hey, next week we're coming out with a different stamp on our bag. We only sell from this corner or this house, so only buy from me.' "
If you're wondering what constitutes a good heroin brand, consider the case of "Get High or Die Trying", an obvious reference to 50 Cent:
When a new batch of especially potent heroin appears on the street -- such as the fentanyl-laced heroin in bags labeled "Get High or Die Trying" that has caused a spate of overdoses and at least six deaths locally -- it's not long before demand skyrockets...
The forces of the drug market are even felt inside Gateway [Rehabilitation Center], where Dr. Capretto had to persuade a recovering addict to stay at the center after the man received a call from a friend informing him that their dealer was selling the bags stamped "Get High or Die Trying."
"He wanted to leave. We actually had to talk him into staying," Dr. Capretto said. "His first reaction was, 'I want that. I want to try the new stuff.' Fortunately, he was here, but if he was out on the streets, he would have been drawn to it."
And you wonder why they call it dope. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on those hip hop lit folks but I still won't run their press releases.
The NY Times' Lydia Polgreen profiles an entrepreneurial wheelbarrow owner in Liberia who bought the wheelbarrow for $25 raised by "selling anything he could find on a tray he built from scrap wood." Now he sells from the wheelbarrow and contemplates buying another "because business is good."
In a devastated economy, wheelbarrows have also become the chief form of transport for goods in the city and those operating such services are unionized and part of a "highly organized business. The wheelbarrows are numbered and lettered, indicating their zones of operation, and the fees for certain kinds of loads are fixed."
In Cuba, a thriving underground trade in bootlegged versions of censored films and music is a mixed blessing for artists who want their work known yet still wish to get paid. For example,
"hip-hop group Clan 537's "Quién Tiró la Tiza?" ("Who Threw the Chalk?") was never released domestically, but it still became a hit with young Cubans. "You can ask any young Cuban if they know that disc," said Darsi Fernández Maceira, the representative in Cuba of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, a management group that defends the intellectual property of its 66,000 member artists worldwide. "They do. The demo went through the whole country.""
Atlanta's Talented Tenth Management recently announced a series of mixtape style compilations of South Carolina hip hop artists to premiere in January. The compilation series will feature relatively unknown artists who are expected to help market the cds at street level and via local retail outlets. Although the outcome of this endeavor will result from diverse factors, the creation of a promotional release in a popular format that can leverage local networks and self starters is worth considering.
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