Elliott Wilson, King of All Hip Hop Media, is back!!!

LEGENDARY MAGAZINE EDITOR, AUTHOR AND TV PRODUCER ELLIOTT WILSON LAUNCHES ULTIMATE ONLINE HIP-HOP WEBSITE, RAPRADAR.COM

Let's take a closer look at what the "LEGENDARY MAGAZINE EDITOR, AUTHOR AND TV PRODUCER ELLIOTT WILSON", the man who brought you Making Fun of Bad White Rappers and who contends that there's no such thing as bad publicity, considers the "ULTIMATE ONLINE HIP-HOP WEBSITE", shall we?

RapRadar: Where YN Lives & NY Dies!

Ummmmm. Well. Coming soon? No email list signup, even?

This guy's really teasing, isn't he? That's something only the New York hip hop media elite could get away with!

But the words of Elliott Wilson say it all:
"With Rap Radar, I'll be able to create some of my finest work. No one is as dedicated to documenting this culture as I am. This is not a job. It's not even really a career. It's my life."

No one is as dedicated as Elliott Wilson!  Or more like Perez Hilton!!!

Note: This is an "online website". Not sure what an "offline website" would look like but I bet it wouldn't have the "boisterous blog roll" Elliott's promising. Nosirree!

Anyhoo, let's look back at the entertainment Mr. Wilson has provided in recent years since he's not giving us much to talk about here.

ProHipHop Coverage of the King of All Hip Hop Media:
Elliott Wilson's Back as a Publicist for Miss Rap Supreme!
Goodbye Old Yeller: Elliott Wilson Fired From XXL
Elliott Wilson: The Great Lion Brushes Off the Flies
Industry Pros Term Elliott Wilson's Back Cover Ad "Offensive" & an "Egregious Violation" of Ethics
XXL 10th Anniversary Covers: Pretend Controversy & XXL's Chief Advertorialist Elliott Wilson

ModernBeats’ announced the launch of Hit Talk, a "music production website devoted to answering the question ‘How do you produce a hit song?"

In addition to features and production tips, Hit Talk is experimenting with a paid feature, Production Hit Reports. Priced at $14.95, a Hit Report is a "downloadable report revealing a Billboard hit’s music production techniques including mixing, frequency spectrum, song format, song arrangement, music composition, music theory" containing "Production Maps, Illustrations, and Articles" covering:

Mix and Melody Production
Drum and Bass Production
Hook and Vocal Production

Plus: Bonus VIP samples.

Sounds like a great product idea.

Great interview with Omar Wasow, who cofounded BlackPlanet.com and is now Product Strategist for the TheRoot.com, over at Black Web 2.0.

Some high points:

BlackPlanet.com

When starting BlackPlanet.com in 1999, they didn’t focus on how many African Americans were online but on how many were coming online and they were able to catch and build with that wave.

"We had a really compelling product."  Free vs. AOL’s paid portal with discussion boards and other community tools.

Word of mouth was huge.  Sent out 500 emails and it grew from there.

The early days of web advertising, the community aspect and the African American orientation all worked against them in getting advertising as did the fact that they weren’t aligned with larger entities that would help credibility but they were able to produce results and over time proved themselves to advertisers.

TheRoot.com

More of an advisor/consultant as the Product Strategist for TheRoot.com at the request of his academic advisor from Harvard, Henry Louis Gates, who is a cofounder of TheRoot.com.

Talks a bit about building a community site (BlackPlanet.com) vs. building a content site (TheRoot.com) and emphasizes the need for content driven sites to build community.

Harvard’s Dept of African and African American Studies

Mr. Wasow left BlackPlanet.com, in part, to pursue a doctorate in African American studies at Harvard.  This guy’s got the whole package above and beyond what’s necessary for mere success.  Lots more to check out in the interview at Black Web 2.0.

At LinkedIn:
Omar Wasow