Hero1

Friday, Aug. 17, 2007 Hip-hop's Down Beat By Ta-Nehisi Coates When the political activist Al Sharpton pivoted from his war against bigmouth radio man Don Imus to a war on bad-mouth gangsta rap, the instinct among older music fans was to roll their eyes and yawn. Ten years ago, another activist, C. Delores Tucker, launched a very similar campaign to clean up rap music. She focused on Time Warner (parent of TIME), whose subsidiary Interscope was home to hard-core rappers Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. In 1995 Tucker succeeded in forcing Time Warner to dump Interscope. Her victory was Pyrrhic. Interscope flourished, launching artists like 50 Cent and Eminem and distributing the posthumous recordings of Shakur. And the genre exploded across the planet, with rappers emerging everywhere from Capetown to the banlieues of Paris. In the U.S. alone, sales reached $1.8 billion. The lesson was Capitalism 101: rap music's market strength gave its artists permission to say what they pleased. And the rappers themselves exhibited an entrepreneurial bent unlike that of musicians before them. They understood the need to market and the benefits of line extensions. Theirs was capitalism with a beat. Today that same market is telling rappers to please shut up. While music-industry sales have plummeted, no genre has fallen harder than rap. According to the music trade publication Billboard, rap sales have dropped 44% since 2000 and declined from 13% of all music sales to 10%. Artists who were once the tent poles at rap labels are posting disappointing numbers. Jay-Z's return album, Kingdom Come, for instance, sold a gaudy 680,000 units in its first week, according to Billboard. But by the second week, its sales had declined some 80%. This year rap sales are down 33% so far. Longtime rap fans are doing the math and coming to the same conclusions as the music's voluminous critics. In February, the filmmaker Byron Hurt released Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a documentary notable not just for its hard critique but for the fact that most of the people doing the criticizing were not dowdy church ladies but members of the hip-hop generation who deplore rap's recent fixation on the sensational. Both rappers and music execs are clamoring for solutions. Russell Simmons recently made a tepid call for rappers to self-censor the words nigger and bitch from their albums. But most insiders believe that a debate about profanity and misogyny obscures a much deeper problem: an artistic vacuum at major labels. "The music community has to get more creative," says Steve Rifkin, CEO of SRC Records. "We have to start betting on the new and the up-and-coming for us to grow as an industry. Right now, I don't think anyone is taking chances. It's a big-business culture." It's the ultimate irony. Since the 1980s, when Run-DMC attracted sponsorship from Adidas, the rap community has aspired to be big business. By the '90s, those aspirations had become a reality. In a 1999 cover story, TIME reported that with 81 million CDs sold, rap was officially America's top-selling music genre. The boom produced enterprises like Roc-A-Fella, which straddled fashion, music and film and in 2001 was worth $300 million. It produced moguls like No Limit's Master P and Bad Boy's Puff Daddy, each of whom in 2001 made an appearance on FORTUNE's list of the richest 40 under 40. Along the way, the music influenced everything from advertising to fashion to sports. The growth spurt was fueled by sensationalism. Tupac Shakur shot at police, was convicted of sexual abuse and ultimately was murdered in Las Vegas. But Shakur both alive and dead has also sold more than 20 million records. Death Row Records, which released much of Shakur's material, was run by ex-con Suge Knight and dogged by rumors of money laundering. But between 1992 and 1998, the label churned out 11 multiplatinum albums. Gangsta rappers reveled in their outlaw mystique, crafting ultra-violent tales of drive-bys and stick-ups designed to shock and enthrall their primary audience--white suburban teenagers. "Hip-hop seemed dangerous; it seemed angry," says Richard Nickels, who manages the hip-hop band the Roots. "Kurt Cobain killed himself, and rock seemed weak. But then you had these black guys who came out and had guns. It was exciting to white kids." Hip-hop now faces a generation that takes gangsta rap as just another mundane marker in the cultural scenery. "It's collapsing because they can no longer fool the white kids," says Nickels. "There's only so much redundancy anyone can take." Artists who never jumped on the gangsta bandwagon point the finger at the boardroom. They accuse major labels of strip-mining the music, playing up its sensationalist aspects for easy sales. "In rock you have metal, alternative, emo, soft rock, pop-rock, you have all these different strains," says Q-Tip, front man for the defunct A Tribe Called Quest. "And there are different strains of hip-hop, but record companies aren't set up to sell these different strains. They aren't set up to do anything more of a mature sort of hip-hop." Of course, gangsta rap isn't a record-company invention. Indeed, hip-hop's two most celebrated icons, Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., embraced the sort of lyrical content that today has opened hip-hop to criticism. And the music companies, under assault from file-sharing and other alternative distribution channels, are hardly in a position to do R&D. "When I first signed to Tommy Boy, [the A&R person] would take us to different shows and to art museums," says Q-Tip. "There was real mentorship. Today that's largely absent, and we see the results in the music and in the aesthetic." That result is a stale product, defined by cable channels like BET, now owned by Viacom, which seems to consist primarily of gun worship and underdressed women. During the past decade, record labels have outsourced the business of kingmaking to other artists. Established stars Dr. Dre and Eminem brought 50 Cent to Interscope. Jay-Z founded his own label, cut a distribution deal and began developing his own roster. But most established artists do little development. That leaves the possibility that hip-hop is following the same path that soul and R&B traveled when they descended into disco, which died quickly. No longer able to peddle sensation, rap's moguls are switching tactics. Simmons, while still something of a hip-hop ambassador, is hawking a new self-help book. Master P, whose estimated worth was once $661 million, watched his label, No Limit, sink into bankruptcy. He recently announced the formation of Take a Stand Records, a label catering to "clean" hip-hop music. "Personally, I have profited millions of dollars through explicit rap lyrics," Master P stated on his website. "I can honestly say that I was once part of the problem, and now it's time to be part of the solution." Chris Lighty, CEO of Violator Entertainment, whose clients include 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes, is looking at ways that record companies can work with artists in one area where rappers have been innovative: endorsement and branding. Whether it's 50 Cent owning a stake in Vitamin Water or Jay-Z doing a commercial for HP, most of these deals have been brokered by the artists' own camp. But Lighty sees in hip-hop a chance for record labels to generate more sponsorship and endorsements. "Record companies are going to have to make even better records and participate in brand extension. It's the only way they can survive," says Lighty. "We need to change the format, and this is the only way. 50 Cent is a brand. Jay-Z is a brand." But the current hubbub over indecency poses a direct challenge to that brand strength, as the artist Akon recently discovered. While performing in Trinidad, Akon was videotaped dancing suggestively with a fan who was later revealed to be only 14. The video attracted the ire of conservatives like Bill O'Reilly. In the wake of the controversy, Akon's tour sponsor, Verizon, removed all ringtones featuring his work and retracted its sponsorship. The message was clear: Hip-hop needs a new and improved product. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1653639,00.html

I checked the store...I'm thinking of gettin myself one... No mediums or smalls? they've all sold out i'm afraid.. once these shirts go they'll never be done again.. well if there are no mediums or smalls i guess i'll have to pass... :sipread: it's either that or stocking up on cheesesteaks down at Pats for the next week until I go back to college lol :fencing: or you could get a Large and shrink it down in the dryer

Will your fiance be in attendance? :clap2:

Great Article.. Thanks Radewart :wickedwisdom: I'm really intrigued to see how far they go down the hollywood angle in this

:lolsign: Why didn't you get him onto the DS Kev?

What's funny is Sony/BMG now owns all the Jive records.. It's really a Jive/Zomba release that now comes under Sony/BMG. Someone over there must have been a fan to contact Jeff, and get him to do new remixes to a song thats 17 years old. Jeff has never had a great relationship with Sony, so I'm suspecting it must have been someone on the BMG side since he did it for them.

Oakland violence prompts mural artists to show balance of good, bad Percy Robinson said he would rather produce a mural about Oakland homicide than participate in a killing. So the 18-year-old joined a group of young people who finished a mural in East Oakland Thursday that responds to the violence by trying balance it with positive aspects of life. "You could give in to the anger and the street life, or you can move yourself forward," said Robinson, who graduated from high school in June. "This mural helped me stay on a positive track." The mural at 1200 50th Ave. was created by 15 young Oakland residents, ages 14 to 20, who worked several days a week for the past month. Many of the artists have lost friends or relatives to violence. Robinson's younger brother Mikal, 15, died when he was struck by a sport utility vehicle a year ago. Robinson said he managed to let go of his frustration at his brother's death by getting involved in volunteer activities, which in turn led to his work on the mural. The mural, along with a series of public service announcements for radio and TV, are part of an anti-violence awareness campaign sponsored by the group Youth Uprising and supported by the California Endowment. Youth Uprising is an East Oakland nonprofit that runs a community center next door to Castlemont High School, which tries to divert Oakland's young people from crime by offering tutoring, job training and classes in dance, video and music production. The young people at Youth Uprising originally conceived the idea of a mural that responds to Oakland's violence and commemorates its young victims a year ago during a 50 percent spike in killing in the city. But the project was delayed, and the artists decided that instead of commemorating the victims, they wanted a positive component in the project. The mural they designed and painted acknowledges the bad on one side while emphasizing the good on the other. The left side of the mural is themed "Weapons of Mass Distraction," and it shows an image of TV with guns, pills, dice, wads of cash and a home broken in two. The right side is titled "Seeds of Resistance, and it includes images of school books, a turntable and microphone (to represent music), paintbrushes and people working. "The artists really wanted to show the problems and show the solutions," said Julio Magana-Saludado, a professional muralist and art teacher who coached the young people throughout the process. "We wanted to make it real and show that there are a lot of negative distractions that make young people act crazy," said Magana-Saludado, who is known professionally as Somos One. "But we wanted to show that you don't have to give in to that. You can find strength in the positive." For Nakeya McFarland, 16, the themes in the mural "got real" when a friend of hers, Anthony Custard, was killed July 24 on 69th Avenue, just as the painting was about to begin. "I put a lot of my grief and my heart into this mural," said Nakeya, who starts 11th grade at Oakland's Fremont High School later this month. "I'm glad we show the negative, but we balance it by showing there is a positive way. ... You don't have to give in to this craziness." Andre Bender said planning and painting the mural improved his own outlook on life. "The positive should outweigh the negative, even though it doesn't sometimes," said Andre, 16, an 11th-grader at Oakland High School who helped paint. Andre has not lost any close friends or family members to violence. But he was a classmate of Andrew Porter, a popular Oakland High football star killed last year. "I'm lucky no one really close to me has been killed," Andre said. "I'm hearing about people dying every day. I've lost neighbors, classmates - just a lot of people from the neighborhood. It's real sad. I'm getting numb to it. "If I showed emotion, I would be paralyzed with sadness," Andre added.

Yeah.. I don't like ghostwriting :thumbdown:

probably 50-60% of sales are from the US actually

theres still 50 left..its just some sizes are more popular than others

nice work..thats sum classic FP in the vid :thumbsup:

I'm very upset right now. I've spent the last SIX hours trying to get to sleep. Now I'm leaving to go work in less than 2 hours for a 9 hour shift. I'm pissed off. Today has sucked since midnight. God Blessa! may it continue to suck for the suckiest of all sucksters! :kool:

haha interesting post Visqo :kool: Ale that's great you enjoy willsmith.com it is Will's official site.. As a fan for many years and being 27 posts like "Will Smith is soo hottt" just doesn't quite do it for me. Of course many of Will's fans are young teenage girls..and many in that generation like to express themselves with text talk. I know you are holding it down over there so keep enjoying yourself.. People like AJ & Cookies used to moderate the official Will Smith board..and many of our members here are from that old board back in the day. Therefore they think that forum could be so much better but I don't think they are hating.

'twas a rhetorical question, good sir! I think you are confusing me with Jonny.. or your mama!

does britain have an alcohol problem?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

haha awesome.. I used to play people somethin like dis in a similar situation

I checked the store...I'm thinking of gettin myself one... No mediums or smalls? they've all sold out i'm afraid.. once these shirts go they'll never be done again..

Ted you talk a lot of sense.. what you been up to, how's life?

That album was supposed to help their careers, but I think it killed it.

I've only got 6 XL shirts left..so if that's your size..order now :signthankspin:

Believe me we tried to help a long time ago..but theres so much rubbish posted and no moderators its just an uphill battle

Sony/BMG.. that release date is for UK/Europe I'm not even sure they are releasing it in the US

it was the dutch release of the boom single

I imagine its being released end of summer because it takes time for labels to get release dates on singles etc..may take 3 months to get 1 which delays things.. anyway its great there is a new jjfp video and single!