Audible Hype

Lateral Thinking: Stop Promoting Yourself

2008-10-01T16:24:00Z

This article is built around a single insight. The artists I talk to who already have an online footprint and already did everything in the $0 Promotional Plan are facing a new question: What in the hell am I supposed to PUT on my website, blog, facebook and mother-effing twitter account? The nutshell answer: you use your platform to promote your fellow DIY hip hop artists. This is a fundamental win/win situation—you get more content, they get more promotion, and the world is a better place.

The Basic Promotional Template

...we looked at every successful artist. We pored over charts in industry magazines going back decades, looking for commonality. And what we found was that anyone who was successful was not isolated. Besides a couple of one-hit wonders in the ‘60s, every big act was part of a larger movement. The Beatles were by no means by themselves. The British Invasion also meant that you had the Stones, the Kinks, The Who.

So around ‘97 or ‘98, when we went to Geffen, we told them upfront that the only way this was gonna work was if we could be like Noah and bring a bunch of other complementary artists on board with us.

--?uestlove from Indy Week

If you think the music you make is totally unique, allow me give you some valuable advice: stop deluding yourself. You’re just ignorant and you need to do some research and actually pay attention to other hip hop artists. I know that’s hard. I spend so much time working on my own material that it’s usually a pain in the ass to get caught up on new artists, or check out the endless names that random folks recommend to me. This is business, though, and you need to be aware of your competition before they steal your fanbase, your momentum and your lunch.

Fact is, there’s a lot of artists who sound like you and they’ve all got websites and blogs and albums, too. It’s also a safe bet that 99% of them are struggling with the same daily grind, uphill climb bullshit that you are. Everyone is looking for some free promo, some good reviews, some new audience. Give it to them. This is not charity, this is smart strategy.

IMPLEMENT: sit down and make a list of the rappers and hip hop acts you like and respect. Local dudes, cats you’ve done shows with, veterans you look up to. Basically, people you can recommend honestly as quality music. This is your foundation. Up next, we’ll look at an example of how to build on that.

Case Study: Inverse

One of the best examples I’ve seen is LA rappers Inverse. You won’t be able to replicate their recipe, because they’ve already done it perfectly and you will come off as a shameless biter. It’s still worth looking over their formula, though.

Inverse clearly started out by deciding exactly where they wanted to go. They mapped out the larger scene they wanted to become a part of and the news coverage at their blog—Inverse Hip Hop—reflects that map. They offer a LOT of hip hop news, new music and video content, but it’s a very specific style of hip hop they’re covering.

Also notice their “blogroll,” or list of links. They’ve summarized a pretty complete directory of hip hop subculture blogs, and it weighs in at over 100 outbound links. For a focused site like Audible Hype, I keep my links restricted to the best material I can refer people to, but for an artist promotional site like Inverse Hip Hop, this is definitely a sound strategy to put yourself on a lot of radar screens, quickly.

The Logical Extreme: Promote Everyone

I’m working on a book about everything I talk about here on Audible Hype. It’s going to be so good that I’ll give it away for free and still sell many thousands of physical copies. To get my brain organized, I wanted to avoid the trap of repeating myself here on Audible Hype, and approach things more systematically. I’ve created a separate site, DIY hip hop, that’s strictly devoted to outlining everything in FAQ format. In the past year, my thinking has been heavily influenced by The Black Swan, the concept and practice of Information Architecture, and about seven hundred struggling rappers, producers, DJs, and self-styled executives.

Remember: I present myself as charitable because I like to think of myself that way. You could look at this more cynically and say it was inspired by the Dosh Dosh concept of setting up “Funnel Sites” to drive traffic to your main projects. Through that lens, then, DIY Hip Hop is just a marketing plan with a charity mask on—like a religion or a hospital.

THE QUESTIONS SO FAR

How can I get more shows?
How can I make sure I get PAID for gigs?
Should I get a record deal?
What hip hop websites matter?
How do I break into the global hip hop market?
How do I get my music reviewed?
Does radio play still matter?
How do I get on soundscan/billboard charts?

An Open Question to Audible Hype Readers

What do you want to see covered on Audible Hype for the rest of 2008? What questions would you like to see covered in the DIY Hip Hop FAQ? Why isn’t there a community for hip hop entrepreneurs and artists to talk shop and teach one another, instead of posing, fronting and talking shit? Has anyone seen any real-world effects from the “economic crash” or is that just media bullshit? I have a lot of questions, and I’m sure you do, too.

LET A MAMMAL KNOW.

Weekend Brainfood, September 20th 2008

2008-09-20T19:03:00Z

Fronting: The Original Business Plan

I’ve drafted seven business plans in 27 years on this planet. Then again, Jeff Bezos did a business plan once, and I think that worked out okay for him.

See, a business plan only works when it’s full of relevant details and devoid of bullshit. And even then, it only works with enough capital behind it, and unfortunately for broke rappers around the world, “capital” means cash money dollars.

Success culture is mentally ill. I’m not saying there’s nothing useful and effective in your Tony Robbins books, but I am saying that the real lesson behind “fake it until you make it” is that most of the people we percieve as successful are full of shit. “Think positive thoughts” is good for exactly 30 minutes to work your way out of depression and frustration. If you take it further than that, you’re not being positive, you’re deliberately misleading yourself.

I’m working fulltime these days on launching a music business but I’m not kidding myself about being an executive. When someone whose website is a myspace page hands me a business card, I can only chuckle. In any given city, there’s a thousand promoters, yet only three to five people actually booking all the shows. Crate Kings, one of the best hip hop production sites I’ve come across, dropped a great breakdown on the subject this week:

Calling Yourself CEO Does Not Make You a CEO, by Semantik.

90% of Success is Just Showing Up

Adam Bernard has been running a lot of quality, useful articles in the past few months—from the value of an EP to the importance of small gigs—and this week, he dropped another gem: Showing up at Shows.

Also worth checking out: Adam’s analysis of first week sales figures and the tricks of the trade behind Soundscan inflation.

The Bruce Warila Curriculum

My personal favorite authors on the music business—by which I mean, the actual nuts-and-bolts business end of making a living off music, which is accessable to independents as well as people named Bronfman—are Ed Peto, Martin Atkins, and Bruce Warila, who writes for Unsprung Media and Music Think Tank.

Essential Reading

For Artists/Bands Seeking Investment Capital—this is detailed and precise how-to material for those of us who want to get real and fund large moves. You need to have your organization humming, and you need to provide a basic list of personal and business information. Warila explains it all here.

RSS for Musicians—Best overall article on the subject I found—also check out his sequels: Being Episodic and Create an Elaborate Plan.

You Will Never Get a Record Deal—a strong dose of professional clarity. Don’t take it as an insult.

11 Ways to Fix the Problem When You Work Harder Than Everyone Else—exactly what it says it is, and for most of the DIY entrepreneur cats reading this, it’s an important damn subject! This is science.

Why You Must Implement a Free Song Strategy—even if you’re already convinced, this is a good summary reader. For advice on implementing a free song strategy for free, check out the $0 Promotional Plan

Daily Routine Brainfood Regime

1. Hypebot has the best overall music news—they cover the whole industry and it’s run by a successful, and very respected, veteran who knows his science. Start here.

2. Prohiphop has the best hip hop news—same deal as above. Much respect to Clyde Smith for being a one-man CNN for all the internets. Buy him a beer.

3. Cryptogon is the best “news behind the news” site I’ve found—he’s consistent, level-headed but still bluntly honest.

4. The Big Picture is a rare example of Truth in Advertising. It delivers the macro-scale goods on a regular basis and the graphics are always exceptionally good. This means that not only are you being informed efficiently, it’s also really cool when you’re having trees for breakfast.

The Audible Hype $0 Music Promotion Plan

2008-09-07T01:30:00Z

This is dedicated to broke rappers everywhere. This is a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on setting up your online operation right. It involves spending no money whatsoever, and you could easily sit down and get it all done tonight. If you find this useful, please pass it on.

1. Get a Gmail Account.

Sign up here. This doesn’t mean you need to get rid of your existing email—you can easily set up gmail to forward your messages to your current account. Even if you’ve already got a personal gmail account, get a professional one, too: yourstagename@gmail.com just plain looks better when you’re handing out contact info.

This isn’t about looking good, though, this is about the tools that a google account will give you access to: blogger, analytics and alerts.

For more on optimizing gmail to make your life easier, check out this LifeHacker tutorial.

2. Get a Flickr Account.

For free image hosting, nothing beats Flickr. Photobucket is an unreliable and bloated piece of shit, Flickr is a truly dope free service. There is no competition. Once you’ve got your account set up, you can customize it and search to see if any of your friends and contacts are using Flickr and get in touch with them. The main workhorse function of Flickr, though, is hosting your images so that you can use them on your website. This brings us to the real meat of this article: getting your free website on Blogger.

3. Get a Blogger Account.

For those of you who can’t afford website registration and hosting, here’s a simple, reliable and free solution. I’ve talked to a number of rappers (without websites) who acknowledged they knew about the Blogger option but never signed up because it looks like shit. They’re right about that, but it’s not an excuse, just ignorance. You don’t need to use default Blogger templates, you can customize as much as you want. Take a look at the DJ Multiple Sex Partners blog: you won’t recognize anything from a cookie-cutter template:

So first things first: go to blogger and sign up right now. I generally start with one of the Minima themes—they’re the easiest to customize after the fact. Once you get the account, take these immediate steps:

Remove the two “gadgets” that come pre-loaded in the sidebar: About Me and Archive. Both of them are useless and ugly. There’s two types of gadget to add: Link Lists and HTML/Javascript. Link lists are, of course, your personal network—give some shine to artists you’re connected with, recommend websites that have been useful to you, and direct readers to your other online presences. HTML/Javascript gadgets are just a block of whatever code you want to add, such as clickable image links to download your music, or a more customized “About Me” if you want to give people a summary of what you’re about.

Here’s an example from the Algorhythms blog: we’re pushing the first EP right now, so the blog design is deliberately minimal so that the album icon will jump off the screen:

For those readers unfamiliar with basic HTML, here’s the code you’ll need to set that up for yourself:

<center><a href="insert your link url here"><img src="insert your image url here"></a><br>insert your text here</center>

Now change the actual look of your blog: go to “Fonts and Colors,” which provides you with a preview of what your site will look like. This might look overwhelming but it couldn’t be simpler: just click shit and see what happens when you change it. In the space of 3-5 minutes, you’ll be able to make your blog look pretty damn slick—or at least suit your own horrible taste.

Finally, here’s the trick for removing the Blogger-branded “navigation” bar at the top of every Blogger page: go to “Edit HTML” in your Layout panel and scroll down to the Header section:

That first line of code in the image is what you drop in, and it goes like this:

3a. Simple SEO for your Blogger Site.

I won’t get into details at all. In fact, I’ll just give you a template. What Blogger sites don’t have is metadata, and this is a huge problem. You really need the metadata in order to get ranked higher on search engines—the automated “bots” that do the indexing love metadata, and without it, they’re not interested in your little site.

First of all, put in a custom title. To do that, you’re going back to the “Layout” part of your dashboard, then clicking on “Edit HTML.” The title is up at the top, and the default code looks like this:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Delete the crap in between the two <title> tags—and put something more descriptive. For instance, on the DJ MSP Blog, I’ve got “DJ Multiple Sex Partners | World-Around Records” which covers all the major keywords I want to be known by.

Now, directly below the <title> section, make some space and insert the following code:

To give you an idea of how to fill those gaps in, here’s the metadata from the DJ Multiple Sex Partners blog:

Of course, you can get way deeper into Search Engine Optimization, but this is really all you need to start getting listed high on Google.

4. Set up Google Alerts.

Click here to get started. This is one of the single most valuable tools google has to offer—and yet I’m amazed how few people have heard of it. Here’s the deal: google will send you daily updates every time they index a page with your name on it. Every time someone mentions Algorhythms, for instance, I read about it within a day or two.

Your basic google alert regimen should be: your name, the name of every album you’ve done, and the name of your label if you have one. Personally, I have alerts set up for every artist on the World-Around roster, so some days I’ll have almost 20 alerts. Often times they’re nothing special, or material that I’ve done myself, but I find new outlets and connections multiple times a week. Knowing what people are saying about you is kinda important. Alerts save you the wasted time (and nagging shame & humiliation) of repeatedly googling yourself.

5. Set up Google Analytics.

Out here on Teh Internets, the most valuable form of information is metrics—hard data about the traffic your websites are getting. Google Analytics is powerful and free. You can get geographical breakdowns and insanely detailed reports. Here’s a sample screen—as you can see, Audible Hype really doesn’t get shit for traffic, but I’ll be honest about it:

Here’s a few of the most valuable features for the DIY hip hop entrepreneur: Keywords, which shows you what people are searching for that leads them to you, and the absurdly powerful Map Overlay, which shows you geographic breakdowns of where your visitors live. Audible Hype gets most of its traffic via Illinois (where I currently live), California and New York State:

Obviously, once you get your blog/site up and running, you want to be seeing a response in your local area. The Map Overlay will even break it down to individual cities on the state level, so you’ll be getting a detailed sense of who your site is reaching. If you find out you’re getting a ton of traffic in City X, it’s probably time to use that information and try to get some gigs in City X.

6. Get a Mediafire Account.

Mediafire is an amazing service: you can upload files up to 100mb and they’ll host it for free. They also have a great control panel where you can keep tabs on how many times your files have been downloaded. This is a valuable source of feedback: if you’re giving away a mixtape and it gets over 100 downloads, that means you definitely shouldn’t be pressing 500 copies of your next album. If you’re giving away an EP and you’re getting close to a thousand downloads, it’s probably a safe and profitable bet to press 500 copies of your next album.

This is also a great way to test your promotion. Keep track of your numbers in a notebook. Start looking for connections between your online promotion and your downloads. For instance, when you put up a myspace bulletin, what kind of impact does that actually have? Believe me, 99% of the people who click through your link and check your music out will never write to you and let you know they did.

7. Your Digital Footprint.

There’s no shortage of social networks to choose from, but there’s two that are essential for independent artists:

Last.fm. Now that myspace plays and friends can be completely fabricated, everyone’s looking for more meaningful metrics—and Last.fm provides it. Rather than restate the case for Last.fm here, let me just refer you to Andrew Dubber’s excellent summary.

Facebook. Now that Facebook has broken 100 million users, it’s probably about time for you to get yourself on Facebook Music. It’s a more complicated process than signing up for MySpace, but it’s also very much worth it. For a shining example of using Facebook right, check out the QN5 page.

Right now, I’m running a World-Around Twitter account—you can check it out here—but it’s very much an experiment. I am assuming that by providing a steady stream of useful information, I can make it into a valued resource for people. So rather than updating about what I’m eating for dinner, the WAR Twitter will be focused on good information and links to quality articles. If you’ve got experience using Twitter as a promotional platform, I would love to hear from you.

Of course, I’m assuming you already have a Myspace account—if you’re looking for advice on how to run that more efficiently, I’ve already covered that topic: How to Defeat and Kill the Devil MySpace.

Finally, don’t build your own social network. Your fans, and potential future fans, are already on multiple social networks your requests will only be an annoyance for them. Besides, every major hip hop label is trying to do the same thing, and you’re not going to beat out Rawkus or Loud anytime soon. Use existing social networks—it’s a bigger audience and you don’t have to do as much work. This seems obvious enough, yet I’m constantly getting requests from chump rappers to join Ning sites with less than 20 users. We are all idiots at times, and we are all assholes at times, but avoid doing both at once.

Last Word

Once you’ve completed this, you’ve got the platform. Your online presence looks professional and you have all the tools you need to push your music on the internets, and get valuable feedback about how your efforts are going.

As I wrote this, I was trying to “un-know” all of the technical crap that I take for granted. If you have questions, or suggestions for improvement, please pass those along. I want to make this the best resource possible. Also, check out the Audible Hype forums, which I’ve been loading up with useful content for a couple months now.

Thanks, and good luck.

Getting Ready for a Long Cold Winter

2008-08-28T08:35:00Z

One thing is already pretty clear: 2008 is not going to be a good year for the United States of America. Although Audible Hype is allegedly about DIY hip hop and making a living off music, let’s all pause to acknowledge the grim panorama of The Big Picture. The United States economy is currently bleeding to death and we’re headed for a long cold winter. With bank failures and corporations collapsing, the losses of jobs and property will have thousands of complex and horrible effects. Here’s one that’s insignifigant to everyone but Audible Hype readers: everyone will have way less money for CDs. For T-shirts. For vinyl. Even for shows.

This obviously points towards a narrowing market, and as a total unknown with a startup independent label, you can bet I’m super-psyched about this. The rest of 2008 will be a challenge for everyone, especially the little guys. This is about how to survive and thrive—simple concepts, proven techniques, and valuable role models.

Start with Simple Psychology.

Here’s the single biggest thing you’ve got going for you: everyone else is getting frustrated and having a hard time, too. When the going gets hard, what do you do?

Statistically, you give up. Yep. That is what the majority of people do when they’re frustrated. I know a couple hundred insanely talented rappers who got sick of dealing with the bullshit, and they gave up. During bleak times, simple tenacity will win out over most any other strategy.

Music At A Price Your Customers Can Afford

Free CDs will never go out of style. Like any tool, there’s a right way to use them, and a surefire method for acting retarded. I’ve seen a lot of people walk through a bar, hand a CD to everyone that would reflexively reach for one, say the same single sentence script to every person, and walk out feeling like they’d accomplished something. They did: they just wasted a medium-sized chunk of money and provided another small life irritation for a bunch of bar patrons.

Telemarketers are assholes, right? So don’t market like a telemarketer. Free CDs will never go out of style because they’re always appreciated by people who want your music. When someone asks me if I’ve got a CD out and I can just hand them one, I know there’s a 50% chance they’ll actually listen to it. When I walk around confronting people, with no context, and giving out that same CD, I know there’s a .05% chance they’ll actually listen to it.

Only One Part Actually Matters.

I realize that what I advocate here at Audible Hype is not for everyone. I do get plenty of emails from artists who think I’m giving them “too much homework,” and I love getting that kind of feedback because it’s a daily reminder of how weak most of you humans are. I appreciate the encouragement.

Between the recording, the mixing, the mastering, the design, the manufacturing, the promotion, the marketing, the booking, the touring, the research, the reading, the websites, the blogs, I know. It’s a ton of tiny detail shitwork, but I’m putting this early in the article because I’ll drive it home again at the end. Only one part actually matters, and that’s your relationship with your fans. As long as you stay in touch with them and treat them with love and respect, you’ll survive into 2010.

Up Your Skillz

Let me introduce you to Nick Williams. Nick is a pretty amazing drummer, but he’s also a lighting designer, a live sound tech, a beat producer, a soundtrack composer, and one of the fastest Pro Tools engineers I’ve ever worked with...oh, and a “Geek Squad” manager at the local Best Buy. (I’m waiting tables, myself.) The point I’m making is far from original but it needs to be repeated: most of the normal people in your life will tell you that you “do too much”—the reality is that you’re not doing nearly enough. The more you can develop new, useful skills with your free time, the more you can accomplish in the future, and the less you’ll have to rely on other people.

Other people, as we all know, are notoriously unpredictable.

Focus on Meaningful Metrics

Hip hop is a street culture and putting up flyers is a rite of passage for literally millions of kids around the world. I’m a hick from Vermont, though, and I think of advertising as a form of pollution. We burn down billboards where I come from, so you can imagine how I feel about putting up posters around town. In any mid-sized city, there’s about 20-30 stores that are worth putting up a colorful, well-designed poster in. These are the venues that your demographic is actually going to on a regular basis, and these are the venues that will actually keep your poster up and display it prominently.

Internet marketing, in case you haven’t noticed yet, is pretty much FUCKING AMAZING. For instance, it costs you money to print up posters and put them up around town, yet it can make you money to do promotions online. Here’s another great example: unless people specifically tell you where and how they heard about your event, you’ll never know what worked and what was wasted effort when you do a print campaign. On the internet, however, you get automatic feedback, site metrics, user data—from everyone who sees your promo.

Helpful hint: download statistics are the most reliable indicator of album sales. Your myspace friend count reflects reality about as much as the mind of George W. Bush does. So rather than fight piracy, host your music yourself. You can do this right now, for free, via MediaFire, who are professional and upstanding folks.

When You Have Time But Not Money...

...obviously, you invest the time. I am really staying on my own case in 2008: I can’t be wasting time with bitchery and complainifying. Time spent “explaining” why I can’t afford to manufacture and promote my albums is wasted time. I have plenty of work to put in, and until I have my operation running right, I would be insane to expect money. (Especially based on some notion that I “deserve” it because of some magical “talent.")

Likewise, most of the rappers who contact me via Audible Hype complaining about how hard it is to promote their albums have not taken any of the simple, powerful and free steps that you can take right now. Do you have a blog? Get one for free right now. Do you have a paypal account? Do that. Get your music on Facebook, Last.fm and iLike, tonight.

If you don’t have the computer skills, that’s actually not an excuse. From html to css to photoshop to pro tools, anything you need to learn, you can find excellent free tutorials to teach you, online, right now.

Remember, depression is counterproductive and self-indulgent. The time you spend brooding is time you could spend building.

Role Model #1: Tonedeff

Even people who hate on Tonedeff’s music admit he’s one of the most skilled rappers on a mic. Critics are probably not what bothers Tonedeff, though: what worries him is people who’ve never heard of Tonedeff. The man is fiercely independent and he’s one of the best living examples of DIY hip hop you can study. He’s built his label, QN5, into a powerhouse. Anyone can jack up their myspace play counts, but you can’t fake metrics like the CunninLynguist’s Last.Fm stats.

You produce, emcee, sing, run your own label, produce for your artists, feature on a variety of projects, perform a great live show, back your artists up on stage, how do you have the time and energy for all that?

Tonedeff: I don’t have any time, basically my life is a series of chores, tasks, favors, deadlines and money stress, that’s my life. Ever since I was a kid I just always wanted to make records and put things together. I really enjoy being a collaborative person, working with other people and helping their sh*t look better and sound better via my talent. Anyway that I can help, because I like to see people succeed and I’m a real team player. In fact I tend to help other people more than I help myself.

Role Model #2: Wordsmith

I start my day at 4:00 AM, 5 days a week and travel over an hour from Baltimore to Washington DC for work. During the drive, I am usually practicing my lyrics for different songs I want to perform at upcoming shows. When I get to my job, I carry in a book bag that has my rhymebook(s), beat CD’s, and 100 blank CD’s into work. I do an important job, but that doesn’t stop me from spending all 8 of my hours at work burning copies..

That’s just a small sampling of what Wordsmith has to offer. The dude is an inspiration and a great reality check: if there’s anyone in your city hustling as hard as Wordsmith, they’re already eating your food. That doesn’t mean you failed at life, just means you’ve got some catch-up work ahead of you. Start here.

Wordsmith also faces the classic emcee problem of someone else biting your name. In his case, that someone else is a slightly goofy looking kid from the UK, and a much younger cat from Rhode Island so for what it’s worth, Audible Hype is only concerned with the real Wordsmith from Baltimore.

Role Model #3: Atmosphere

It’s worth considering that maybe hip hop is suffering because 99.9% of you are doing it wrong. There’s an independent group out of Minnesota—seriously—who had their last album debut at number 5 on the charts. Not the college radio charts, the Billboard Top 200—so clearly Atmosphere is doing something right. Here’s a break down from Brent “Siddiq” Sayers, courtesy of this highly educational article from Pulse:

“Atmosphere’s the flagship artist: Sean [Slug] has been doing this longer than any of them and has built Atmosphere to the point, touring-wise, that they can sell out bigger rooms. So he’ll bring [Brother] Ali out on the Godlovesugly tour when he’s never been out there before. It’s up to the artist to put on a great show and be responsible, but they learn because they watch Sean: Sean’s on time, Sean does all his interviews. Sometimes we’ll do 16, 17 shows in a row non-stop. So when you roll like that, you learn the ropes. We brought Ali out, P.O.S. went out the same way and it’s been continuous where we bring developing artists out and they see from the ground level how much work this really is. Touring has been that foundation pretty much since the beginning and at least since I’ve been here.

That was part of my goal: to really implement a touring structure in Rhymesayers, because that’s one of the things I first saw when I saw Atmosphere play the Entry. When I met Sean, I was like, man, you gotta take it on the road. We just started doing it, grinding it. Driving to Texas, doing a show. Going to Chicago, doing a show and driving back overnight because people had to work the next day. Sleeping on people’s floors. Whatever it took. A lot of people that are newer don’t know that it’s been a long time coming. Atmosphere didn’t just sell 100,000 records.

The Last Word from Seth Godin

This passage from his recent article, The Secret of the Web, really resonated with me. Well, more accurately, it really, really pissed me off because it confirmed one of my darker suspicions. Running World-Around Records is rewarding, but mostly frustrating as fuck. The gap between putting in work and seeing the results is something I constantly have a hard time with. I constantly have to remind myself that this is a path I chose, consciously and deliberately, and this frustration is the inevitable consequence of Doing It Right.

I’m not doing this to make money. I’m doing this to make music for a living. I’m doing this to build something larger than myself that will create positive changes.

Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.

Resources for Dedicated Primates

If blogging and internet media is new to you, there’s 10,000 blogs about blogging. Pretty much all of them are superficial horseshit, but the greatest exception is DoshDosh, written by a Pseudonym pseudonamed Maki. . Every article is a tutorial, raising detailed questions and providing detailed answers. It’s an amazingly useful resource and it helped us out at Back Brain Media, especially in the past year.

Start with his concept of “Opportunity Costs”—and if you’ve never heard of SWOT Analysis, get familiar with the most important tool a DIY capitalist could have. I also highly recommend his reality check, Social Media Networking and Return on Investment”.

Other important articles for beginners: How to Promote Your Website for $100, Blogging Mistakes Roundup, and finally The “Free” Business Model: A Strategy for Attention, Traffic and Profits.

Another great resource is Andrew Dubber, author of New Music Strategies, and the excellent report “20 Things You Must Know”, which is still the most relevant and concise dose of reality I’ve found. Dubber is currently working on the (insanely ambitious and quite admirable) sequel, which will basically be the most complete FAQ for music promotion online in human history.

Here’s a few exceptionally useful chapters:

Are CDs Dead?

How Can I Sell My Music Online?

Is the Long Tail Good for Musicians?

It’s Actually Not a Competition

Your fans will be your fans no matter what.

Your fans are not into 95% of other rappers, but they are into you.

Most of who you consider competition actually pose no threat to your success or your fanbase.

Most of them are in fact struggling musicians just like you.

Most of them could probably help you out, if you swallow your pride and make contact.

Most of the time, we waste our time.

We can always be working on improving our own operations.

We can always be doing more to help.

The DIY Hip Hop Business Master Class

2008-08-21T21:02:00Z

This is a collection of the best, most useful highlights from interviews with hip hop legends and DIY entrepreneurs. There’s tons more information in the Audible Hype forums, and if you’re new to the site, start here.

?uestlove

When we were out there on The Chronic battlefield, from ‘92 to ‘97, me and Rich [The Roots’ longtime manager] were racking our brains on how to escape from the pack, how to matter. A lot of people accuse of us over-thinking. And that’s OK. But we looked at every successful artist. We pored over charts in industry magazines going back decades, looking for commonality. And what we found was that anyone who was successful was not isolated. Besides a couple of one-hit wonders in the ‘60s (there was no ‘movement’ behind “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” or “Monstermash"), every big act was part of a larger movement. The Beatles were by no means by themselves. The British Invasion also meant that you had the Stones, the Kinks, The Who. Likewise with hard rock—Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin—or the Philadelphia sound—Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, the Three Degrees.

Once Illadeph came out, me and Rich were like, we’ve got to get a movement. We weren’t trying to be the Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer of this. So around ‘97 or ‘98, when we went to Geffen, we told them upfront that the only way this was gonna work was if we could be like Noah and bring a bunch of other complementary artists on board with us.

Source: Indy Week

Wendy Day

The basis of any successful project is the music. The music must be banging and must have appeal outside your inner circle. That means you don’t just play it for your boys, you play it for people you don’t know who are most likely to be honest with you about whether or not it’s on point. When putting out Do Or Die’s first single in Chicago, “Po’ Pimp,” we gathered together all the local mix show DJs, club DJs, and some of the local retailers and played a few songs for them. They unanimously picked Po’ Pimp as their favorite song, so Do Or Die had reconfirmed exactly which single to press up (and the DJs felt like they played a part in choosing the single). Why spend tens of thousands of dollars on pressing and promotions if you aren’t certain you’ll have the support of the local DJs and stores?

Once you decide on the first single and press up your record, you market it within a small geographic area that you can affordably control. Unless you are backed by millions of dollars and a flawless major distributor, you don’t want to start nationally because you can’t be everywhere in the country at once. The larger labels have staffs and budgets to accommodate a national release, but since you don’t, start with just your city or town and no more than a few nearby. I usually draw a circle around the city where the artist is based. I make the circle about a three to five hour driving radius, and that becomes the target area.

Make certain you’ve done the research in all of the areas you choose where the record will sell. Choose areas where the artists can travel cheaply and easily, since they may need to travel often into those areas to support the record. For example, it would not be a wise decision to choose New York, Houston, and the Bay Area for simultaneous release because the airfare alone would kill you financially every time your artist needed to travel to support the record at radio or retail or with a show.

Source: The Day Report

Paul Wall

“When I was 14, that’s when my life changed because that’s when I got really heavy into street promotions. I worked and did a lot of stuff for Def Jam and stuff for Cash Money, before they signed their major deal. But, doing the street promotion, a lot of that was me just learning and working the game because I was always taught and my mother always embedded in me, that if you work, you’re going to get paid.

If you don’t work, you’re not going to get paid and no one was going to give me sh-t. So I took that aspect and worked, worked, worked. I built up reputations with different store owners being that I was doing retail promotions and different DJs being that I would service them with records. When I brought them the new Jay-Z record, they remembered me like, “What’s up.” I built those relationships up. . . I still took that job with pride, worked it to the best of my ability and it gave me respect within the industry to what I was doing: building up relationships and rapport with different record labels or producers.”

Source: Baller Status

El-P

In the early days of your career, what do you think paid off most for you? Because it isn’t always a given that talent is going to rise to the surface, and nowadays the industry is even more oversaturated.

It’s a combination of a complete, blind arrogance—don’t let anyone tell you that you suck, even if you suck—and ridiculous amounts of energy and overstated ambition. That’s it. If you have those things, just keep fucking going until you can’t. If it changes or you don’t like it anymore, move the fuck on. Until then, just write and be passionate and do the thing you believe in, period. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.

Source: The Red Alert

As being the leading figure of Def Jux, do you need to do some A&R or are the albums the people hand in, in no need for you to do anything?

I definitely get down and dirty with cats and build with them about their records. I don’t cross the line, but I’m really interested in what cats are trying to do. And I think that a lot of times the cats that I work with, are interested in talking it out with me. Obviously on the CanOx album I played a big role. I think I played a very big role in the Mr Lif album, even in the EP. Because we are just really good friends, and we always build with each other about shit. With a cat like Aesop, I just let him do his fuckin’ thing.

When I met Aesop, he had two albums under his belt. So he just kinda gave his album to me. With Murs, it’s pretty much the same thing, except of the collaborations that we did. So it really depends. It depends on what the relationship is. It depends on what the vibe is. I’m certainly not the type of cat to, infringe on somebody’s ideas. What I do do, is, if they want it, I give suggestions, in terms of anything that I can help with. But I do believe in trusting people. Trusting the artist. Because I always wanted people to trust me. And I hated to be in a situation where I had to explain something to somebody, who clearly wasn’t feeling what I was feeling. I don’t think it’s ever really like that at Def Jux. If anything, it’s all on some positive reinforcement shit.

I like to get down with cats that really think about it. Cause everyone knows it’s a team effort, and you want everybody to come up with the best possible thing going. But I would never, for instance, give a suggestion what to write a song about. Or, ‘why don’t you do the chorus like this?’ That’s not my shit. But if somebody wants to talk about help with producers, or sequence the album. Or an idea for a way to bring the concept they have in mind to life, I’m 100% down to talk about it. But at the end of the day, it’s up to the person whose record it is, to either take my suggestion or not. I try to be there if they have a questions and if they trust what I try to say.

Source: Urban Smarts

iCon the Mic King

What’s your perspective on the business of collaborations? Can established rappers make good income off that, or do they mostly undervalue their verses and beats?

“Collaborations are a complicated issue, man! I don’t personally believe it does much to validate anyone especially in the information age. I feel like people download the song and skip to featured verse listen to it a couple times and then erase the song. Let’s say it’s a hot song, it’s a hot song of yours that you can’t really perform unless that person is around. Businesswise it’s both. Established rappers can make good income off it but a smart businessman prices his product in the range of his customer so you have [insert rapper here] selling verses on his myspace for $500 or [insert producer here] selling beats for $50. I understand where they are coming in that you price it lower you sell a bunch, but it destroys utility. Most times people ask me to collab and I request what I am worth they say “well I can get [insert rapper here] for $500 man you gotta come down.” The economies of scale of collaborating are much different now than when rappers were much less accessible.”

Source: Audible Hype, baby

DJ Vlad

A lot of people email me everyday to try to ‘network’. Most of the time, they don’t understand what networking really means.

Your network is people that you have done actual business with - not people that you have seen in the club. I’ve had conversations with Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Puffy multiple times. I didn’t have any business that I could bring to them at that time, so they’re not in my network.

“I’m hot but I’m broke, put me on” is begging.

“I’ve got a project with a budget that I want to work with you on. We have $10,000 dollars for you upfront” is networking.

Professionals network with other professionals. Hobbyists network with other hobbyists. If you make your living off your music - you’re a professional. If you don’t earn your living off your music - you’re a hobbyist. This is not my opinion - it’s the dictionary definition.

Slug

“I don’t really do many collabs, but when I do I hardly charge people. Anyone I do charge, it’s because I know they have a budget and when I do charge I make them give it to charity. I don’t actually collect a check from them. My job in this shit isn’t to make money off of my voice or my rapping, but to figure out how to be good enough business wise, to make my art make my money for me, rather than make the art the money.

Sales are one thing, but to me those are called royalties. It’s not like every time you buy a CD I’m popping off. No, you buy a CD and you’re helping me cover the cost of making the damn CD for starters. You’re also helping me cover the cost of bringing the CD to your city, bringing a tour to your city that is also bringing three other rap groups to your city that you may have never experienced. It’s not like I’ve got this incredibly genius business strategy. I ain’t really supposed to get rich off of rapping; I’m supposed to get rich off of everything else that makes itself available to me because I rap.

I really don’t give a fuck if people hate me. The elitists or the underground people that say “ohh fuck him, he’s a sell out.” Naw, actually fuck off. I know what I’m doing. I know what my choruses sound like. I know what my beats sound like. I’ve never paid anyone to play my record. I’ve never played any of the games trying to sell lots of records. The closest I’ve come is making videos, but videos are fun, man. I didn’t make videos so that MTV would play them. Hell, MTV didn’t play the shit. I made them because I wanted a visual to go with the song.”

Source: Impose Magazine

Buck 65

“For me and for most musicians these days, we pretty much have one option left to put a career together, which is to tour. And to really make a living, you’ve got to tour all the time. But if that’s becoming the case for everybody, you’re going to have every band on the road all the time,” Halifax-bred hip-hop MC/producer Rich “Buck 65” Terfry, who handles most of his own touring affairs, recently remarked to me.

“When I was booking the tour I’m currently starting in the U.S., we were having some real problems. We wanted to go into, you know, Albuquerque, New Mexico, during this particular week, but even way in advance there were so many other bands and only so many rooms. And we came to find out that we’re in a time right now that’s kind of unprecedented in the amount of bands that are out there on the road. So that’s going to spread things a little thin.”

Source: The Star

Of Course There’s Gonna Be a Sequel...

This is not the end. There’s a lot more information floating around out there—and a thousand more voices I could have included. If you’ve got suggestions, quotes, or just a heads-up on people I should be checking out, please leave a comment and LET A MAMMAL KNOW. Thank you.

The No Bullshit Guide Hip Hop Demographics, Part One

2008-08-04T16:30:00Z

Did you know that even the biggest record labels on Earth right now are scrambling, just as much as you and I are, to figure out what’s going on? “Demographics” sounds scientific as all hell, I know, but it was mostly (over)educated guesswork right up until the past five years or so. Thanks the the growing science of data mining, and the explosive growth of consumer databases to mine, demographics is starting to resemble actual math based on reality.

As we learn to tame the flood of new information and make sense of the patterns, the real demographics of hip hop are finally starting to emerge:

The global hip hop community: twenty four million people between the ages of 19-34, from a range of nationalities, ethnic groups and religions. Their collective spending power is $500 billion annually in the U.S. alone.

That’s from a Tech Crunch article on a “hip hop culture” effort from Accel Partners and Russell Simmons called Global Grind. It’s one of over a dozen conflicting but authoritative-sounding estimates that I’ve found in the course of researching this article.

As much as I’d like to just give you the numbers, I can’t do that. Information is power, and the corporations who own these databases are in no rush to make their information public. The waters get murkier when multiple, rival consultant firms, like Ypulse for example, issue conflicting (and insanely expensive) “White Paper” reports. These reports are based on taking a small body of private research and extrapolating those numbers to fit a vastly larger sample: usually the entire consumer base of the United States. This obviously leads to some very suspect numbers, so we’re left with an incomplete puzzle. Rather than give you conclusions, I’m going to give you all the available resources in one place. This is an exploration, not a simple answer.

Did you know that 37.1% of 15-25-year-olds in China love hip hop? Remember, that figure is from yet another expensive white paper, but it’s worth thinking about. According to Chinese government statistics, the 15-29 demographic makes up 22.8% of the population. Considering we’re talking about China here, that’s around 296 million—in other words, a core hip hop demographic about the same size as the entire United States. Food for thought, and also a much larger figure than the “24 million” that Russell Simmons was pushing earlier.

Cracker Mythology 101

Yeah, everyone knows that the majority of hip hop listeners are rich white kids in high school, if not younger. What’s also fascinating is that nobody can back that up with any information whatsoever.

Normally, I’d make an impassioned plea for people to stop being dumb, but I’d actually like to encourage it. Your laziness and gullibility will make my own success that much easier, and I thank you. Audible Hype, of course, is written for the smart kids. Finding accurate, detailed information about the demographics of hip hop and the raw numbers behind the record business is not simple.

...but it is possible.

Thank God for Davey D

Davey D has been a shining example of hip hop journalism for a long damn time, and he said it straight: “The truth of the matter is that this 80% white Hip Hop fan myth has long been a nice marketing tool used by media corporations to justify ad revenues for Top 40 radio stations.” His article on this myth is a beautiful beat-down and very much worth reading.

It started in 1991 when Newsweek Magazine did a cover story on Gangsta Rap and in their article they put out an un-researched statistic that said 80% of Hip Hop’s audience is white and that its reflected in record sales. That stat has been bantered about ever since as an undisputable stone cold fact.

...Top 40 stations had this Newsweek quote along with their CHR status that they could present to ad buyers. Essentially they were able to say, ‘yes we’re playing Public Enemy, NWA and 2 Live Crew, but this is what the mainstream (white audience wants). Look at this Newsweek article. It’s proof positive that 80% of the people who like this aggressive music are the main ones purchasing it.

What wasn’t really publicly known or even taken into account was how Asians were classified when it came to radio ratings. They were always counted as white people.

As you can see, this brings us back to corporations and private databases. Once you start a culture of competitive intelligence, you’re creating a powerful incentive for disinformation as a strategy. This leads to headaches. Since we’re dealing with a hall of mirrors and conflicting opinion, let’s get some clarity, shall we?

The Outer Limits

When you’re dealing with a massive system of unknown size, it’s helpful to start with the extremes. For instance, on a planet with over 6 billion humans, you can rest assured that over 70% of them cannot afford to buy enough food, let alone your album, so we’ve already whittled things down considerably. Canada has 33 million people, the UK has over 60 million, and America is past 300 million humans, mostly overweight people with horrible taste in music. All told, that’s a potential audience of just under 400 million people—but how many of them like beats and rhymes?

As it turns out, it’s hard to even get a straight answer on what the best-selling hip hop album of all time was. According to most sources, it’s still MC Hammer’s timeless masterpiece ”Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em,” which moved 20 million copies. The fact that Eminem’s Marshall Mathers EP sold 21 million copies would seem to deny Hammer’s claim to anything but novelty status.

Let’s not be intimidated by huge numbers, though. Music is a big landscape with a lot of money flying around. Wu Tang Forever sold 8 million copies and they can still go on world tour whenever they want, with $40 ticket prices in most cities. Dudes like us are just trying to fill up local venues and turn a profit off a hobby, and that’s a much more attainable goal.

Up next, I’m going to be taking a look at hands-on demographics for underground hip hop artists. In the past decade, we’ve seen a new standard of success emerge—not exactly superstars, but sure as hell not broke, either. We’ll call it “Underground Famous.”

Meanwhile, here’s some tools and information for you to keep doing your own research. I’m also highly interested in any feedback and pointers the readers have got. Thank you for your time.

--Justin Boland

Five Star Resources

Bruce Warila of Unsprung Media maintains a list of music industry facts and figures, a pipeline of important and current data, complete with citations. Thank you, Bruce.

The Hip Hop Demographic Project is a worthy, and especially thought-provoking, contribution to the study.

The entire demographics archive over at Pro Hip Hop is a mixed bag with a great deal of gems.

Pew Internet report on Teens and Social Media.

And of course, enjoy the bounty of Wikipedia: Marketing Research * Market Segments * Competitor Analysis * and if you’re really ready to dive in, Consumer Theory.

Audible Hype Interviews iCON the Mic King

2008-06-05T05:05:00Z

The Audible Hype Interview

With the “Reintroduction Mixtape,” you’re making a solid bid to change the way people see you, and your place in hip hop. Was there a lot of preparation and self-analysis involved with this new direction?

Well we’re moving into the Third Renaissance of hiphop and I’ve been talking about this publicly for awhile and there hasn’t been a high-profile release of mine that showcased anything more toward that direction. So the self-analysis and such has already been at play. I’m a Virgo, I sit here and critique all day everyday, I think that’s what has brought me this far! I didn’t come up with the idea of creating this mixtape until about a month or so ago. A lot of those songs had already been released but due to lack of push behind them they’re new to most people. Really there wasn’t much preparation I’ve been recording like crazy anyway it was just deciding what songs do I have that give people a good picture of what I’ve been doing recently and where I’m heading.

Is being as prolific as possible a core part of your strategy for 2008?

Absolutely, I’m planning to put out something digitally monthly. And do a big high-profile release quarterly but I have high quality standards so if it doesn’t actually happen it’ll be because of that. I’m still a quality over quantity guy but I’m pushing myself more than ever. In any event there will be more iCON the Mic King than ever this year.

Do you sell merchandise yourself at shows? Do you think that personal connection is a major factor in sales, night to night?

Again absolutely. I’m cutting out the middle man in all cases. The Third Renaissance is very much about the artists working for the fans and the fans directly supporting the artists. Just because I rap doesn’t mean I’m too good to speak with you and build a rapport with you. The people are my lifesblood, it’s only right that I treat them with the respect they deserve.

What’s your perspective on the business of collaborations? Can established rappers make good income off that, or do they mostly undervalue their verses and beats?

Collaborations are a complicated issue, man! I don’t personally believe it does much to validate anyone especially in the information age. I feel like people download the song and skip to featured verse listen to it a couple times and then erase the song. Let’s say it’s a hot song, it’s a hot song of yours that you can’t really perform unless that person is around. Businesswise it’s both. Established rappers can make good income off it but a smart businessman prices his product in the range of his customer so you have [insert rapper here] selling verses on his myspace for $500 or [insert producer here] selling beats for $50. I understand where they are coming in that you price it lower you sell a bunch, but it destroys utility. Most times people ask me to collab and I request what I am worth they say “well I can get [insert rapper here] for $500 man you gotta come down.” The economies of scale of collaborating are much different now than when rappers were much less accessible.

Do you feel the market for hip hop in Europe is more appreciative and supportive than the US?

Absolutely. The key difference is in their overall appreciation for music and the fact that they market rap shows as parties. Whereas in America a party and a show are two different things. The frame every show as a party so it’s understood that it will be a fun time full of music that everyone loves, there will be girls, and it will be something of quality. In America our view is too narrow on how we frame our shows so unless you are a fan of the person on the bill you’re not gonna go because you don’t assume it has a built in good time. In Europe they still have a structure in place that accounts for a good show experience. Europeans are also a lot more open-minded and accepting of new things! All notoriety being equal, I can rip it down in New York and everyone will stand there with their arms folded thinking “I woulda done this different” and I can do the same exact performance in Paris and people will be catching me when I stagedive and wildin’ out. It’s not as though we don’t have the propensity to do the same, go to a hipster show. It’s the exact same thing they frame their shows as parties and people come out and the secondary thing is someone is performing. Those shows are packed! There’s no reason we can’t reframe hiphop the same way!

What are the most valuable tools you’ve found for staying organized and juggling all the roles you play when you manage your own career?

Man I don’t have any secrets, it’s all a lot of work. I just make lists of things I have to do and do them as I feel like it. Of course making a spreadsheet of all your contacts is invaluable. The best thing I can suggest to anyone is to maintain correspondence with everyone. Building those relationships is good but you have to keep that warm rapport otherwise you are just a user and people will see that and be less inclined to help you. Also when you commit to doing something, actually do it. You’re not gonna get anywhere being flaky. Other than that I keep everything in order in emails, in my sidekick and such. Having a PDA is a must for this type of stuff. Of course the Internet, you can’t say enough about the Internet. Basically any contact you ever needed, any place you’ve wanted to go...it’s all there.

I was reading an interview where you advocate people “taking a systematic approach to achieving their dreams.” What was the foundation of your system in the past 2 years?

I think mostly I’m just a spoiled and stubborn kid. I see something I want I’m gonna go after it until I can’t anymore or I lose interest. With most things I lose interest very fast though. HipHop was just the one thing I always loved and kept me interested and remained a challenge so my drive and talent just kept taking action and then analyzing where things went wrong and perfecting it. You have to otherwise you will think you’re running in place because this is a game of inches. BUT my purpose shifted about a year and a half ago though. I fell in love and I say that in a rap interview with no shame so that should tell you something. HAHA! Yeah I fell in love and I’ve been more motivated than ever to make things happen in the name of that so I’ve been perfecting my system and taking control of more things, using all the resources available to me, doing a lot of self-analysis to remain ahead of the curve both artistically and businesswise. I found my inspiration and now my productivity is through the roof!

Further Brainfood from iCON the Mic King

There’s a lot of questions I didn’t ask, because iCON has already addressed them elsewhere. Here’s some highlights:

Daily Hustle and Grind

I’ve heard that your work ethic is unparalled. What’s a typical day like for iCON the Mic King?

Let’s take today for instance. Last night I had a show, drove home. Slept for a few hours. Right now I’m doing this interview then I have to work on a website for C-Rayz Walz, write six verses, practice 6 songs for a studio session tomorrow. I gotta work on my new site, respond to all my myspace messages, check on the progress of my next tour, contact promoters some spot dates, write a column for an online magazine, I’m going on tour with Souls of Mischief in a few weeks so I have to reorganize my set. Today’s not all that busy of a day.

--from ThaHipHop.com

Markets, Demographics, and Getting F***ing Paid

One of our aspiring interviewers, Visero wanted to know, “Do you think you’re making a big inpact on all of the Underground Hip-Hop or just the backpackers? And what will it take to reach the rest of your potential audience?”

Music is funny, you never know who is going to like yours or who it’s going to impact. A lot of the times I’ll play a song for someone and think they won’t understand it or feel my style at all and they turn around and tell me they really felt it. So I honestly don’t know who I’m making an impact on. I don’t look at it as the “Underground Hip-Hop” or “Backpacker” markets, the only way to survive this era of oversaturation is to forge your own market. That is what I’m attempting to do so I just make my music and do my shows and whoever likes it likes it.

--from Rapsearch interview

Dealing with Hip Hop “Journalists”

What question do wish people would ask you?

In general, not just with me, I’d like to see hip hop journalism take itself more seriously. I get a lot of cookie cutter interview questions where it’s like the interviewer clearly didn’t have much interest in the subject. When “Mike and the Fatman” came out the interviewers kept asking me about battling when I’d been retired for four years!!! If I did interviews I’d sift through every bit of available material on the person and basically ask everything that’s never been asked. I’d feel like I shouldn’t be interviewing the person if I didn’t truly care because otherwise it is a disservice to the reader and the artist. With that said I wish someone would ask me direct questions about my music. It’s easy to ask me about the sensationalized things around me, I wish people would listen to rhymes and ask me about the actual music.

--from UGSMAG

So obviously I’d like to apologize for asking the “Europe vs. USA” question, which he’s already answered a couple thousand times. In fact, one of those answers was so damn funny I have to share it again here:

It’s weird ‘cause sometimes I kinda feel silly because I’m up there and the people really don’t understand me? They’re really just responding to how loud I am, and my arm motions nahmean? I’m a lyricist I put a lot of focus on what I’m writing and shit. So I feel like what’s the point? I feel like I could just be making sounds and they would respond the same way.

And finally, check out iCON’s manifesto for the Third Reniassance: Taking Back the Music We Love, from Drop Magazine.