The Phenomenon of Featured Rappers, Part I

August 20th, 2011 | By Edwin

The world of music can be frightening for young rappers who are just starting out in the game today. It is a cutthroat environment and even rappers with a huge amount of talent can sometimes fall between the cracks. How can somebody stand out from the crowd? One technique that has existed since the early 90s was the “featured rapper.” Here are a few observation that I made about this phenomenon:

1) New rappers may establish themselves and gain fame, notoriety, and buzz by rapping a strong verse on an established album by a veteran. Some notable examples in recent memory include Lupe Fiasco, who got a significant amount of buzz by killing his guest verse on Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky.” J. Cole had his career boosted with a guest verse on The Blueprint 3 (a mediocre album, by the way) and on Wale‘s album Attention Deficit. Likely the most famous example of all was AZ’s historically fierce cameo on Nas’ Life’s a Bitch.

2) Conversely, established rappers can jump into new micro-niches of the hip hop culture with guest appearances on tracks that may diversify their portfolio. Lil’ Wayne fueled his rapid ascension to hip hop stardom not only with the incredible amount of mixtapes he put out, but also with cameo appearances ranging from Destiny’s Child to Wyclef Jean. He ensured that his music was constantly heard in both the streets and the radio.

3) Rappers can also form a cohesive group of sorts in which they can feed of each other’s styles and energies. One of the earliest examples of this was N.W.A, which consisted of  Arabian Prince, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren , all of which became solo legends in their own right. In the early 2000 era, conscious hip-hop merged with the native tongue movement and inspired rappers Common, Talib Kweli, and Mos Def. When you listen to an album like Black Star, you can hear the chemistry between them, the common sound they share and the lyrical ideas that they seem to effortlessly create today. This still continues on to this day (Young Money, for better or worse).

Just like how transcendent talents in the tech industry often make sweet music together by combining their energy, efforts and ideas together in the start up world, rappers can help each other reach levels that they can otherwise not achieve by themselves as long as the sound is cohesive, the chemistry is sound and (perhaps most importantly) they all actually like each other.

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How 50 Cent Applies Marketing Knowledge to Himself

July 26th, 2011 | By Edwin

I read an article recently that appealed to me, mainly because it contained a strange hybrid of two topics, both which I find extremely interesting: hip hop and marketing. After reading the article, it made me realize that 50 Cent is a lot smarter than what people make him out to be (heck, even what he makes himself out to be) and that he could rightly be defined as a sort of hip-hop marketing guru.

A few takeaways:

1) His street cred, which was carefully cultivated after being shot multiple times, was starting to fade away. Ironically, his two immensely successful albums that center around this street cred started erode his tough image.

2) As typical with a lot of young rap stars or athletes who become immensely rich in a short period of time, hands begin appearing. Palms up. Asking for money. 50 Cent found himself surrounded with people who were only looking for their own interests, and not his.

3) Fifty Cent found that his social circle increasingly consisted of white guys, in suits. Corporate label guys in suits don’t necessarily give you a good sense of new trends in the street, where Fiddy came from.

After some introspective thinking, what did he do? He recorded a track without his label’s knowledge and released to the public and watched for feedback (very Web 2.0). The public wanted harder stuff! He continually shortened the distance between himself and his fans with technology, and his “hustler’s mentality” now applied to Internet marketing with great success. Greene’s great article explains more, but with Twitter, the Internet, and all the marketing knowledge rap stars are now in possession of, the audience has less patience for rap stars who don’t get it. Except Lil’ Wayne, who can do whatever he wants.

Buy 50 Cent’s Latest and Surprisingly Good Album on Amazon now – on sale

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