From The Trunk To The Web, USD To Yen (and controlling our image along the way!) by R.S.

If the anecdotal evidence, such as the hollow boasts of connections and impending success we hear from individuals we soldier with in corporate America’s cubicles, is to be believed, I am one of about 2 million brothers who currently has a “rap CD” and is trying to make progress in the music industry. If you're on the East Coast, like I am, I’m probably a little different than the cat in the cube next to you, since my self-financed and produced CD is actually being sold.

It’s been an interesting couple of months. I definitely appreciate the support I have received in the United States, but what has really excited, and surprised me, is the amount of support that I have been receiving from other nations, such as Japan.

You know the routine. You have a grand idea and start planning how everything is going to happen, step by step. Then when you actually put your plan into action, it never goes as you expected. Well I released my independent CD "....Louder Than Words" in June and had a specific plan to tackle the tri-state area (NJ, NY, PA). In a recent interview, Sheek Louch of The Lox spoke of how it is impossible to release an independent cd in the tri-state area as people are just not receptive to independent music as they are down south. He’s right, and I expected to struggle, but since this is where I live, I decided to pull a Booker T. Washington and cast my bucket down anyway.

I put all of my energy and resources into marketing the "Adult Contemporary Hip Hop" brand and promoting "…Louder Than Words" in my immediate area. My team and I were hustling (in the tradition of E-40 as opposed to some knuckle-dragging dopeman) and gradually racking up sales and building interest. At the same time, I also put my CD on sale on a 3rd party website. Every time a cd sells on that web site, I receive a notification via email.

Well, two days after I posted my CD on that website, the flood began. The CD sold out and has gone on to sell out on the web site three times in the last four months (And we’re not done; sales are still coming in!). The strangest thing is that a large number of the sales were coming from Japan! Apparently the initial Japanese purchaser stumbled on to my CD and began spreading the word among his friends and in his network. We have often heard about how big Hip Hop music has become in Japan, but I was very surprised that my CD, which is radically different from the cookie-cutter content that is often pushed, would sell so well without any promotion (or real effort on my part). I've even found my cd on sale on a Japanese web site and found a review of my CD in Japanese (that bugged me out)! My
own website, www.adultcontemporaryhiphop.com, has received a large amount of visitors since June, but again I am receiving significant amount of traffic from foreign countries including Japan (coming in strong), U.K., Denmark, India, Chile, Germany, Malaysia, Australia, and Seychelles. My first single "Get Away" also took off overseas, specifically in the U.K. The single debuted as the seventh most requested song on the UK internet station aiiradio.net and remained the most requested Hip Hop song on their chart for the month to follow.

Maybe if I had actually created a plan to reap those Japanese sales I wouldn’t have been so surprised. Chuck D of Public Enemy, whose new CD New Whirl Odor is out now, has regularly noted how it is important for American artists to get on their grind and build support in different spots around the world. Beginning with Public Enemy’s first album, Yo Bumrush The Show, PE has always made sure to cultivate a multi-country fan base that could sustain them whether they were “hot” in the immediate American market (“been through two passports/ass stay up in airports” – World Tour Sessions from PE’s There’s A Poison Going On). I’ve heard that Speech of Arrested Development has a following in Japan. O.C. of Digging In The Crates had a leaked album called Starchild which sold well in Japan and in an interview he noted that Japan is D.I.T.C.’s biggest market. I wonder how one of my old favorites, Lord Finesse, sells out there. Anyway, now that I have started to experience some of what Chuck has been talking about, and what the news about O.C. and others indicates, what I have heard about working to cultivate international Hip Hop opportunities has more meaning to me.

I can't thank all of my overseas supporters (and U.S. as well) enough. My team is always looking for opportunities to promote our brand so if anyone has a hook up, holla back! Without my overseas sales my company would not be meeting the financial goals we set with the release of the album "...Louder Than Words".

R.S. is song writer and emcee who produces “Adult Contemporary Hip Hop.” Visit R.S., and become familiar with his music at AdultContemporaryHipHop.com or www.rsj-online.com. His independent CD “…Louder Than Words” is available now. Email R.S.at rs@rsj-online.com

My First Article: Hip Hop Fridays: Adult Contemporary Hip Hop by R.S.

BLACKELECTORATE.COM is a leading daily news analysis website covering politics, business, religion, culture, national affairs, and international affairs as they relate to Black People anywhere in the world. Recently Black Electorate.com featured the following R.S. article for their HipHop Fridays section. Enjoy!

http://www.blackelectorate.com/articles.asp?ID=1395

I am a 28 year old who has been listening to Hip Hop as far back as my memory takes me and I continue to listen and buy albums on a consistent basis. But, I can’t help but remember a time in Hip Hop where there were several themes running throughout mainstream Hip Hop simultaneously. We had artists with a wide range of subject matter like Public Enemy, NWA, Big Daddy Kane, A Tribe Called Quest, and Cypress Hill all present and successful at the same moment in time. There is still diversity in Hip Hop, but it is not currently reflected in the mainstream. We have several artists tackling subject matter that differs from the standard thug fantasy in 2005, such as Common, Talib Kweli, Masta Ace, etc., but it has been extremely difficult for most of these artists to be seen by the masses and their album sales have suffered as a result. As I remember seeing it covered on Black Electorate, even when a rapper like Styles P, who received radio rotation with both his song “Get High” and his appearance on Akon’s “Locked Up,” comes out with a first single title “I’m Black,” and speaks to Black pride, he is silenced. “Getting Low” appears to be the order of the day.

I remember an episode of The Simpsons where Homer Simpson remarked, “Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974; it's a scientific fact!" Perhaps you are imagining that I am about to go down that road, which Cedric Muhammad addressed in his Rap COINTELPRO Part XVI: The Four Most Important Artists On The Horizon - Saigon, Immortal Technique, Mikkey, and Papoose, where I am going to romanticize the 80’s and early 90’s, as an old head, and leave it at that. Hold on. I have some nostalgia going on, but I still love the music. I enjoy some mainstream artists, but like a lot of people my age, I wrestle with much of the subject matter.

I grew up in the suburbs, and I’m not alone in that, but how often do you see a Black suburban experience represented in mainstream Hip Hop? I know about some birds, but I was cutting the grass not polluting the block. My peers who live in lower income neighborhoods, who might have their area shouted out on a record, aren’t seeing their experience really represented either. Whether we are repping the “gated communities”, the burbs, or the ghetto, whether we are poor, working class, or middle class, most of us aren’t the criminals that are over represented in the mainstream. I recall a Tupac interview where he stated, “The same crime element White people are scared of, Black people are scared of. We next door to the killer, all them killers they letting out, they’re right there in that building. Just cause we Black we get along with the killers or something? We need protection too!” So even when we might know, or live nearby, killers and the thug flavor of the moment, most of us are allergic to giving or receiving random gun shots to the brain. So-called “Reality Rap” doesn’t reflect most of our realities.

As anyone who has listened to the radio, watched videos, or been bored by an extremely whiny Hip Hop Intelligentsia editorial knows, mainstream Hip Hop is currently glorifying some of the most negative aspects of life in some of our communities and is marketing this material to teenagers. And to be honest, when I was a kid, I listened to The Chronic where we heard Black pride anthems like “Rat a tat tat tata tat like that/never hesitate to leave a nigger on his back” (side note, a friend once told me how when he was in High School, a White kid “innocently” exclaimed that “Rat a tat tat” was “real rap”….no comment). As Star, of The Star and Bucwild Show, says the marketing of this material to our kids and younger brothers and sisters is a “quagmire in and of itself.” Whatever issues we might have with younger people having such material marketed towards them, let’s table that for the moment, and look at this from another side. I still love the music. I am an adult. Am I going to drive to work, having exchanged my baggy jeans for a finely made suit, and roll into the office parking lot bumping “Rat a tat tat” or advising my co-workers that I am about to “put a nigger’s head out?” I’m single, but when I am married, and then choose to have children, am I going to blast some Three Six Mafia with a pregnant wife in the car or a baby in the back? It was one thing when I was younger, but as I am now older I have to exercise more discretion and thought. But again, much of this material is marketed towards teenagers. I have to find a way to satisfy my love for Hip Hop while at the same time refusing to lower myself, as an adult, and follow trends that are created for teenagers. I have heard Chuck D use the term “extended adolescence” to describe where some of us are mentally and in his July 2003 Terrordome, MistaChuck gave us an example of how silly some of us can look, “When I see a whole family in a HUMMER on dubs, seriously it tosses me for a loop 4 real. Or a young mother blasting a kitted out sound system with a baby chair in the back with her child in it. Don’t let hip hop make us stupid.” Seriously.

Again as a 28 year old, I feel like there is a minimal amount of mainstream Hip Hop that I can properly fit into my daily life so I make a conscious effort to seek out and support those artists who are covering subject matter and topics that are relevant to my life. I respect those artists who are making the effort, but still feel there is a void in popular Hip Hop music. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy some “negative” Hip Hop, and I enjoy some childish Hip Hop, but I need more than that for my plate, and my portions of these types of Hip Hop are getting smaller over time and circumstance (as they should). Cedric Muhammad noted how the artists who were popular when I was younger will not return in the same way, and that is fine; I want the younger brothers and sisters to get on the ground floor with newer artists. At the same time, the older heads need to be taken care of as well. There is room for all of us. In my first paragraph, I made a point of saying how at one time we had several types of artists popular at the same time, so ideally, it would be nice if we could have more diversity in the mainstream again, with the addition of an effort to promote Hip Hop for adults. Now that Hip Hop has been around for over three decades, there are a large number of adults who have grown up on Hip Hop that have been largely ignored by mainstream and independent Hip Hop as well. I know that many of my peers are, as Common stated in "Chi-City," “tired of rap” and would love to hear some music in the Hip Hop form that would be relevant to their lives . In addition, I’m sure you have friends who complain that they cannot play Hip Hop CDs in front of their kids, even if it is the edited version, because “if you got big ____, with a matching_______” isn’t fooling anybody. So a friend of mine and I, came up with the idea of me creating what we call an “Adult Contemporary Hip Hop™” album, which ended up becoming …Louder Than Words”. On the album I tackle real life (work, relationships, society, etc.) situations from an adult perspective over smooth tracks that people in my age group and above have experienced or can relate to. What a novel idea; we are actually marketing Hip Hop towards adults! I’m sure a decent percentage of those reading this article are doing so from work and would enjoy hearing Hip Hop that spoke to the trials and tribulations of corporate America and the workplace in general. You think slanging rocks is rough? Rent Office Space and holler at me. I’ll bet that many of those reading this article are tired of the daily grind and would love to take a quick get away with their significant other that doesn’t involve either one of you disrespectfully shouting for a bitch or nigger to spread, swallow, get on the ho stroll, elbow someone, or open fire on fellow club-goers. As a mature Hip Hop listener, I’m sure many of you wouldn’t mind hearing more songs about relationships from a hindsight and perspective that would remind you of experiences that helped shape you into the person you have become (i.e. post-breakup the man has gone beyond impotent whining about “chickenhead ho bitches.”). Maybe you are the character Masta Ace portrayed on “Do It Man”, off of his Long Hot Summer, who doesn’t want to get caught up in the violence that guest Big Noyd portrayed with his character. Maybe you want to hear a rhyme about a sister getting rich legally with a business that she built; if emcees who have never sold gum can rap about selling drugs they could give sisters and brothers building wealth and institutions legally a voice too. Public Enemy has two new CDs coming out; maybe you’re like Chuck D and can relate to being a Black Man who doesn’t play video games and doesn’t present himself as dependent upon a corporation or a government.

Speaking of not being dependent, it would be nice if the major corporations that are currently controlling Hip Hop would provide some “real” reality rap, and different perspectives, but I have the feeling that if we wait for them to change the direction of Hip Hop, we’ll be waiting for a LONG time. Listeners who want a change can organize, and maybe stimulate market forces that could force corporations to promote cleaner, more thoughtful, and more diverse material, but depending upon an outside human power is dangerous. I approve of efforts to force those changes, through the market, but we already have the power, to influence what we hear, that the corporations exercise in the mainstream. We often hear older people whine about how Hip Hop is “dead,” but it isn’t. You don’t always have to feed at the general corporate trough; just look for Hip Hop that suits you and support it. If you are reading this editorial you obviously have access to the internet, and so even if you don’t have time (or are just too lazy) to comb stores and attend shows, you have easy access to a large variety of Hip Hop. The diversity is out there. Right now I have a range of cds in my car’s CD changer including works by Lil' Jon, DJ Quik, Public Enemy, Masta Ace, Will Smith, Beanie Siegel, Common, and Black Market Militia, so I have created my own “musical reality” and you can do the same. Don’t just whine about Hip Hop and give up. Whether the younger brothers and sisters pick them up, go and pick up favorites like Wise Intelligent and X-Clan when they offer us new releases. Don’t forget about your local scene; a new artist that you could enjoy might be emerging in your town. And I can’t stress it enough, please, if you can find the time in your busy schedules, remember to seek out and support the live shows of quality artists. We do not have to settle for what a corporation throws at us. By supporting artists who offer us entertaining art, with substance, we might be able to force these corporations to balance their artist rosters and playlists, but since we can’t depend on those outside powers, it is more important that in doing this, we give “our” artists the encouragement and means to continue.

R.S. is song writer and emcee who produces “Adult Contemporary Hip Hop.” Visit R.S., and become familiar with his music at AdultContemporaryHipHop.com or www.rsj-online.com. His independent CD “…Louder Than Words” is available now. Email R.S.at rs@rsj-online.com