TO WHOM THIS MAY CONCERN;
January 15, 2008
So the DEF JAM job eh?" These same questions lead me to ask what are the qualifications for the DEF JAM presidency job? Clearly it's an easier job than what BARACK and HILLARY are going for and even my man ISIAH THOMAS of the KNICKS, as politics and sports also are thorough on resume qualifications...
I think first of all, the masses are made to care/ know little about the history, present and most especially the future of the recording business. When they talk about hip hop suffering, the rappers not doing the numbers, all the artists at DEF JAM not doing the numbers, it's silly street talk, and you cannot cash it in. Ain't JAY Z's fault, it was bound to happen. Nobody will do those numbers with CDs again folks and the record labels need to be honest themselves into readjustment. With lawyers and accountants who've assumed the high positions of guarding / spending stockholder's money, the pure notion of themselves merely calling themselves record labels is as old as a dusty tape recorder. The blog on allhiphop.com had folks asking when did PE last go platinum? Or dumb sht like you cannot compare this to sports? Well this was one of the pros-cons bloggings, post my initial statement.
' He's thinking in terms of live performances driving physical sales rather than, as the new world is shaping up to be, physical product selling tickets for gigs. The idea of "coaching" bands to play well live isn't a bad one, but how does a record label - with 100 years of experience of making studio recordings - convince an artist they've got the skills to do that? If the labels are merely going to subcontract this role to people who know what they're doing, why wouldn't an artist merely employ these brains, trusts themselves instead of letting Def Jam top slice the fee?'
Well my answer here is that we are talking about a total reconditioning of a genre at least from a label/brand standpoint. Granted these are not the 1980's where it was rap against the world, DEF JAM had the first advantage of being an independent company with major distribution, access, and potential revenue power behind a new music. It's doubtful DEF JAM would've been a world force without CBS and later SONY at the time. As well as the balance of the artists we had. There were other strong labels and artists at that time but the diversity in both the sound and stage, backed with the powerhouse co-signing of RUN DMC gave an advantage then. Back then artists HAD to be distinctly different to standout on stage, sound and look. The difference nowadays is that no brainer carbon marketing by un-street office people determining the street definition, has resulted in too many artists being similar and not much of a notch above the 3 million artists perched on MYSPACE.
Yes, it can drive either way, the physical product still selling tickets for gigs and vice versa. But no longer will there be tolerated disappointment from the live aspect. In my belief the artists were made to rely too much on the record company to be the end all be all, one stop service for everything. The truth is that nothing other than laziness set into hip hop artists post 1990. As they climbed to more superficial imagery the performance area fell off, and the record companies saw less and less of a necessary connection between the two, opposed to the much more favored videos which rap became the last genre to use it as a staple.
The history of recording says that technology rules the roost. In the past recording was a business card for the artist as an act. Now the performance has seeped out of what started out as the epitome of performance art. Hip hop, meaning rap, DJ, dancing, and art, was multi-fold in titillating excitement. It still is. Just because a car can run on half its cylinders, don't mean it's running right. Hip hop is running on half, and DEF JAM just needs a rewiring job to be a prototype leader in the art form again.
It will never be easy, and never meant to be either. I would look at DEF JAM like a former player would look at a slipped overspending franchise. I counter to those who say that I'm not relevant or don't have corporate experience, please grow up, this is not a popularity contest. It's based on understanding the best of what an entertainer can do, not simply accepting where they're at. About today's rappers we need to know that advice and coaching are not as present. No one wants a substandard. I was making a sports analogy to make it simpler in understanding that very same age and racial demographic. The film industry doesn't accept it, much of the modern recording companies no longer accept it, and I've seen too many of these cats clean up their act in order to 'act' in movies.
1. First they already have superstars that need to be taken care of - LL, LUDACRIS, KANYE WEST, NE-YO , RHIANNA , REDMAN, THE ROOTS.etc. LL is simply like the BOB DYLAN of the label, carte blanche, and you can only have one. There's a lot of artists who also need a dose of reality of what's to come. The numbers will continue to fall as far as CDs are concerned. It's not a fault it's a reality. There will only be 2-3 artists, period, who might be able to sell CD figures resembling the past. A top 15 should signify massive CD distribution, and everybody else should prepare for digital distribution or regional saturation.
2. Severe cutbacks need to happen, staff and artists. The aspect of outsourcing and subcontracting makes sense. Again the higher ups make the cuts. The lower ones will have to earn that offline priority. It's just the way that manufacturing costs have to be reduced. Again the digital solution allows every recording, archived, future, and current to be labeled and released. The DEF JAM name is the legit branding to tag rap/hip hop that's 'next level' stuff. DEF JAMdigital.
3. New artists as well as artists who will suffer the cost factor of being too expensive for the forwardness of the label. The crap shoot bling days are over, except for your all stars. DEFJAMdigital can be 75% of the labels releases possibly 80%. Advances will be low in lieu of a shared revenue system. DEFJAMdigital is the answer to how people will continue to get their media from multimedia acts no longer merely recording artists.
4. Catalog should be treated like they do at VERVE, BLUE NOTE and COLUMBIA jazz. There have been attempts, but....rarely do those people that handled black music in its creation given the keys to the vaults and archives to caretake it.
5. At the end of the day these artists need to get in front of an audience they expect to pay them. If they're not impressive they gotta work on it. There are millions of artists out there to do the same thing. DEF JAM can no longer just be a crutch to hype up something ordinary to the realm of more noticed. The thug and gangster rappers who've been cute as a two -dimensional facade to white America, and press release short bid tendency to gain the street attention of black folk in America. This cycle is stupid and has to stop somewhere. My roughest, toughest rappers would have to entertain like Johnny Cash and I would set up prison tours as benefits.
If artists gonna be what they be, then my advice is - play it all the all the way. Be a service to somebody. Somebody also noted that this isn't exactly a morality camp, I agree but I also must say that the facts are proven that the old tactics of fooling the crowd without moving them ain't bringing in the loot either. The numbers don't lie and everyone is crying about the numbers. It's the law of diminishing returns. Lack of faith in the product. Sports doesn't really have a fall off point, does it? The film industry doesn't either. Maybe companies, franchises, have their ups and downs but the standard is connected to long term fan satisfaction, so that they will come back for more.
As for myself, I got a lot of things done and out of the way in '07, started and therefore completed in my vision and opinion. So it's probably the best time to change my bio up again. In these out of sight out of mind times, it's like you have to wear it on your forehead, or if you're black commit some crime and get busted to keep in the news. Ever since 1982 I had built my focus and direction within 2, 3, to 5 year plans and I would say it has kept true 80%. Since 2004 and after finishing up the benchmark of our 60th nation, 60th tour (including a national, international, and participation on the US successful ROCK THE BELLS tour), 7 albums of past, and new studio material including last year's acclaimed HOW YOU SELL SOUL TO A SOULESS PEOPLE WHO SOLD THEIR SOUL???. 7 DVD projects, capping it off with a growing film festival documentary called WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME and the emergence of the PE comic book upon the scene has made the group a brand on its own steam. Meaning little or no outside investment. To have closed out the BET AWARDS in JUNE and breaking the 'SOUL' album on the JIMMY KIMMEL SHOW in AUGUST was no small feat for an independent.
The launching and directed design of key web-supersites (RAPSTATION, PUBLICENEMY.COM the oldest ranking artist websites, and SLAMjamz.com), since the turn of the century has kept up the pulse of my surroundings. With no corporate investment. I've ventured into the mobile phone ( CHUCK D MOBILE ) and hardware manufacturing fields (MEDIASTREET PRODUCTS ) regarding delivery systems for music and entertainment. Headed into my 16th year on the college and university lecture circuit on my topics RAP, RACE, REALITY, and TECHNOLOGY. From that, 2 books ten years apart, FIGHT THE POWER in 1997 and last year's LYRICS OF A RAP REVOLUTIONARY. On top of this being requested to keynote MIDEMnet on the world's biggest music business gathering end of this month in CANNES, FRANCE. While I might have missed the boat on the clothing line boom after starting RAPP STYLE in 1992, and the digital gold rush of invested company facades at the turn of the century, I have predicted the present of these record companies clearly.
In 1999 I moved as an artist, my group PUBLIC ENEMY, away from major label distribution and positioned it into a bold new world. As a visionary my role is to always forsee different growing areas in communication and art outreach. It really wasn't done to spite, although I had thought that RUSSELL SIMMONS and LYOR COHEN were stuck in a holding pattern of trying to sell the rest of the company to UNIVERSAL and line themselves rich at everyone's expense. Which they did and I was happy for them, all I cared was whether my catalog and songs were in the best of caretaking. We couldn't be there at the same time. It was a bold new world, thick with corporate money, looking to sell and get mo money. I had an old school way of approach, after all I signed with RICK RUBIN in 1986, making profit in a straight jacket contract. Always coming in mad under budget because we had to.
The one project I allowed to go this super marketed way of the dollar beast had gone GOLD but over budget. Crazy. Technology grabbed me just as it did 20 years earlier with HANK and KEITH SHOCKLEE's two SPECTRUM turntables and a microphone. I stepped away from the archaic way that doomed the recording business, well in advance into a world that they are all staring up at.
Clear on how the business works but increasingly puzzled on how the chief operators think is how I gonna put in this application. When JAY Z stepped down from the DEF JAM presidency last week , I had this picture in my head of a vacant penthouse setting with a lot of toys on the floor. Expensive ones at that. Besides thinking that JAY is the greatest emcee of all time, I also think that he is the no brainer opportunist of the money era. It was bound to happen. He was evolutionary, not really revolutionary. This is not a knock on him , it is what it is, if it wasn't him it would've been somebody else within the corporate accepted arms. He is smart to recognize this surrounding. He is a one of a kind, at a time artist , a brand like Jordan.
Business wise for the record industry, the opportunity , the doors, and the audience at the turn of the century was mature to accept a high finance business model for rap. No longer kid's stuff, the snuffing of the independent rap attempts was evident with the big financial corps invested trust of making it back 20 fold. No, I wasn't part of that. My artistic power period was 10 years prior, convincing the majors that albums in CD format were viable in rap, not singles. I knew that. And I knew my financial opportunity even with my straight jacket contract was better than my predecessors who'd built the damn thing. FLASH and The 5, BAM, MO and the T3, even RUN-DMC because I had the opportunity to re-niggergotiate.
I always started some small imprint but never chose to take either one of 2 roads; 1. Get deep financing to pay enormous money to feed some non trusting system or 2. Get behind something I didn't believe in. I, instead, waited for this tech transition. A lot of cats who rode gangster to the riches who many were totally the opposite in their true nature,and so I for one took a natural approach with my own funds and later with SLAMjamz, foresaw the licensing area more viable than competing for the radio and retail shelf .
So in turn, I think this T-dome is another address in a campaign to run for the DEF JAM presidency. Oh hell with the title, it's whatever JAY Z stepped down from. I think this public notice is extended to DOUG MORRIS and L. A. REID both of whom were very critical of this music world switch early on and now claim to embrace it. In an article recently in WIRED magazine, Mr. Morris had claimed he didn't see it coming, meaning the digital revolution. When he realized it was among the companies they fought it without identifying it. It was sad hearing that he didn't know who to turn to. It's the language of kings and high order that often blurs all other sounds from beneath. This was the sound at the turn of the century, the sounds of technology turning the pages.
Now again we are talking DEF JAM. Not ISLAND, ATCO, SUN, GEFFEN, A&M or MOTOWN, although I do have some ideas for MOTOWN to raise fan awareness that ANDRE HARRELL could've used some years back but I won't go there. In sports there are reasons that they always bring the past to sell the future, think CELTICS- hello. But it's also a reason that these music guys are not in the sports world. Many of these are business people who really ain't in the music world either. I'm just trying to turn the smell of briefcase down.
' He's thinking in terms of live performances driving physical sales rather than, as the new world is shaping up to be, physical product selling tickets for gigs. The idea of "coaching" bands to play well live isn't a bad one, but how does a record label - with 100 years of experience of making studio recordings - convince an artist they've got the skills to do that? If the labels are merely going to subcontract this role to people who know what they're doing, why wouldn't an artist merely employ these brains, trusts themselves instead of letting Def Jam top slice the fee?'
Well my answer here is that we are talking about a total reconditioning of a genre at least from a label/brand standpoint. Granted these are not the 1980's where it was rap against the world, DEF JAM had the first advantage of being an independent company with major distribution, access, and potential revenue power behind a new music. It's doubtful DEF JAM would've been a world force without CBS and later SONY at the time. As well as the balance of the artists we had. There were other strong labels and artists at that time but the diversity in both the sound and stage, backed with the powerhouse co-signing of RUN DMC gave an advantage then. Back then artists HAD to be distinctly different to standout on stage, sound and look. The difference nowadays is that no brainer carbon marketing by un-street office people determining the street definition, has resulted in too many artists being similar and not much of a notch above the 3 million artists perched on MYSPACE.
Yes, it can drive either way, the physical product still selling tickets for gigs and vice versa. But no longer will there be tolerated disappointment from the live aspect. In my belief the artists were made to rely too much on the record company to be the end all be all, one stop service for everything. The truth is that nothing other than laziness set into hip hop artists post 1990. As they climbed to more superficial imagery the performance area fell off, and the record companies saw less and less of a necessary connection between the two, opposed to the much more favored videos which rap became the last genre to use it as a staple.
The history of recording says that technology rules the roost. In the past recording was a business card for the artist as an act. Now the performance has seeped out of what started out as the epitome of performance art. Hip hop, meaning rap, DJ, dancing, and art, was multi-fold in titillating excitement. It still is. Just because a car can run on half its cylinders, don't mean it's running right. Hip hop is running on half, and DEF JAM just needs a rewiring job to be a prototype leader in the art form again.
It will never be easy, and never meant to be either. I would look at DEF JAM like a former player would look at a slipped overspending franchise. I counter to those who say that I'm not relevant or don't have corporate experience, please grow up, this is not a popularity contest. It's based on understanding the best of what an entertainer can do, not simply accepting where they're at. About today's rappers we need to know that advice and coaching are not as present. No one wants a substandard. I was making a sports analogy to make it simpler in understanding that very same age and racial demographic. The film industry doesn't accept it, much of the modern recording companies no longer accept it, and I've seen too many of these cats clean up their act in order to 'act' in movies.
1. First they already have superstars that need to be taken care of - LL, LUDACRIS, KANYE WEST, NE-YO , RHIANNA , REDMAN, THE ROOTS.etc. LL is simply like the BOB DYLAN of the label, carte blanche, and you can only have one. There's a lot of artists who also need a dose of reality of what's to come. The numbers will continue to fall as far as CDs are concerned. It's not a fault it's a reality. There will only be 2-3 artists, period, who might be able to sell CD figures resembling the past. A top 15 should signify massive CD distribution, and everybody else should prepare for digital distribution or regional saturation.
2. Severe cutbacks need to happen, staff and artists. The aspect of outsourcing and subcontracting makes sense. Again the higher ups make the cuts. The lower ones will have to earn that offline priority. It's just the way that manufacturing costs have to be reduced. Again the digital solution allows every recording, archived, future, and current to be labeled and released. The DEF JAM name is the legit branding to tag rap/hip hop that's 'next level' stuff. DEF JAMdigital.
3. New artists as well as artists who will suffer the cost factor of being too expensive for the forwardness of the label. The crap shoot bling days are over, except for your all stars. DEFJAMdigital can be 75% of the labels releases possibly 80%. Advances will be low in lieu of a shared revenue system. DEFJAMdigital is the answer to how people will continue to get their media from multimedia acts no longer merely recording artists.
4. Catalog should be treated like they do at VERVE, BLUE NOTE and COLUMBIA jazz. There have been attempts, but....rarely do those people that handled black music in its creation given the keys to the vaults and archives to caretake it.
5. At the end of the day these artists need to get in front of an audience they expect to pay them. If they're not impressive they gotta work on it. There are millions of artists out there to do the same thing. DEF JAM can no longer just be a crutch to hype up something ordinary to the realm of more noticed. The thug and gangster rappers who've been cute as a two -dimensional facade to white America, and press release short bid tendency to gain the street attention of black folk in America. This cycle is stupid and has to stop somewhere. My roughest, toughest rappers would have to entertain like Johnny Cash and I would set up prison tours as benefits.
If artists gonna be what they be, then my advice is - play it all the all the way. Be a service to somebody. Somebody also noted that this isn't exactly a morality camp, I agree but I also must say that the facts are proven that the old tactics of fooling the crowd without moving them ain't bringing in the loot either. The numbers don't lie and everyone is crying about the numbers. It's the law of diminishing returns. Lack of faith in the product. Sports doesn't really have a fall off point, does it? The film industry doesn't either. Maybe companies, franchises, have their ups and downs but the standard is connected to long term fan satisfaction, so that they will come back for more.
As for myself, I got a lot of things done and out of the way in '07, started and therefore completed in my vision and opinion. So it's probably the best time to change my bio up again. In these out of sight out of mind times, it's like you have to wear it on your forehead, or if you're black commit some crime and get busted to keep in the news. Ever since 1982 I had built my focus and direction within 2, 3, to 5 year plans and I would say it has kept true 80%. Since 2004 and after finishing up the benchmark of our 60th nation, 60th tour (including a national, international, and participation on the US successful ROCK THE BELLS tour), 7 albums of past, and new studio material including last year's acclaimed HOW YOU SELL SOUL TO A SOULESS PEOPLE WHO SOLD THEIR SOUL???. 7 DVD projects, capping it off with a growing film festival documentary called WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME and the emergence of the PE comic book upon the scene has made the group a brand on its own steam. Meaning little or no outside investment. To have closed out the BET AWARDS in JUNE and breaking the 'SOUL' album on the JIMMY KIMMEL SHOW in AUGUST was no small feat for an independent.
The launching and directed design of key web-supersites (RAPSTATION, PUBLICENEMY.COM the oldest ranking artist websites, and SLAMjamz.com), since the turn of the century has kept up the pulse of my surroundings. With no corporate investment. I've ventured into the mobile phone ( CHUCK D MOBILE ) and hardware manufacturing fields (MEDIASTREET PRODUCTS ) regarding delivery systems for music and entertainment. Headed into my 16th year on the college and university lecture circuit on my topics RAP, RACE, REALITY, and TECHNOLOGY. From that, 2 books ten years apart, FIGHT THE POWER in 1997 and last year's LYRICS OF A RAP REVOLUTIONARY. On top of this being requested to keynote MIDEMnet on the world's biggest music business gathering end of this month in CANNES, FRANCE. While I might have missed the boat on the clothing line boom after starting RAPP STYLE in 1992, and the digital gold rush of invested company facades at the turn of the century, I have predicted the present of these record companies clearly.
In 1999 I moved as an artist, my group PUBLIC ENEMY, away from major label distribution and positioned it into a bold new world. As a visionary my role is to always forsee different growing areas in communication and art outreach. It really wasn't done to spite, although I had thought that RUSSELL SIMMONS and LYOR COHEN were stuck in a holding pattern of trying to sell the rest of the company to UNIVERSAL and line themselves rich at everyone's expense. Which they did and I was happy for them, all I cared was whether my catalog and songs were in the best of caretaking. We couldn't be there at the same time. It was a bold new world, thick with corporate money, looking to sell and get mo money. I had an old school way of approach, after all I signed with RICK RUBIN in 1986, making profit in a straight jacket contract. Always coming in mad under budget because we had to.
The one project I allowed to go this super marketed way of the dollar beast had gone GOLD but over budget. Crazy. Technology grabbed me just as it did 20 years earlier with HANK and KEITH SHOCKLEE's two SPECTRUM turntables and a microphone. I stepped away from the archaic way that doomed the recording business, well in advance into a world that they are all staring up at.
Clear on how the business works but increasingly puzzled on how the chief operators think is how I gonna put in this application. When JAY Z stepped down from the DEF JAM presidency last week , I had this picture in my head of a vacant penthouse setting with a lot of toys on the floor. Expensive ones at that. Besides thinking that JAY is the greatest emcee of all time, I also think that he is the no brainer opportunist of the money era. It was bound to happen. He was evolutionary, not really revolutionary. This is not a knock on him , it is what it is, if it wasn't him it would've been somebody else within the corporate accepted arms. He is smart to recognize this surrounding. He is a one of a kind, at a time artist , a brand like Jordan.
Business wise for the record industry, the opportunity , the doors, and the audience at the turn of the century was mature to accept a high finance business model for rap. No longer kid's stuff, the snuffing of the independent rap attempts was evident with the big financial corps invested trust of making it back 20 fold. No, I wasn't part of that. My artistic power period was 10 years prior, convincing the majors that albums in CD format were viable in rap, not singles. I knew that. And I knew my financial opportunity even with my straight jacket contract was better than my predecessors who'd built the damn thing. FLASH and The 5, BAM, MO and the T3, even RUN-DMC because I had the opportunity to re-niggergotiate.
I always started some small imprint but never chose to take either one of 2 roads; 1. Get deep financing to pay enormous money to feed some non trusting system or 2. Get behind something I didn't believe in. I, instead, waited for this tech transition. A lot of cats who rode gangster to the riches who many were totally the opposite in their true nature,and so I for one took a natural approach with my own funds and later with SLAMjamz, foresaw the licensing area more viable than competing for the radio and retail shelf .
So in turn, I think this T-dome is another address in a campaign to run for the DEF JAM presidency. Oh hell with the title, it's whatever JAY Z stepped down from. I think this public notice is extended to DOUG MORRIS and L. A. REID both of whom were very critical of this music world switch early on and now claim to embrace it. In an article recently in WIRED magazine, Mr. Morris had claimed he didn't see it coming, meaning the digital revolution. When he realized it was among the companies they fought it without identifying it. It was sad hearing that he didn't know who to turn to. It's the language of kings and high order that often blurs all other sounds from beneath. This was the sound at the turn of the century, the sounds of technology turning the pages.
Now again we are talking DEF JAM. Not ISLAND, ATCO, SUN, GEFFEN, A&M or MOTOWN, although I do have some ideas for MOTOWN to raise fan awareness that ANDRE HARRELL could've used some years back but I won't go there. In sports there are reasons that they always bring the past to sell the future, think CELTICS- hello. But it's also a reason that these music guys are not in the sports world. Many of these are business people who really ain't in the music world either. I'm just trying to turn the smell of briefcase down.
Oh yeah, HNY '08
mistachuck@rapstation.com
Side note:
Myspace Mondays returns next week. Sorry Praverb... You've still got next...
