is more music more music, or does it become just noise?
Over at Ohword, they used a post on a video from up and comer Jay Rock (one of his 30 songs/30 days project) to briefly address the issue of hip-hop marketing strategy. Specfically, they address the once innovative, now seemingly expected and common X songs/freestyles/videos in X days strategy.
If you guys have read our blog for a while, or ever checked out 3sidez, you probably have heard us talk about this a bit. The theory is that you become loyal to your fanbase through giving them a shitload of material.
This is the idea and main reason behind t he success of mixtapes.
As far back as old DJ Clue and Funk Flex tapes, to the mixtape-fueled rise of Fabolous, 50 cent, Lloyd Banks, and countless others, most recently Wayne, we as fans used the tapes to see what they could do as artists. They would be so confident in abilities that they would give us these cheaper, or even free, incarnations of albums…it almost builds a charitable relationship between artist and listener, while benefitting labels too, of course. You build trust…
And then Wayne took it to another level, at least in my view, by releasing obscene amounts of songs. Few artists have enough talent or charisma for that to work, for him it did. That definitely upped the Ante, and helped beget the aforementioned X songs in X days thing. But now that it’s so common…is it played out? Does it feel fake to yall? I know to me (JJ) personally, it feels like a gimmick. It feels like people are doing it because it’s the thing to do, because it’s the trend. And there are so many up and coming artists that are mediocre and need every advantage they can in such a competitive, Raging-ADD, What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately industry, where the seemingly easiest way to promote is through the internet…that they follow suit.
Like we’ve said many times, on the other end of the spectrum you have someone like Jay Electronica who has maybe 50 total tracks released, ever, but who maintains a strong buzz at ALL times due to the sheer quality of his work. To me this is preferable, but it is much more difficult and most artists couldn’t pull that off.
So what do you guys think about that kind of thing…gimmick? Or great move? Should I never go into the music Business…or am I onto something here???
That gimmick only works with certain artists…Freeway did it and it was pretty okay for the first two weeks but it kind of got boring…And it sucks when rappers do this whole X songs/X days and then lose all of their buzz…An established rapper has an easier time doing it then an up and coming rapper…unless they have cosigns all over the internet like C-Hamilton…
I agree with Ricky in that releasing songs one after the other does only work with certain artists. Moreover, rappers keep sending out so many songs within a short amount of time, it overwhelms an individual and loses the element of surprise. It’s like being in a scented candle store and smelling candle after candle without giving your nose a chance to register the first smell.