ADVISE TO UPCOMING AND ESTABLISHED RAPPERS. Long but worth it 1.ORIGINALITY : As an artist, would you rather have just 1 hit that sounds like all the other big songs around just because that style is the In-thing and end up fading away fast because there are many other songs like yours that can give listeners the same feeling they get from yours because everyone else is making that same style of music, or would you rather have a hit record that will last for a long time because it sounds like no other song that’s out at the moment and pulls the attention of people away from the style everyone else is doing, and no other song gives listeners the same feeling? The choice is yours as an artist. A wise man in the music industry once said to me, “The best way to make an original hit record is by turning off the radio”. Use radio, blogs and TV as reference points but don’t let them dictate what a hit record should sound like to you. Be creative, carve out your own niche, focus on your own identity and create your own sound. Music in here won’t grow if everyone just wants to take the easy way out by just copying anything that’s in vogue and trying to emulate the same thing. We won’t grow if everyone keeps trying to sound like everyone else. 2. ARTIST DEVELOPMENT : Just as a house built on a weak foundation will collapse in no time, no matter how much potential you have as an artist, no matter how talented you are, jumping head first into your music career without sacrificing and spending time to develop yourself will cut the career you think you have short in no time. No one is really doing any developing these days. People aren’t really going around looking for and picking up the young man with the great singing voice in church or on the street corner who might have the most amazing voice but knows nothing about song structure and song arrangement and just needs to know how to put a song together. Everyone is just looking for a ready made product to market, an artist who already knows how to do those things own his/her own. That’s why the need for development is even more essential now. If you really want to have that edge, you have to show that you are ready for the industry, you can handle things on your own, not just come up with one “accidental song” with a catchy hook and beat, and then you can’t back it up with another song because you never took out the time to develop yourself as an artist, never spent time honing your craft and knowing yourself as an artist. Season yourself, practice practice practice, teach yourself how to write songs, find out what styles work for you. Don’t just loop a beat by mistake playing around with the music production software you only started using two weeks ago, record on your laptop with your friends on a drunk Friday night and think you’ve arrived! If you take a look at majority of the artists in the industry with longevity and consistency, you can trace back their history and see that they didn’t just show up out of nowhere with a catchy song one day, they worked their way to the top by getting better and better. How well you develop yourself is the difference between “HAVING IT!” and “MAKING IT!” and this development does not only involve music, it’s the whole package, it has everything to do with the artist you want to become, your personality, your performance, your IMAGE. 3. IMAGE : One of the biggest mistakes artists have been making is the failure to have a compelling image that is congruent with their music or the music they plan to put out. Too many artists underestimate the importance of image and believe “It’s all about my music”. If it was just about music, then music videos,shows, press conferences and Interviews wouldn’t exist, people would just sit home and listen to your music forever without knowing or caring to know who you are, but that’s not the case. You have to give your fans a part of you that can stay glued to their minds when your music is not around in order for them to think about your music for a long time, an image that comes up in their minds every time they play your music. Believe it or not, if you look like every other artist out there, people will assume that you sound just like every other artist out there and might not give you a chance. If we want to push out our music globally, if you as an “Artist” want to make your music spread out globally, you have to be able to give out an image that’s in line with the music you are trying to give out to the world. You don’t just want to be “One foreign artist who made that good song”, you want people to know you as You don’t what to pitch your material to a foreign audience and have them saying “But he’s just like this or that artist over here”. 4. PERFORMANCE : It’s mind boggling to think of the fact that in an industry where majority of the musician’s income comes from shows, artists still neglect the importance of a great show and the importance of sharpening their performing skills. Your music may be good, but a live show requires more than just that. If people only want to hear your music, they’ll just stay at home, lay down throw in your CD or click on your MP3 and press play and never come out and pay their hard earned money to watch you perform. If you want to be remembered, give people something to remember when you perform. Don’t just come out there and mime like it’s S.S.2 social night because you’re gonna get paid anyway. Let people know they are guaranteed satisfaction every time they have to pay to see certain artists or trek miles like Moses and Aaron in the bible to watch artists perform. 5. SOUND : The truth is(and the human ears can testify to this), a track that is 40% in terms of content and concept but 100% in terms of sound will always top a track that is 100% in terms of content and concept but 40% in terms of sound. A lot of the music coming out is good in terms of sound, but some aspects can still be worked on. Too many artists focus on loudness instead of clarity, and when a song is mixed and recorded too loud, the listener gets tired of listening quicker. That’s where the importance of good mixing and mastering come in, to bring in that clarity and sonic perfection. Yes, your song might sound great to you and your friends after you record it, and it might get posted on the blogs, but is it radio ready? would it get played on big radio stations all over the world based on the sound quality? 6.OVERUSING SOCIAL MEDIA AND THIRD PARTY SITES/UNDER-USING OTHER MEANS OF ONLINE PROMOTION: It’s really frustrating to me when I try to get more information about a major artist who I’m a fan of , but can’t find anything about him/her besides what appears on his Facebook page and/or Twitter account. And what’s even more frustrating than that is when people can’t find your music anywhere else but on the blogs where they were posted and the links you put up on twitter. Social Media sites are just one piece of the online marketing puzzle, they are just a tool. Your success is defined by how many fans you have, not how many twitter followers and Facebook friends you have. Build your own website, build your promotion as an artist without focusing solely on third party sites which you do not control. It’ll make people take you more seriously and intensify your fan base. When the big shows and events start rolling in, big industry players and promoters are more interested in your website traffic and popularity than the amount of twitter followers you have. 7. OFFLINE MARKETING/PROMOTION : Despite the obvious importance of online communication, it’s just one part of the whole package. As hard as it is to believe these days, there are people who are into music but not just into computers and the internet as much as you and I. Think of them, they’re fans too, and they need to know what’s going on with you as an artist. Intensify your promotion offline, put yourself out there, create logos and other promotional materials to giveaway. Make shirts, hats, pens with your logo on them, stamp your brand on anything you can. Just assume you don’t have any form of online promotion, let your offline promotion be that serious and intense. 8.CONSISTENCY : You go to the gym for 4 months, consistently, you start gaining strength and muscle, you start looking and feeling better, and then you just stop all of a sudden, and never go back for a year for whatever reason. You’re gonna lose all the strength and muscle you gained, and when you eventually go back, if you do, you have to work even harder than you did before to regain what you lost. As an Artist, think of your career that way. If you release good music people like and get yourself buzzing for 6 months, and then all of a sudden you get too comfortable and disappear from the scene for one year, People are going to start forgetting about you. It’s like that in every field. The more you fade away from your career and fans, the more your fans and your career fade away from you. Whatever you do, be you a DJ, Producer, Artist, Blogger, consistency is the big difference maker that separates you from everyone else. Be consistent, always aim to be better, don’t get comfortable because you put in 110% effort in the beginning and got a lot of fans and now you think you can just do whatever and give your fans whatever and they’ll just accept it. Stay hungry, Keep working. Even when you’re not doing what people know you for, put yourself out there, stay in the news for positive reasons, do positive things the fans will enjoy. #HipHopGuru
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 19:32:34 +0000
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