Excerpt from article written for Twine Interactive

Since MySpace began to take a downward spiral in user traffic, many musicians have been left wondering where they can direct fans to discover their music. For years, MySpace has been the central hub of music promotion for both artists signed to major record labels and independent musicians. These musicians have used their MySpace profiles to gather as many fans as possible; who have inflated their song play counts and in some cases created enough exposure to take an artist from being an internet sensation to a household name.

We can now say; the bubble on MySpace has officially burst. Users have become tired of the constant spamming that has corrupted the network and are now flocking to other outlets like Facebook and more recently, Twitter for promotion. Rather than jockeying for song plays, artists are now competing for followers and are using networks like Twitter to build more personalized relationships with fans.

Musicians are implementing a variety of methods to interact with their base of followers on Twitter and are routinely trying to instigate new promotional methods that will attract the attention of the Twitterverse. One genre of music seems be succeeding at utilizing Twitter’s broad range of application more than any other; hip-hop.

In some cases, hip-hop artists are generating buzz on Twitter without even owning an account themselves. Jay-Z, who recently released the album Blueprint 3, has been a staple of Twitter’s trending topics on almost a daily basis due to his legion of fans who are constantly posting updates about his album release and promotional appearances to promote the album. The artist does not have a personal Twitter account, but has demonstrated he has the fan base capable of making him one of the network’s most discussed celebrities.

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I’m sitting at the airport with time to kill and decided to hunt down some new music since I’ve grown tired of about 90% of the tracks on my iPod. Seems like a simple task; right? There’s about 250 million hip-hop blogs out there (although many are just carbon copies of larger sites), so most would assume this would offer a plethora of new tunes to check out. Wrong.

These days the music is playing second fiddle to the soap opera we’ve allowed this culture to become. To find something new right now you’ve got to dig through 500 posts about 50 Cent vs. Rick Ross, Chris Brown vs. Rihanna or random videos of Cam’ron pretending he’s still relevant while attempting to beef with anyone that will listen. You could reincarnate Biggie and Pac and get them to cut a new track, but if 50 Cent makes a cartoon about Rick Ross that day you can bet everyone will be talking about that new 50 Cent cartoon.

How did we get here?

At one point in time, it was mildly entertaining to see 50 Cent instigating beefs, but at one point in time it was entertaining to hear new music from 50 as well. The beefs aren’t fun anymore (see Why Does the Saigon vs. Joe Budden Battle Suck?). There’s no sincerity or real emotion involved, just drama for the sake of keeping your name out there.

Obviously, these beefs aren’t proving to increase record sales. Sure, they keep an artist’s name fresh in your mind, but for all the wrong reasons. If anything, these beefs hurt record sales and if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the music industry you’ll understand that poor record sales aren’t helping anyone at this point.

Have these artists decided that music is no longer relevant and they’re better off trying their hand at being a net celebrity?

If that’s the case, bring some fucking creativity to the game. You and your homies sitting around mean-mugging a camera and making meaningless threats against your adversaries is played out. I would rather watch a Youtube clip of 50 Cent ordering a Whopper at Burger King. At least in that case I wouldn’t know exactly what was going to be on the video before I even hit the play button.

I’ve got no problem with rappers taking to the net with senseless videos (in moderation), but there also has to be a balance between the music and everything else because at the end of the day your job title is still musician.

I pray that this whole Youtube beef thing is just a fad that will pass quickly and hope some of the bloggers that continue propagating this stuff will get sick of it as well. If not, this culture will continue to sink so low that we’re going to lose the little bit of credibility we’ve got left.

Did we come this far to create a soap opera?

If you’re comfortable answering yes to that question, I dare you to turn on network television in the daytime and see what we’re striving to associate this culture with.

I really hate when labels try to use these manipulative musical soap operas for promotion. It would be one thing if these artificial beefs were clever and at the end of the day those involved looked at the camera like “Gotcha!”, unfortunately we’re not dealing with good writers here in the hip-hop industry.

This week two unlikely foes have engaged in another case of beef 2.0 by exchanging unpleasantries through blog posts, videos and Myspace bulletins. In one corner, you have a new artist by the name of Charles Hamilton (see Sonic the Hamilton is a Reminder of Why Hipster Rap Sucks). In the other corner, you have Soulja Boy, a Green Beret when it comes to online warfare.

So here’s their story in a nutshell. Hamilton goes on the radio and gets agitated (as many artists do) when confronted with the topic of Soulja Boy. He proceeds to throw a few jabs at the youngster and blames him for many of his own struggles, mostly his trouble being taken seriously by the music industry. Soulja Boy was quick to take notice of the statements made by Hamilton and on Tuesday afternoon the rapper released a video responding to Hamilton’s attack.

Soulja Boy Responds to Charles Hamilton (VIDEO):

I’ve done a little bit of research and decided to unravel the horribly executed online marketing campaign Interscope Records attempted to pull off to spark the career of Charles Hamilton, while prostituting the names of two of the label’s biggest acts in the process.

1) The disappearing mixtape.

Called The Hamiltization Process, Charles Hamilton recently released a series of mixtapes- each in conjunction with a separate hip-hop blog with the final release in the series, titled The Pink Lavalamp, scheduled to be released with OnSmash.com on Monday Dec.8.

For reasons unknown, the mixtape never reached OnSmash.com, but miraculously found a new home the very same day on 50 Cent’s Social Network, ThisIs50.com, where Hamilton received a warm reception that included a complete Charles Hamilton site makeover featuring ads that covered the site promoting the release of Hamilton’s mixtape and prime real estate on the homepage for a video interview, which featured the now infamous remarks he made about Soulja Boy.

Hamilton offered the following explanation for the change on his blog:

Thanks to thisis50.com, onsmash.com…. from what I hear there’s a lil controversy as to what website got what. That was an administrative decision, and I was not behind the scenes on that. Then again, if bloggers aren’t political, I shouldn’t feel any kind of backlash at all.

According to Quantcast (a web traffic monitor), OnSmash.com pulls in over 250K unique visitors each month while ThisIs50.com is said to reach roughly 413K people each month. While the increased exposure is attractive, it’s hard to believe that any rationale “administrative decision” could warrant alienating the high traffic blogs like OnSmash that have been vital to promoting Hamilton’s career.

2) Soulja Boy Responds!

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first. Was Soulja Boy really upset about the comments from Hamilton? Out of all the bad things people have said publicly about the kid; was it really possible that Hamilton blaming him for his hedgehog getting no respect warranted Soulja Boy taking the (online) gloves off again?

As I watched the video, I began thinking- this video is actually pretty good…a little too good. I started noticing things that weren’t typical for Soulja Boy’s video masterpieces like editing and adequate lighting.

Here’s what I’m used to seeing:

It wasn’t just the quality of the video that seemed uncharacteristic, but Soulja Boy’s entire demeanor during the video. While he was no Barack Obama, Soulja Boy was surprisingly articulate and charismatic when speaking to Hamilton. This obviously was not the same Soulja Boy who made the nine minute dis video aimed at Ice-T, which featured about 30 seconds of relevancy surrounded by eight and a half minutes of name calling. If one didn’t know any better, they might just say that this seemed rehearsed…

3) The Marketing

The irregularities of Soulja Boy’s new video continued when instead of debuting the video on his Youtube channel, which makes him money on every click and comment according to the latest issue of Billboard, he opted to host the video on WorldStarHipHop.com.

The video went live on World Star Hip-Hop at approximately 3:40pm on Tuesday. Within the hour, the video was receiving a push from both Soulja Boy and Charles Hamilton.

4) Anti-Viral Video

The Soulja Boy video racked up over 500K views on World Star Hip-Hop during it’s first 24 hours of release, but all press hasn’t proven to be good press for Hamilton, as almost all reviews have favored Soulja Boy.  Hamilton has already started waiving the white flag and claims his words were taken out of context.

Hamilton has even proposed a collaboration between himself and the artist he blames for:

…ruining the opportunity of people such as Cory Gunz, Mickey Factz, Kid Cudi to be accepted in the mainstream.

5. How It Failed

It’s very simple to figure out why this marketing plan blew up in Interscope’s face. They got greedy.

This plan could have worked and caused the sort of controversy they were seeking, but they let the entire story unfold in a day. We all know things move quickly on the internet, but this was too quick. They ran through the introduction, built the story, climaxed and then concluded the saga within twenty four hours.

It also may have worked better if all the players involved weren’t signed to the same label.

Interscope was trying to establish Hamilton as an anti-hero. He was their answer for all the hip-hop fans who reject Soulja Boy’s music. They assumed his online presence was strong enough to compete with that of Soulja Boy and attempted to instigate a fight between the two respective fan bases. Nice try.

The problem I have with all of this nonsense is exactly what I said when I reviewed Hamilton’s mixtape a few weeks ago; I’m sick of major labels diluting the talent pool of hard-working artists by trying to buy their way in. Say what you will about Charles Hamilton’s work ethic. All credibility he had was lost when he sold his soul to the suits and allowed them to turn his career into this cheap marketing campaign. In the end he disrespected the blog sites that he owes his career to, embarrassed himself and insulted the intelligence of his fans by expecting them to buy into the gimmick.

Like I said before, hip-hop fans are too smart for this stuff. Someday you’ll learn…

The dudes at It’s the Real are just too damn funny. They’re definitely coming with some of the most creative and well done, albeit senseless, videos about hip-hop.

Diddy, you should be taking notes homie.

The Battle of Billboardsburg from jeff on Vimeo.

This Week’s Top Stories:

R.I.P Real Rap Beefs

It looks as though the hip-hop industry is really dying for attention. We’ve reached the point where we can’t even get legitimate rap beefs started these days.

Here is what played out in the past 24 hours:

- Thursday afternoon, Thisis50.com, 50 Cent’s social network and hip-hop lifestyle site, began advertising that DJ Kay Slay would be debuting “the ultimate beef record” during his Thursday night show on New York’s Hot 97

- Thursday night, as promised, Kay Slay debuts a “new” dis record featuring Jay-Z along with NYC up-and-comer Uncle Murda taking shots at rapper Fat Joe, with some subtle jabs that may or may not have been intended for DJ Khaled

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- Shortly after the record debuts, the entire industry is buzzing asking profound questions like: WTF? Why? Seriously, WTF?

- As bloggers tried to unravel the conspiracy theories, Just Blaze dropped a bombshell revealing the origin of the Jay-Z verse and letting the public know that this verse was recorded “8000 years ago” or more accurately, during the “Blueprint 2 era”

While there’s plenty of questions left to be answered, it’s quite clear that there is no real beef here and whoever orchestrated this stunt failed miserably.

Lil Wayne’s Milli Dollar Birthday

Lil Wayne was celebrating either his 26th or 29th birthday depending on which calendar you’re going by this week in Miami and was shocked when his “father”, Baby a/k/a Birdman, delivered the gift that is sure to top every child’s Christmas list this year: a briefcase filled with a million dollars in cash.

While many media outlets are reporting Wayne was “shocked” by such a generous gift, the look on Wayne’s face seems to suggest this wasn’t unexpected and his main concern is trying to figure out where he’s at.

This event is clearly another publicity stunt by the Cash Money camp reminding the public of how much money Wayne is earning. In fact, that’s probably Wayne’s money in the briefcase or at least money that has come Baby’s way via Wayne (and probably went right back his way after the party).

At least Wayne is making the most out of his stay in the MIA, as later in the week he popped up as a surprise guest at The Roots concert in the city. A live version of Wayne’s hit “A Milli” flooded the net after the performance.

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In Case You Forgot, T.I.’s the KING

Last week I said T.I.’s Paper Trail album was the best hip-hop album of 2008. While the jury will have until year’s end to prove me wrong, the people have spoken this week as the album debuted at #1 on Soundscan, moving over 568K units in it’s first week.

Not satisfied with his 3rd album to debut at the top of the charts, T.I. also stirred things up on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart by unseating himself at the top with his single “Live Your Life” featuring Rihanna, moving the single “Whatever You Like” to the number 2 position. The one-week jump from 80-1 beat the record T.I. had set just a few weeks back when “Whatever You Like” jumped from 71-1.