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A LESSON FROM THE HIP HOP HISTORY
Back in the days Hip Hop, better known at the time as Rap music, was a new thang. There weren't any rap records in the stores. Rap music was strictly a street culture phenomenon, especially in the summer where street jams would be thrown at school yards. About 99 percent of these street jams were without permit. Cops used to let that shit go. It was usually stopped by a fight or shoot out.
There were no flyers for these street jams (that came later.) People would see a bunch of guys carrying their equipment with these big
ass speakers and the word would get around. The equipment was powered by an illegal hookup to the street lamp post. These jams usually consisted of rappers,
known at the time as emcees, who would battle each other with their lyrics. Most of the lyrics consisted of the emcees dissing one another and their crews.
It didn't take long before some groups and crews became crowd favorites because they were just better.
Emcees and groups like the Cold Crush Brothers with Grand Master Caz, The Furious 5, and Emcee Spooning G
used to draw large crowds. It came to the point where two or three street blocks got packed up with people trying to get closer to the jam.
At this point cops had no choice but to break up most street jams before they got out of hand-and they usually did get out of hand.
Groups like those mentioned above were in very high demand.
Some smart cats caught on to the craze and started selling tapes in the streets.
The most popular tapes were those which had the battles between the most popular crews and emcees.
Tapes were being sold at five or ten dollars a pop and the people were eating them up. Now this was happening years before
The Sugar Hill Gang came out with "Rappers Delight", way before sampling, and way before the music industry saw Hip Hop's economic potential.
Now what can you as a thriving DJ, artist, or group take from all of this? For one you don't need tons of money to get things going. The founding fathers of Hip Hop used two turn tables, mixer, mics, amp, and speakers to start off this party and look at how the Hip Hop industry has blown up. Then next thing you should take from this is that you are not confined to record labels. Hook your own shit up and burn it on cd. Give em out to people in schools and hanging out in the street. Before you know it people will be making copies for their friends and before you know it your name and the name of your group will be known.
Talent will only take you so far. You have to have the drive and the discipline to make it happen. There is no room for excuses. So if you find yourself making excuses as to why you are not making it do yourself a favor and excuse yourself from the race or don't get mad when your ass keeps getting run over.
Angel Velez
BOOTLEG CDs AND CORPORATE AMERICA
I'm not sure about everywhere else, but In New York City the bootleg industry makes a load of money.
Just walk down Canal street on any given day and you will see tons of bootleggers being surrounded by hoards of people looking to
get the latest cd for a fraction of the cost sold at retail outlets.
A CD that you pick up at a Best Buy or the Wiz for about $15.00 can be picked up in the street for $5.00.
Some people will argue that the quality of these illegal CDs don't equal the legal ones.
Fact is most people don't care. They rather have an extra ten bucks in their pocket then have a so called better quality
sound. Even before CDs people would use tape decks to record their favorite songs off the radio, and that quality was horrible,
but the people didn't care.
The music industry has been trying to get law enforcement to crack down on the bootleg industry but that's not going to help.
There's just too much money being made and the police have more important things to do. They are even using CDs that can't be duplicated on
a high volume CD copier, but that's just silly.
All you have to do is burn one copy using the analog method and then burn copies from that one.