Back when I owned a gangsta rap label…that’s right kiddies! Jo was a playa… I had a trio of fine rappers from Hunter’s Point, California. Indeed, they were our first signing. They were good guys but they came from a hard and depressing place with no trees.
We did three albums with them and set them up as producers so they could release other side projects. It was important to us to make it possible for them to have financial independence and maybe go onto their own thing in the future. I know this is not normal in business circles but we weren’t about tying our artists to us forever. We looked on it as a partnership not as ownership, and of course we were trying to revolutionize the standard record deal. Unfortunately it didn’t work out but that’s a different story. The current climate of electronic downloads and website promotion has freed artists up to such an extent that the traditional record label is becoming a thing of the past and that’s a good thing in my opinion.
One thing I noticed with these artists was that they weren’t so much about saving money. They spent their advances pretty much immediately. And if they decided to pick up a car for a couple of thousand bucks so they could make the drive from HP to Oakland, they wouldn’t choose that boring but dependable Ford Escort they could pay cash for and own outright. No instead they’d lease a BMW or a Cadillac with the nice leather interior and the big speakers for the low low cost of a few hundred dollars a month for five years and eventually not be able to make the payments. Or if there was a choice between getting a nicer apartment or buying a floor length leather coat or some jewelry, the accessories would always win out. They drove better cars than me. (Actually I walked to work and let my boyfriend drive the ford pick-up to his job). They looked good. They blew their cash in hours. They were rappers. They had a reputation to uphold. Even though they were doing pretty well with us, they had to look as if they were millionaires. As if they had made it to the big time. There was a pressure to present this facade to the world, to their buddies. At one point one of them lost everything except for his car. He was sleeping in it. And another one was close to losing his apartment but he still had the rings and the necklaces and the fedora. And the good haircut. It drove me crazy but now I sort of understand it.
There is a stigma among writers. We don’t talk negatively about our experiences. We are never DROPPED by our publishers. We are BETWEEN publishers or we are looking for a new publishing house, researching possibilities as if it’s OUR choice who we go with. Our sales are always better than they actually are. There is a lot of hype surrounding every new book release- if you’re lucky you actually have a publishing house with a savvy marketing department who knows where to spend the money and how to promote on the web. Hype is sort of like everyone’s most hopeful dreams. Sometimes the two mesh, but rarely, and hype becomes real but so often they are miles apart. Do we not admit to failure because it’s too scary a thought? Because it might jinx the project? Because it’s not true if no one says it? Remember that movie “Field Of Dreams”? Build it and they will come. What is that but an example of someone’s passionate wish turned into reality? Of magical thinking. If my rappers wore the clothes and drove the cars and had all the trappings of huge success, then they attracted other successful people to them. They were perceived to be the hot new commodity and they got guest appearances and offers, and that led to more money and more opportunity. Their rich clothes may have been non-existent like the emperor’s (from the fairytale you know) but if everyone was talking about how fabulous they were, it didn’t matter. Eventually fantasy and reality would meet.
When I started blogging my book had not yet been published. I like to blog. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. I usually blog twice a week. On Mondays and Fridays but sometimes I need to be flexible about that. I am regular however. Nothing worse than visiting a site and finding the same article posted for months and months. In May my site received 6723 visits and 21,465 hits. Not bad for an unknown author and a two and a half year old book which wasn’t read by as many people as I had hoped. Those numbers, by the way, are taken directly from my web hoster’s tracking device. They are real. But they’re still bling.
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