Rap Lyrics for Sale - A very disturbing trend.

[Jotown]

A friend of mine sent me this link. Just when you thought that record labels and advertising agencies have sunk to the bottom, they always manage to find a basement. URL=http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isyn/default.asp?newsid=200211189]Read about it here.[/URL] http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isyn/default.asp?newsid=200211189

[ECBRules]

'smore like Yo Town

[Alndln]

Since all commercials are just that anyway I guess it was a matter of time.Me?I rather join the Talaban than have anything to do with or even listen to any of that nonsense.I'd even rather go to church early in the morning on a bright sunny day with a raging hangover.BoooooooooooooHisssssssssBahhhhhhhhhhHumbuggggggggggggggg!!!!! :mad:

[Jotown]

[quote]Originally posted by keny: [b]'smore like Yo Town[/b][/quote]Huh? :confused:

[Jeebus]

Keny? Do you truly support local bands? Or do you merely capitalize on their weaknesses and feast on their souls.

[ECBRules]

Yes, I support local music. 7-8. The Master said, "I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson." [url=http://www.whatsupg.com/confucus.doc]The Analects by confucus[/url]

[ECBRules]

Jotown, I was playing off of your user name. Ya know Jotown, Motown, Yo town. Humor, you're supposed to snicker. I am irritated with jesus right now. I mean no trouble. Jotown, please forgive me if I seem offensive. Keny

[Wewus432]

Wow is that offensive or what? That's comes very close to subliminal advertising which I believe IS illegal. Any artist who would make a deal like that is a scum sucking, misbegotten, hyena. Any one who wants to write music for commercials should get a job at an ad adgency. I think you'll see a big backlash against this. I personally will boycott, badmouth, and berate any artist who tries to sneak ads into their songs. If they start doing this on any kind of scale law suits need to be filed. You can't present commercials to people as art.

[Groovepusher Sly]

Like I’ve said before, you get what you pay for. Good clothes don’t have ads on them. Good movies don’t have ads in them. Good music won’t have ads in it. Listen to crap and get played. If you bought it you’re a sucker already (all ready) to get screwed. [i]Motorola said it doesn't compensate artists with money for product placement, but with products it hopes the performers will enjoy and refer to in their songs.[/i] That sounds like a lie to me, but who knows. Sly :cool:

[alphajerk]

jayZ is a talentless dumbass who got so fucking lucky.

[strat0124]

I ain't tryin to hear dat......

[Kendrix]

Songs have been the filler around the advertisements on radio for some time. Now that many of us are shunning the overly constrained radio playlists, using internet radio/downlaoding/satelite or cable music services sans commercials - the advertisers need to get to the audience somehow. I beleive this practice of product placement has gone on in movies for some time now. So, the move into music is a natural extension of this from a business perspective. Do any of us really think that audiences will shun songs that include such references?- Not a chance. They won't even know of the arrangement. Se la vie. I also think a song can still be good - even if polluted by some of this. Would you like your favorite movie any less if you knew that some beer or cigarette brand paid for an appearance in it? BTW- I also recall reading that, in Britan, including trademarked/registered brand names in music causes some sort of legal issue. I dont recall the specifics- anyone up on this? If so, will we have unique lyrics for each country to accomodate any legal issues and/or the presence or absensce of certain products there? I wonder if Jay Z will be holding up his motorola pager on the cover of his next CD? I still havent gotten over the Led Zeppelin stuff playing on that Cadillac commercial. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

[jpmiii]

It's one thing to sell an old song from your catalog to be used by advertisers but this is something completely different. When an artist (and I use the term generously) takes money or another form of compensation to say what some else wants them to say then your music is no longer valid or at the very least you can't expect to be taken seriously anymore. That person has then truly become a whore in the worst sense of the word.

[doc taz]

Somewhat OT but... Stuff like this really doesn't bother me. What bothers me personally is how celebrities are handled on trial. These guys have access to huge sums of money that most regular folks don't (which does help get a top notch legal team...money talks, bull$hit walks). Look at Robert Downey, Jr. for instance. He's gotten away with several sentences at halfway houses and drug treatment centers. Most regular folk would have accumulated enough of a criminal record with the same number of offenses to be stuck in jail for much longer than he's been in treatment! Thi isn't to say that all celebrities get away this clean... Darryl Strawberry toyed with the drugs too much, and now has the prison sentence to go with it.

[aliengroover]

Check out my thread a page or so back. It has a link to a Fortune mag article about pretty much the same thing, but focusing on the Pop-pers. Peace Eh...nevermind. Here's the article: http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209927

[Magpel]

It just seems to be that in the Hip Hop world, material and business success are not considered bad or even morally complicated things. They're good. Get your piece. Popularity, wealth and power is what you work for and get if you're good. Pretty simple. There's good music, and good business. They're not the same thing and they're not mutually exclusive. The white boy angst guitar bands still have to pretend, ala Cobain, that they're not interested in success, a rite of credibility, which leads to a hilarious and sometimes deadly hypocrisy for naive souls like Kurt who take it to heart. BTW, I don't think naivete is a bad quality, and I liked Cobain well enough. But in a way I think he was killed by his own catch-22.

[aliengroover]

I don't like this a little bit, and I've gone on record saying that, but... The difference between the Hip Hop and Rap end of this, as opposed to the Pop end, is that Rappers have been freely promoting products for decades now. So, in this case, I'd say that it's, eh, kinda okay to be like, "Hey Apple, check out this song I got that mentions your new e-mac a couple of times." "Hey Joe, we like that, here's free comps for your company." On the other hand, I think it's utterly low to accept money ahead of time for you to "write in" a product. Thing is, as I've said before (forget if it was here, though) entertainers have been receiving free goods since the dawn of the entire industry. Go to the Oscars, why don't you. They don't give those free goods away to be nice. They want you to sport that watch or that phone or those clothes, in public, to get interest in those new products. I heard this on a Grammy or Oscar special (I never knew they gave away such marvelous stuff, packages ranging in value from $2K to 20K). Ask the general public (not us nuts) who bust their humps working double jobs if they'd accept that payment. It'd be a resounding, "Yes." Peace

[AlanThomas]

"Product placement" in a song lyric or poem can in no way be compared to the same practice in film. In a movie, having real products visible with their logos, color schemes etc. serves to enhance the realism of the scene. It wasn't that many years ago that a lot of films had all actual product logos, signs, etc. blotted out. It looked ridiculous and actually subtracted from the realism. In a song lyric, you're not really trying to depict "realism". You're trying to "say something without saying it", etc. But when you start dropping brand names in, it destroys the creativity, the poetry of the lyric. It just becomes ad copy. Having said that, there are a few circumstances where "brand-name dropping" does serve the lyric. Neil Young's "This Note's For You" for example. And I suppose brand names that have become generic like "Kleenex" would work sometimes too. And the Rap world is all about brand names and status-by-association (which is [i]totally[/i] advertising). I mean how many rap lyrics have "Benz" or "Rolls" in them? How many rap artists wear a gold Mercedes-Benz insignia around thier necks? So I dunno, maybe this product placement bullshit is a perfect fit for rap.

[Wewus432]

posted by Hank the popstar, posterchild, cave peanut: [quote] Now, if you had some style of music that DIDN'T lend itself to blatant product placement, like, I dunno, folk music or something, then yeah, this would stink and would taint the "artistry" part of the music. Not so with hip hop... [/quote]Brother whatchou talking 'bout? Are you saying hip hop got no integrity to begin with so it don't make no difference? I'll slap a discount on your head! Actually Cave P I think you're right. The only people who will be doing endorsements in their songs are the people who have already sold out or sold their souls for a bucketful of spit. Wouldn't it be funny if you had a song that was [b]only[/b] product placements? You'd have to throw a few real lines in there for continuity but if you worked at it you could put like 300 product placements in one song. I was walking down the street with my Nikes on my feet when I had to have a treat and saw a Taco Bell so I paged my brother Pete....... on my Motorola.......sweet.

[Jotown]

It is one thing for a company to give an artist, or actor clothes or jewelry. It is an entirely another thing for a marketing agency to set up shop and solicit artists to actually use their brand name as lyrics. In the music industry, ala MTV etc.... every moment of airtime is bought and payed for by record labels or corporate interests. That is not so new. That artists would take these trinkets and sing about them in their songs is a new level of whoredom, not yet defined.

[Jotown]

[quote]Great post, Magpel. Yeah, there is a real complex that some genres of music have about making money or being popular... In every genre of music, it seems there's a set of unspoken standards required by artists to be "authentic". What is "authentic" to Bob Dylan fans is very different than what is "authentic" to Jay-Z fans and vice versa... [/quote]That's not what I mean though. That the bling-bling and bragging about it is part of hip-hop culture is true. The difference here is this: If a rapper [b]chooses[/b] a certain expensive brand to show off his success, that is one thing. That would be a true expression of his creativity. When a brand [b]solicits[/b] an artists to use their brand, under the condition that the artist sings about it in their songs, it is another level of pimping altogether. It is a very insidious type of marketing to kids who don't even know that they are being marketed to. That's why it is so wrong to me.

[Jedi]

I knew it. When I heard that bullshit "Air-force One" Nelly song, I fucking new it. They truly have found an even more bottom than before. Thanks for the article, Jo. All the talk about "Rap always being materialistic so therefore it's no big deal" I think is off-base. I'm not slamming the sentiment. I can feel you guys are coming from good intentions. I can definitely feel the unbiased approach with that sentiment. However, Art is art, and bullshit is bullshit. Art inspires, Art is sublime, Art opens you up, and truly inspiring art does not come from the same place that quarterly reports come from. The moment you start catering your art to an ad agency, you've stop making art and started making commercials. And Commercials are not inspiring. A lot of the "popular" rap artists are simply not artists. They're entertainers, They're business men who's commoditty happens to be music, They're no talent ass-holes who don't have a creative bone in their body(o.k. that was over the line :D _, They're anything and everything but an artist. If it's ALL about the money, then it can't at all be about art. To truly do something great and inspiring it has to be about more than just the money. I'm not saying that it's adverse to making money, I'm just saying that money cannot be the single solitary reason why you produced a said work of art. sorry for the long-winded bullshit, Lincoln Ross Dead Black Jedis

[Jotown]

Thanks Jedi, You have said it better than me. That's what I'm talking about.

[Mr. Downchild]

Well done, young Jedi.

[ernest828]

It doesn`t surprise me that rap music would entertain this. Such a low quality "artform" has nothing to lose from such an insulting idea. Rap have nothing to say of value to society. Lets cut the diplomatic / "politcally correct" shit... and be honest. Ernest

[Midimonk]

major labels are leeches, it's not just a rap issue,its the RIAA just robbing the consumer even more.their philosophy of lets overcharge the consumer and now lets get back at them for all the losses we took from filesharing.the record labels have way too much power for their own good,there used to be lots of smaller labels that nurtured artists,the big5 have no desire to do anything unless it gives them a better bottom dollar,this recent stunt proves it even more.it's a shame something so personal as songwriting is now a glorified commercial and yes any artist that does this is a downright SELL-OUT.yes, i know people need to eat,make money but if you sell your soul(creativity) for this any backlash that comes your way is well deserved. midimonk :mad:

[aliengroover]

Let's keep this right and be perfectly clear: there is a MAJOR difference between "Rap" and "Hip Hop" music. Hip Hop records have LOADS to say. Rap records have ZERO to say. Yeah, commercial Rap records suck...suck big time. I hate them with a passion, but I have a passion for "real" Hip Hop. Only Rap and Pop, two decidedly commercial music genres, are driven by the dollar, and would thus not feel "reduced" by doing this. Suckas. Peace

[ECBRules]

Why do they call it rap? Cause someone stole the "C" I know at least half of you already heard this.. :D

[Jotown]

[quote]My impression from immersing myself in older records is that, at one point, musicians -- or people with "ears" -- were usually running the show. Now it [b]seems [/b] like it's bean counters and marketing folks. And some of the marketing folks are actually the artists, like Fred Durst... [/quote]I have been saying that for years, except it doesn't just [b]seem [/b] like it, thats the way it is.

[G. Ratte]

[quote] something so personal as songwriting is now a glorified commercial and yes any artist that does this is a downright SELL-OUT.yes, i know people need to eat,make money but if you sell your soul(creativity) [/quote]Ok, just to be a jerk and devil's advocate (my specialty)- what's so sacred about songwriting and creativity? Could you say that any act of creativity is an advertisement or advocating something... an idea, a thing, or just yourself? example: "I'm putting up flyers, come see my show." ie.(please fulfill my economic & socialization needs) Or perhaps you're advocating your own self-worth. example: "I'm sitting at home writing great music to amuse myself after work" ie. (wow, I'm really clever, the next McCartney/Stockhausen) -- So there's some navel-gazing for ya. My only opinion is that this ad-music is obnoxious and I wouldn't really wanna hear it. But I don't care much. How much less-inspiring is it listening to ads than hearing Human Condition Cliche #2b vs. Human Condition Cliche #1d in a lyric? Man, that one makes me sniffle every time. Reminds me of my old dog. Or was it that car, the fast one? Or the girl that did me wrong. I get 'em mixed up. Anyways.