My favorite artist during my early adolescent years was Busta Rhymes. In spite of my parents’ consistent and stern disapproval of his lyrical content (which, in turn, prompted me to listen even more), “Woo-Hah!!” was the first cassette single that I broke through excessive listening.

You see, like many Brooklynites, I grew up in a household devoid of cable television, so for me to successfully retain content, I employed one of three tactics:

-spend way too much time in the barbershop, post-Ceasar
-Ralph McDaniels (VMB on Saturday night)
-The Box aka Channel 39 on UHF.

More often then not, I turned to The Box to not only watch videos (there were no genre filters, which made the viewing experience wack juice), but to occasionally order them. For those who don’t remember, The Box famously positioned themselves as “music television YOU control”- which in today’s context, really isn’t the control we’ve grown accustomed to (just another testament to how far things have come). In any event, this antiquated form of access spurned irrational behavior such as paying $11 to request “Woo-Hah!!” twice, its glorious mind-bending remix featuring ODB, and then waiting attentively and for the videos to play simply so I can record them on VHS.

If there are any adolescents reading this now, you’re probably wondering – what the HELL is wrong with this guy? And for good reason.

Earlier this month, Spotify officially launched in the US- a service I suspect to be a game changer for the music enthusiast. With the old adage of “consumption up, profit down”, Spotify has essentially created a perfect storm of discovery, active participation, and curation that will no doubt change the way people engage in music. I’ve been using the service for several months now and despite the persistent empty room, I’ve reconnected with songs (rare joints, indeed) that I’d normally find/listen to on YouTube without the pressure of having to qualify a purchase.

I tend to think of Spotify, Turntable.fm, and the forthcoming cloud invasion as the The Box’s desire for total viewer control coming full circle. All those minutes waiting in front of the TV and parents’ dollars wasted on one video (one video!!) are now, in essence, spent refining my tastes and discovering new ones by virtue of the people who’s opinion I value the most.

True control finally realized, and a wealth of culture for those who choose to digest it (brands and people alike).

{SUITS STILL SUCK!}

On Wednesday of last week, I moderated a panel entitled “Making Your Mark” at this year’s Latin Mixx Conference.

The conference, now in its 5th year, is half entertainment summit, half information session and attracts a pretty varied audience of DJs, artists, and industry folk. To kick off the panel, I delivered a presentation (available below) covering a few areas of interest including: personal branding, the marketing and publishing landscape, and the role that today’s public-facing entertainer must play to thrive in the modern information economy.

To be successful in today’s business climate and attract the attention of brands and marketers, artists must fulfill the role of “Culture Creator.”

Establishing a dominant position in today’s entertainment and marketing environment requires one to vision going above and beyond the traditional, formulaic processes that comprise the bulk of today’s vapid, cookie-cutter landscape. Here are a few traits that the Culture Creator must embody, and inherently value:

Sometimes it feels like there is nothing new under the sun, but make something your own. Make it unique to you and your values. Revisit emotional territory that your FFF (friends/followers/fans) had once been emotionally invested in and reinterpret it. As Mark Pollard puts it in a brilliant blog post titled, “Why Strategists Should Make Stuff”, stories are currency; building a construct in which your content manifests values that are important to you and your community is a very important aspect to the process that cannot be ignored.

There will always be the idealists that can apply a prophetic eye towards culture and assist in the ushering in of “what’s next” by creating the mechanisms for those things to happen. This can include content platforms that begin digitally and then extend into the analog world. These people might not make total sense at first, and run the risk of being labeled disruptive, but, over time, their position shifts from the ‘idea advocate’ to the conduit through which the subsequent content, ideas, and themes are realized. To quote Jay-Z (as I frequently do), “I used to beat that block…. now I BE the block.” Fluidity is also very key to advancing one’s brand, as avoiding volatility and progression is an exercise in futility.

Remember the classic scene at the end of the first Matrix, where Neo realizes he’s “The One” and proceeds to predict the karate moves of the agents because he visualized everything? We can do that now. The ability to navigate, and qualitatively extract patterns has become a phenomenon that is available to everyone with the advent of the open web. There isn’t a specific formula for developing those sensibilities- it is simply a function of paying attention and digging deeper (at ANET, we preach “the why before the what”) into the things that are relative to what you want to create. Those who work to develop a second-nature mastery will advance, those who bypass will fall to the wayside.

One of the more powerful examples of this phenomenon is Kanye West’s rise to prominence.  In the early 2000’s, a pre-iconic Kanye West took the hip-hop world by storm, ultimately driving urban culture towards its current incarnation by aggressively and holistically embodying his vision of where hip-hop was going — not just musically — but philosophically, aesthetically and materialistically as well.

Cognizant of the fact that he could better disrupt the status quo from the inside, Kanye leveraged his position as Jay-Z’s go-to producer to establish himself by trading on his credibility and changing the perception of his role in Jay-Z’s success. “I brought back the soul,” he eloquently raps on The Blueprint 2’s ‘The Bounce.’

By the time Kanye was able to tell his story on his first album in 2004 it was, essentially, already told. Every celebrated hip-hop artist at the time had either already collaborated with Kanye (Ludacris, Lil’ Kim, 50 Cent) or otherwise revived their career by leveraging his distinctive sound (Common, Twista).

His transformation from hip-hop musician to “culture creator” was a byproduct of the fact that he (and his platforms) embody everything that is of value to him.  His has successfully leveraged his curatorial voice to actively shape the urban cultural landscape. Be it sartorially (through his collaborative efforts with some of the world’s most influential personal and luxury product brands), materially, or musically (through his G.O.O.D. Music label), Kanye has created the blueprint for the modern “culture creator” role that today’s most successful icon’s embody.

Sure, not everyone has been afforded the marquee opportunities to the same magnitude that Kanye has, but that isn’t to say that artists and entertainment figures (and marketers, to an extent) can’t embody those guiding principles, and bring this weird culture thing to its next chapter.

[Their] generation is about something completely different. Let me tap into their generation and see what they like. because if I kept my mind on what I like … I wouldn’t make it. I gotta always stay relevant.

-Snoop Dogg on the “Juan Epstein” podcast, 12/22/09

Drake’s triumphant first official single was released several hours ago to the web (exactly where, I have no idea, but Twitter has almost completely replaced my need for HOT97- a tear almost comes to my eye saying that), and he officially enters the commercial landscape in grandiose fashion. (As if anything less was expected). In efforts to blot out the forthcoming groundswell of hype, I downloaded from one of the what seemed like hundreds of available links everywhere to indulge in the sh*t the GQ golden child was shovelin’.

DRAKE. OVER.

The ability to instantaneously and utterly completely command the attention of the Twittersphere and spread throughout social media like a steroid-infused game of telephone is uncanny. And yes, there is much to be said about his behind-the-veil superteam and his engineered success, but if history serves us correctly, it’s best to focus on the content- which up to this point, has been quality. Despite my preexistent skepticism, I can now affirm that I’m intrigued at witnessing the progression of (and working with) the millenial generation’s first true cluster of relevant artists (excluding KanYe, who birthed their style).

Thank him later.

SUITS!

Salsa in the 70s. Punk & Hip-Hop in the 80s.

New York City is undeniably responsible for spawning the modern world’s most definitive art forms. The aforementioned movements (for all intents and purposes we won’t refer to them as simply genres of music) were all byproducts of social expression in its most pure form, became organically popular, than through engineered ubiquity reached critical mass. Such was the cycle all beginning with the most simple of ideas. (Note: no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t edit the post to wreak any less of “V For Vendetta”. My bad.)

And that’s the heritage of this city. At least until recently.

In this information-starved, everyone’s-quick-to-assign-titles-to-themselves-because-nobody’s-looking landscape that we live in, something got lost. Ideas have been reduced to mere chatter because there’s too many being spread around without discerning taste. Collectively, a lot of media + marketing professionals in New York have forgotten what matters, only seeking out what’s “now”, regardless of its origin. Too many “tastemakers”, not enough people to adhere and fill the void.

Where has that left us? Micro is seemingly becoming the new macro, and “local has inherently become the new global” (according to world-class trend forecaster Marian Salzman).

That being said, I’ve been paying more attention to the “un-obvious obvious”- the contributions of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances- and have come to the conclusion that it’s a good time to be here. In New York City. Unless you’re in the Bronx.

(Just kidding.)

For the first time in a long time, individual efforts are becoming more fluid and running parallel with each other, and the right people are crossing paths more often- all signs of a (dare I say it) cultural boom that will define a generation of Millenials looking to set standards and reconcile them with traditional standards of success. All of the people in the image above are more than colleagues of mine; they’ve made sacrifices so that they can contribute to culture, and I know this because I know them and peep game. You should as well, because they are the ones- in my humble opinion- who have stepped it another level, meditated like a Buddhist, and will continue giving everyone proof that these are the times to value being here.

Over the next few months, their efforts will be chronicled here in efforts to shed light what. it. is…

SUITS!

(Sickamore, Mel D. Cole, Maluca, The Kid Daytona, Uproot Andy & Geko Jones, GFCNY, Zandile Blay, 13th Witness, Sherlen Archibold, Willis The Barber, Kenji Summers, Outasight, William Yan, RTNC, ArtekNYC, LV The Stylist)