Target Media Group
ABOUT US
BACKGROUND
9 Elements Digital Magazine has been created to fill a void in the Hip Hop media. For too long the weakest examples of REAL HIP HOP have been promoted as the face of the culture.
With this publication we hope to add a more truthful representation of what can be considered Hip Hop. Hip Hop is not just rappers talking about thuggery, women and money. Hip Hop culture consists of what the Temple of Hip Hop refers to as 9 Elements. There is Breakin, Emceein, Deejayin, Graffiti Art, Beatboxin, Fashion, Language, Knowledge and Entrepreneurialism (go to hiphoplives.net for a detailed description).
ADVICE
Our advice to artists is to find your singles from your entire catalog and promote those constantly and exclusively. If you have an album project promote it thru the promotion of a single song. Get an objective party to judge between the crowd appeal and the image you want to project to decide on which songs best fit you. For example that’s what American Idol is. A panel of judges and an audience help an artist shape their career. The panel of judges is important to help mesh what the artist has to offer with what the audience wants to hear.
ARTISTS
Over the years we have worked with many artists, most of whom were unsigned looking for major label recognition and recording contracts. That situation in 2014, is almost non-existent at this point. And although you can perform with a great amount of skill and technique, a hot show doesn’t guarantee anything. You need YouTube hits, ITunes numbers and name recognition in the right circles to even get noticed. Still, many artists we’re all familiar with, have all of that, including the name recognition and still don’t have major distribution.
DEAL OR NO DEAL
At the end of the day the way to go is independent. Artists and producers really have no choice. Veteran emcees like KRS ONE say “why would you volunteer for slavery?” in reference to artists still looking for major record deals. Immortal Technique has been able to cultivate a respectable underground career, touring and releasing new music without a label. The goal at this point becomes maintaining a promotional campaign to promote your music. A good song doesn’t guarantee sales. Good promotion guarantees sales. Music that many people think is garbage does well in some circles if promoted correctly.
In terms of marketing, artists mainly utilize performing at local shows, creating mixtapes, posting YouTube videos, social networking like Facebook and Twitter, and every once in awhile paying a service to mass promote thru email blasts. These are all good methods, but then another problem arises. It is way too easy to create music today. So consequently rappers have hundreds of songs sometimes.
HISTORY:SHADES OF HIP HOP / SHADESRADIO
It seems like everybody and his brother has a DVD these days. And for the most part they’re whack. Some are intriguing and everything, niggas flashing money, talking shit, chicks wit fat asses, and ill looking whips at the Funk Flex or whoever’s car show. And the emcees, are too much. Every niggas carrying the hood on his back, and is a stone cold killer underneath the rhyming. What about the hosts? These niggas just happy to get the interview, waiting to see some ill shit happen; encouraging the bullshit so their DVD could sell. Encouraging niggas to put incriminating video taped evidence on the bootleg distribution circuit for any narc to see. What’s with valuing a nigga throwing up gang signs and flashing some big, illegal within the city limits type of firearm, under the street sign on their block while they tell the location of their building to the camera? Are niggas still snitching on themselves on DVD’s, because I stopped watching those shits a long time ago?
When I started doing video mixtapes nobody was doing that shit on any kind of level. Just to say you were doing a tape (not DVD), you had to have it in the major spots for mixtapes in the city. Those were Beat Street Records 2 locations, Music Factory’s 2 spots and Harlem Music Hut. And if you were really official your shit was in Dream Team in Harlem, Brokenia in Manhattan, and in every store in your own hood. During that time in the 90’s Shades of Hip Hop was setting the trends for a lot of shit on video, some bad some good.
We were the first to show cats on the block actually making sales to fiends as they talked shit to our camera. On one of our first tapes, there were cats who did the usual speech about how nobody was getting it except them and they had the ruggedest squad in the hood. The main clique featured, actually could rhyme though despite all their shit-talking. And their little man, was the nicest out the clique, which foreshadowed a trend of niggas hustling to support rap careers, something Master P mastered in the mid 90’s. After releasing that video tape, Time to Shine (which featured Lil Kim on the cover) in 1997, with the aforementioned footage of the cats on the block, the younger Hip Hop fan narcs who happened to watch the tape too and be from that hood took offense to some of the statements being made. So they ran down on the block repeatedly, until they locked up at least 2-4 members of their team. Meanwhile that crew, who for the purposes of this conversation will be known as the West End Posse, were not the only crew of niggas talking shit on the tape about who they were and how other niggas aint getting no money. In fact another crew, we’ll call the East Side Crew, went so far as to actually throw up wads of cash in the air, while they burnt rubber on a hot looking ninja-type motorcycle, which created huge clouds of white smoke under the tire. Of course after seeing the tape, along with other heads on the West side of town, the West End Posse felt offended by what the East Side Crew said on the tape. So after a week or two of niggas getting knocked out, windows getting broke out of stores, and people getting shot at in their house, the West End Posse sees me on the street and decides to confront me. After recounting the tales of what transpired because of the tape they placed the blame on me for “putting those whack niggas on the tape”. At this point I was forced to remind them they were not censored in any way either and it was Shades of Hip Hop’s format of mixing unsigned cats with celebrities that allowed either of them to get on and let everybody know who they were in the first place.
It was at this point, in 1997, that I resolved to deemphasize the miscellaneous bullshit if it could incriminate somebody or get somebody shot and just continue doing for real Hip Hop. MC battles and rhyme fights were a different story. When we taped a round table discussion with hot new emcees about to do their thing that featured DMX, Big Pun, John Forte, Mos Def and Canibus, we didn’t get stuck on the road of strictly doing ‘Beef’ tapes. Realizing that we had the first live ‘Beef’ on video in circulation as it happened (Canibus vs LL) could have inspired us to go the Jerry Springer route like some of these other videos but we chose to stick to Hip Hop.
As we pioneered the manual video remix on video mixing equipment, our efforts were given notice by Noreaga of CNN fame who was about to do his debut solo album N.O.R.E.. After handing him a copy of Hot 2 Def which featured the roundtable footage, a tribute Master P, our man of the year for 1997, and among other things a remix of his video for T.O.N.Y., he called us for an exclusive taping at the Hit Factory. Not only did he provide an herb-laced interview but he hosted a segment featuring Track Masters, Kid Capri and a first ever uncensored VIP rhyme cypher with Consequence, Punchline and a young 50 Cent before he got shot. Naturally we didn’t get sidetracked with doing remixes, because we had been steadily documenting the kind of material we were striving for; Real Hip Hop footage.
As it turns out, the Rap game switched from Real Hip Hop to something based more on image. The niggas talking shit on the video became the hot thing. The miscellaneous shots of fat asses, cars and mounds of weed became the hot thing. Even whole DVDs of videos and remixes became the hot thing. So instead of switching I stopped doing video tapes and DVDs. I said “let them niggas have it.” The whole genre was becoming whack to me. Like so many of the Hip Hop pioneers of the past have done. (not that I feel I have pioneered anything besides video mixtapes) I took the stance that you can’t force cats into your style even if you think it’s hot. Instead, I decided to play the law of karma in what goes around comes around. I decided to wait until real Hip Hop came back around.
Rather than go the route of DVDs 7 years after we did our last fully original volume, we did not come back with another DVD. Instead, we’d like to welcome you to the world of Shades of Hip Hop worldwide, 24 hour, internet radio. With our new format instantly accessible to the world thru the internet we can transmit True School Hip Hop material in our archives from back in the day up to now. Our original formats are filled with gems that others are sure to imitate. In the same way that Shades name became linked with the innovation of a new Hip Hop format on video, we seek to innovate internet radio in 2007. So far you have heard of terrestrial am/fm radio, pirate radio and satellite radio available to people who buy the service. Internet radio is free to anyone who now has access to the internet. Although there are no commonly known sources for internet radio besides XM satelite, you now have at least heard about shadesradio.com.