Hubert Sawyers III - S.O.L.A.R.-Powered Content

If you are not aware, I am the manager of the hip hop group, Detroit CYDI.  Lately I have been reading the blog by Ian Rogers, manager of my newest point of interest – Get Busy Committee.  Inspired by his well-developed plan for his group, I am now looking to evoke similar progress from my own managerial efforts. Much like myself, Mr. Rogers does not have substantial experience managing music acts.  It is facts like this that keep me motivated in this crazy, unpredictable industry.  As long as there are smart folks like Ian Rogers willing to take chances, I figure my work is not in vain.

This all has me wondering about what I need to do to inspire the kind of work ethic from my group to eventually start seeing a return on my investment of time and energy. Right now, we are working on a fundraising campaign to gather funds for their first official physical project that was released to the world almost a year ago. This is truly a test of faith as we are seriously limited on time. If we are not able to get the funds, then it would be somewhat of a setback. Fortunately, there are alternatives to how to release an album in a short amount of time, so even in a crunch, we can have some sort of product to sell.

Going through this process, I have realized how important it is for me to be on top of things. As a new manager, I cannot expect anything more from my group that cannot be expected of me. Watching others that I know are in the same space as myself, it becomes apparent that a manager’s job is more than making deals for their artists and cracking the whip on them. A manager has to be a leader. It is as much of my responsibility to inspire as it is for me to manage, especially since we have the formidable task of trying to wrangle a fan base that is invisible to us.

Ian Rogers is a new manager, but he does not seem to be new to success. He has been in the tech space for music since the 1990s. There are very few that can say that. If he were to come to me with ideas on how to try to succeed, I know I would listen! That is why I give the guys in Get Busy Committee a lot of props for picking him as their manager, regardless of his background. In this day and age, it is hard to say if old music industry types can be as effective as they once were for new bands. I am sure some would beg to differ, but I would imagine cost of entry has dropped. The valuable connections that were to be had are probably not as hard to come by these days. Everyone is looking for new opportunities.

In my position, I feel I am good as anyone to be an artist manager. Networking and connecting people are major passions of mine. Helping my friends is as automatic as breathing for me, so it only seems right to be able to make a part of my life’s work.

Greetings all,
I hope you all had a great Thursday, regardless of what you did. Here at Frying in Vein, I am not trying to force any discussion on holidays, but we all know yesterday was Thanksgiving and whether or not you participate in the American tradition you can still enjoy a good old funk mix. This particular one was produced by an old friend of the Frying in Vein site, dj_pi aka Paul Karatsinides. You can take a listen below and/or click the widget to download.

Saw a tweet from my favorite urban tastemaker magazine, The Fader, about this video and I had to check it out.

My first listen to Zomby was on a mix curated by Your Brutha brub, who is someone that should be on your radar if he isn’t already. He is definitely the most organized dude when it comes to his social media interaction AND he still uses MySpace faithfully.

I usually want to have a ton to added info, but I got some bigger things coming up for the site. Enjoy the trippy visuals and the Zomby sounds. If you like what you hear, dig deeper and search his catalogue.

… for me.

MySpace screenshot by Steven Vance

It does not make much sense why I still have my MySpace profiles (all three of them). It is not like I use them anymore. I check them occasionally to remind me why I stayed away for so long.

Yet it was only the other day when it hit me what bothered me most about the once-popular social networking website. As I look at my “friends” on MySpace and I notice that 70% of them are artists themselves; most of them being hip hop acts. At one point, I was get 4-5 requests a day from rappers and producers to check out their music and cop “their hotness.” Whenever I would post promotional bulletins, they were only being acknowledged by those involved with the event, never non-industry people.

Sure, it was me that accepted all these artists, but I do remember being quite discriminatory for a while until I just got bored with the practice. At some point, I just did not feel that the time I was investing on the site was merited by the dull results I was getting. That was when I decided to get my OWN space like you see here. Granted, I still did not know what I was doing, but I knew it had to have been better than my MySpace work. I must say it was the best move I have made in quite a while. My presence is stronger than ever and when I finally get the second phase for Frying in Vein going [which is very soon], I am certain I will see respectable results.

While preparing for this piece, I had to get some perspective from some of my comrades. I knew my incendiary headline was just that, almost to a level of absurdity. The site is still buggy and loads like cold molasses on a lumpy surface with a 15 degree incline, but it is still kind of necessary to have. In terms of owning your brand on the search engine, MySpace always ranks high, so it came as no surprise when my friends were not as supportive of my baseless accusation.

My dude Ethan Holben aka DJ Contakt, former VP of Fat Beats Records, gave me some perspective over e-mail that drills the point home. My issue with rappers has nothing really to do with MySpace. The truth of the matter is, the reason why the content of this site has taken the direction it has is due to what Ethan says here:

(edited by me)To me, the problem with Rap and Myspace is GENERALLY ( I capitalize, because it is a generalization and isn’t true for everyone) the same is the problem with Rap and everything else. The importance of self promotion in rap has always been there, it’s part of the framework of the music and the culture. However, there was a turning point where it went from being a necessary part of the culture to a comedic parody of itself. I can’t pinpoint when this turning point was (maybe the indie movement in the late 90’s, or perhaps the rise of the 50 Cent style “mixtape” in the early 2000’s) nor can I give you the exact cause, that is an entire article in itself – however it did happen. There was a period of a few years when you couldn’t have a conversation with a rap artist that didn’t have the use of the now cliché phrases “grinding”, “on my grind”, “hustling”, “do my thang”, and all the variations at least once, if not ten times that. To me, Rap became obsessed with blatant self promotion, to many, that blatant self promotion appeared to be more important than the quality of the art. This obsession with “hustle” is essentially the opposite of building a “true fanbase” like your prior article. When you “hustle” you aren’t treating people like peers, you are selling to them and in essence creating only a fleeting transactional relationship.

Let me highlight something from Ethan’s perspective for you guys that I really want you to absorb

When you “hustle” you aren’t treating people like peers, you are selling to them and in essence creating only a fleeting transactional relationship.

When I advocate being a personable geek, I am telling you to care about who you seek to buy your stuff. For the longest time, folks have gotten away with this one-way arrangement of doing things and people are no longer accepting of it. THAT is why MySpace has died – too many stupid people, who do not understand that they are not special. You are not adding value to someone’s life by having “the hottest beats on Earth” or “the Dylan fire of 16” bar verses. I mean, you might to someone, maybe. You are never going to find that person if you are adding to a thick fog of spam though. You need to get a personality; something that will make you stand out from the pack.

Seriously folks, wise up! Stop jumping on every social networking site because you see a fake 50 Cent account with over 100,000 followers. You will never be 50 Cent by following. 50 Cent became who he was by being a leader in the hip hop space. His mixtapes changed the way we ingest rap today. The man does not care to jump on trends. He is still trying to recreate his best record! That is why he is rich.

If you must use MySpace, try to really connect with folks. Now that they have analytics, explore how a tweet to your MySpace can affect the amount of plays per day. See if integrating the same status messages across the same platforms is actually advantageous to you. Do your research, different demographics use different sites. It is true. You probably will not have the same friends on MySpace as you do Facebook. This is how you must think when using these TOOLS. These sites are not toys, so stop playing with them. Either get serious or quit.

Sorry… but this gets me a little riled up. Thanks for reading.

This feature is just productivity exercise. I want to remind myself that it is not hard to showcase quality content. Case in point, I must share this audio/visual gem featuring producer/eMCee Nick Speed, made by Nic Notion.

Basically, The Nic(k)s explore the deep blue collar connection between the industrial plants and the industrious beats that permeate Detroit hip hop music. Notion juxtaposes scenes of assembly line activity and Speedo working on a new beat. It is hard to tell which is the grimy backdrop – the music or the film footage. It is this kind of work that inspires me and keeps me going. In a world that forces us to reconsider our value every day, we must share in each other’s creativity to keep up surging forth.