Hip Hop Music Is Timeless: Don’t Put an Expiration Date on Your Favorite Music

Music is an art and Hip Hop music is not only an art but a culture. Hip Hop artists should strive to make their music timely. Think of artists like the O’Jays, The Rolling Stones, and The Isley Brothers. They have been making music for many, many years and what if someone would have told them they could only make music until they were 25 years old?

What if the world put a time limit on how long we could create art? Can you imagine Eddie Levert doing something other than making good music? What about Chuck D from Public Enemy or KRS-ONE? I can still enjoy a good show by De La Soul any day of the week.

These artists have been around for years and they are true to their craft. They put out good music consistently and they do not let anyone tell them when to stop doing what they love.

That love for what they are doing is the key ingredient to a successful career. When you start making music just to make some money or to satisfy a record label or whom ever, then you are on the way out. The people with long careers are passionate about their music. They are passionate about their fans. They are in touch with their fans and their fans are in touch with them.

Their music is not about winning awards or fancy marketing and promotions tactics. It is about making good music. Music they can be proud of…music that will stand the test of time and create a mental shift in the mind of the listener.

We will always remember the first time we heard a song from one of our favorite artists and when we hear it now it makes us feel a certain way. That is what artists should strive to do with their music. Then, the music will be memorable and timeless!

So what is the formula for making timeless music? It can be summed up in the following steps:

1. Have a passion for your music
2. Find a way to record and distribute your music
3. Promote your music to as many people as possible
4. Give great live performances
5. Repeat Steps 1-4

Using this formula, any artist, Hip Hop or otherwise, should be able to record and distribute their own brand of timeless music as often as they want to. So what are you waiting on? Now is the time to get started creating a legacy for yourself and your music.

Mello Melanin, The Hot Instrumentalist
www.RapBeatCreator.com

Click here for Hot Hip Hop Beats and Instrumentals

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How to Resurrect Your Music Career and Come Back Better Than Before!

Whassup Peeps?

There are a lot of people in the music business. Some music artists become wildly successful and have a career that supports them all their lives. Others are barely even noticed and they never make a dime.

Then there are some in the middle who become successful to a degree and all of a sudden, they seem to vanish into thin air. You don’t hear from them in years and all of a sudden, BOOM! They come back on the scene and shoot straight to the top again.

Is there a technique for doing this or is it just a random occurrence of luck…or both?

One thing these types of comeback artist have that allows them to comeback is previous success or track record. It’s easier to build on your successes that people remember such a having one or more hit songs. Having a hit song that is familiar to your audience makes it easier to connect with them.

Some good examples of artists who made a great comeback are El Debarge, Twista, and Maxwell.

All three of them were very successful at the very beginning of their careers then they faded away and people always wondered what happened to them. We enjoyed their legendary music even when they were not actively releasing new music.

Some, like El Debarge, were extremely successful in the 80’s. Then, there was nothing. He resurfaced a couple of years ago on an awards show singing one of his hits. He was well received and as of this writing has a radio hit song, “Lay With You”, with another artist called Faith (who had also been out of the spotlight for a while). This song is bangin’.

In the Hip Hop world, one of the greatest comebacks in my opinion was Twista. Twista is a Guinness World Record holder for fastest rapper. He had several hits early in his career and then for a while he was not putting out hits. Then all of a sudden, he teams up with Kanye West and Jamie Foxx for “Slow Jamz” and creates an ultra hit record. It was almost like he never missed a step.

Even a Grammy Award Winning artist like Maxwell had an insanely successful comeback. After his first few albums he was rarely heard from for a few years. People were wishing he would come out with more music. Out of nowhere he comes out with a wildly successful album, “BLACKsummers’ night”, that earns him another Grammy!

One thing that makes all of these artists successful is their passion for the music. When they comeback, they put out great music. I think their love for music is what drives them to be successful again. They already have a good core fan base that would support them anyway but they make the music so good that they end up with lots of new fans as well.

In addition to making good music, they have a good music business team around them. This is not to be forgotten. At the end of the day the music business is still a business and its better to take a shot on a proven winner than to create something entirely from scratch.

That is not to say something brand new will not work for surely that is not the case. But an artist that has a great following can come back over and over again and you can take that to the bank.

How to Win In the Music Business with Persistence

As children, most people learned the story of the tortoise and the hare. The hare was quicker than the tortoise but in the end, the tortoise won the race because of his persistence. Getting anything you really want in life is the same as this story.

This theory can also be applied to the music business as well.

There are no overnight successes. There may be artists who seem to have this type of success but what the public does not see are the long hard hours which have been sacrificed to get them where they are today. To prove a point and put this theory in perspective, let us compare two types of artists. We will call the first artist, Big Mack and the second artist, Small Fry.

Both Big Mack and Small Fry have talent but they have very different mentalities. Big Mack sees the music industry as a “get rich quick” scheme and does not care about learning the business of music. All he wants to do is get the fame and fortune by any means necessary. He gets a record deal and has a hit song on the radio.

He spends his money on cars, clothes, women, jewelry, etc. Big Mack’s career seems great in the beginning but he fails to make another hit. His second album is a flop and he owes his record label $500,000 because they did not recoup their investment in him.

Big Mack never even took the time to find out what recoup meant.

Now he lives with his mom in her basement. He still has at least one of the fancy cars but the engine is going bad and it needs a brake job. The clothes went out of style, all the women left, and he had to pawn the jewelry. He now works in a warehouse making $8 an hour and complaining how the music industry was unfair to him.

Small Fry on the other hand never had a big budget. He learned as much as he could about the music business through books, attending music conferences, and finding mentors who he could model. He started his own record label, Hot Fries Records and a publishing company, Supersize Fries Music.

He learned how to market and promote his music using guerilla marketing techniques because he did not have much money. Small Fry became a regional success and secured an independent distribution deal with an international distributor.

Small Fry invested his money back into his businesses and bought a nice piece of real estate to build a recording studio so he could continue to create music for himself and others. He became a music mogul and will probably never be able to spend all the money he has earned in his lifetime.

How can you apply this to your music career?

You must have a vision of where you want to be. People hear this stuff all the time but most never act toward making their dreams reality. You should also have some written down goals for you music career.

Then you must act. Nothing replaces action. This is where things can get tricky because even though you do take action, you may not like the results you get. You can make one of two choices: quit or persist.

If you quit, you may never know the realm of possibilities you may have achieved. You will never know if you were the next “big thing” because you gave up.

If you persist and continue on even though you have setback after setback, you will be successful. Your music career may not end up exactly like you planned in the beginning but most of the time, you will end up better off in life and much happier.

Are you at the verge of quitting the music business? How will you truly know if you don’t at least try again? If you fail at something, pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. You didn’t really fail. You just found one way that would not work.

Let's Make It Happen!!!

Mello Melanin, The Hot Instrumentalist

www.RapBeatCreator.com

www.Beats4ADub.com

www.MusicMarketingPromotions.com

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