For the last three weeks, Jay-Z’s ““Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life’’ has been the best-selling album in the country, just one of several hip-hop albums that have dominated the charts all fall. While high-profile rock bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, Hole and Marilyn Manson have had disappointing sales, hip-hop acts like Lauryn Hill, OutKast and the various proteges of New Orleans entrepreneur Master P have conquered. Though rap still accounts for just over 11 percent of all music sales, three of this week’s top-five albums are rap, and the genre now outpaces country music, with sales of more than 54 million albums in the first three quarters of 1998. ““I wouldn’t say rock is dead,’’ says Sylvia Rhone, chairman and CEO of the Elektra Entertainment Group. ““But right now, hip-hop rules.''
Street teams are one of the main reasons. ““If I’m the quarterback, the street team is our front line,’’ says Damon Dash, a Harlem native who founded Roc-A-Fella with Jay-Z and a third partner in 1995 (like many hip-hop labels, Roc-A-Fella is an intricate joint venture with corporate parents, in this case Def Jam and PolyGram). ““Without our street team it would be really hard for us to survive.’’ In his unpainted office, with his barber anxiously waiting on him, Dash explains. Typically, record companies promote their music to fans through exposure on radio and MTV. But these outlets, and especially their advertisers, have traditionally been cool to hip-hop, especially the rough stuff released by smaller labels like Roc-A-Fella, Suave House and Master P’s No Limit. Hip-hop was born of the drive to make the most of limited resources. When shut out of radio and TV, the companies made their own media. Labels developed street teams–corps of hungry urban youth looking for a break in the business and a few free CDs–to get the word out. An outgrowth of the culture’s mid-’70s roots, when entrepreneurial deejays like Kool DJ Herc and Afrika Bambaataa aggressively promoted their parties through graffiti-style fliers, street teams carpet-bomb urban neighborhoods and clubs with posters, stickers, fliers, even free cassettes of upcoming music.
For hip-hop companies, the bottom line on street teams is the bottom line. Major labels routinely spend $2 million or more to push a rock or R&B album, sinking most of the money into radio promotion. Rap albums, by contrast, sell by word of mouth. Even at the high end, it costs only $500,000 to $1 million to break a hip-hop act. The main expenses are videos and ““co-ops’’–preferred placement in music stores. Street teams, mostly volunteers in urban neighborhoods or on college campuses, come cheap. ““They’ve created a new model for doing business,’’ says Rhone. ““The smart [major] companies have adapted their staffs accordingly. Others have just exploited whatever the latest trend was.''
To break a record like Jay-Z’s ““Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life,’’ the push starts months before the album release. This summer, street teams gave advance vinyl copies of the single to influential disc jockeys like DJ Clue in New York and DJ Mars in Atlanta, who included the song on their trademark ““mix tapes’’–homemade compilations sold on the street. Labels used to bridle at mix tapes as pirated releases; now, the tapes have become a key marketing tool, teasers to start the advance buzz. ““Even though I’m an established artist, I still like to leak my music to a kid on the street and let him duplicate it for his homies before it hits radio,’’ says Ice Cube, who has recorded five platinum albums, including his work with N.W.A.
Sometimes acts will record songs just for mix tapes. ““If [an unknown] is rapping about me on tape, my fans will accept him,’’ says DJ Mars. If the mix tape doesn’t catch fire, a label can cut its losses. If it does, street teams push the song to club and specialty radio deejays. Just before the release date, they start putting up posters in earnest and holding listening parties in key cities. Says Tevester Scott, 32, vice president of business and finance at No Limit, ““If I know that there’s 50,000 rap-music buyers in St. Louis, I want those 50,000 people on the street level to have heard my record before it comes out.’’ The strategy has worked. Started on a shoestring budget, No Limit has sold 17 million to 20 million albums this year, according to a spokesperson.
From this core audience, the music then spreads to the suburbs, which are now the biggest markets for hip-hop. Rap magazines like Vibe and The Source help spread the gospel. More than that, though, ““The white kids aren’t hanging out in the suburbs anymore,’’ says Benny Medina, who manages Sean (Puffy) Combs and Babyface. ““They’re coming to hip-hop, so hip-hop doesn’t have to try to find them.’’ These suburban fans have developed sharp feelers, says Derek Tresvant, who organizes street teams for labels in Los Angeles. If white fans sense that the urban market doesn’t like an act, they won’t buy. ““The bottom line is that white kids like whatever black kids like,’’ he says. ““So it doesn’t make sense to try to break hip-hop artists to white kids.''
Emmanuelle and Adrienne both still live with their mothers, which allows them to work for Roc-A-Fella without pay. Both hope that street teaming will lead to something better. In the club, they network ferociously, dreamgirls in nylon running pants. ““We’re strong, we’re smart,’’ says Emmanuelle. ““Five years from now there’ll be someone our age doing this, and we’ll be running labels.’’ As Jay-Z’s song winds down, Adrienne and Emmanuelle keep dancing. They’ve already given out all their fliers; nothing left but to keep on keeping on. Because being on a street team may be all business, but that doesn’t mean it’s not all about pleasure.
Into the mix: Street teams start the buzz months before an album’s release, leaking advance copies to deejays who put together ““mix tapes’’ to sell on the street. Once considered piracy, this is now a key promotional tool.
On to the clubs: If the kids seem to like a song on the tape, street teams push it to club deejays, who can try it out on hundreds, maybe thousands of kids in the target audience. Word of mouth spreads.
Up on the walls: The official release date is just around the corner. Street teams start slapping up posters around the inner city–keeping an eye out for the police, who tend to take those POST NO BILLS signs literally.
Out to the burbs: This is where the label makes the bucks. Most rap albums sell to white kids, who sooner or later pick up on what black kids like. Sooner is better–most rap sales come in the first three weeks after release.
title: “Taking To The Streets” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Darlene Sanchez”
No doubt. While Bush was whisked between heavily guarded venues, protests were mounting in London. On Thursday, more than 100,000 people clogged the city’s streets, waving flags from around the world, Bush puppets with bloodstained hands and antiwar posters in several languages. Though the crowd, armed with drums, whistles and horns, included plenty of dreadlocked students and rainbow peace flags, marchers came from every background. “I am very angry about the war, I feel we were lied to by Bush and Blair,” said Claire Bellenis, a well-dressed pensioner from upscale north London who had also used the trip to pay a quick visit to the nearby British Museum shop.
Three generations of the Latif family, including their 2-year-old granddaughter, also met up for the protest. Said Ahmad Latif, 67: “We are against the war and especially the Bush administration and what they are doing to the whole world.” John Beardmore, 58, who had traveled from the north of England, was one of several who carried American flags held upside down. “It’s to signal distress,” he explained. After marching past Downing Street, protestors toppled a giant effigy of Bush in Trafalgar Square, echoing the memorable image of Saddam Hussein’s falling statue, which was pulled down last April by U.S. troops and Iraqis.
Some 5,000 police were on hand to monitor the loud and good-natured crowd; the focus of one of the largest peacetime security operations ever mounted in Britain. The tab for the security operation during Bush’s three-day visit will be nearly $17 million. No Clintonian walkabouts were on the schedule: Bush was even driven the few steps from his suite at Buckingham Palace to the welcoming ceremony in a bomb-proof car. Police turned Buckingham Palace into a fortress this week for the president and his entourage, closing all roads in the vicinity, with marksmen on the roof and the ground.
Some protesters kept a lower profile. On Thursday morning, at Westminster Abbey, the president met with British families who had lost relatives in the Iraq war. Val Titchener, 55, whose son Matthew was killed in an ambush in Basra in August, but who had not been asked to meet Bush, said she didn’t mind her exclusion. “I would probably lose my temper if I met with him, so he’s probably lucky I wasn’t there,” she told NEWSWEEK. “My son did a job that he loved. I would have supported him in whatever he did,” she added. “I wouldn’t deface his memory by getting political and screaming and shouting.”
