Marketing Hip-Hop Online

Jadakiss in Letter to B.I.G.

According to Gawker.com, not only is Coogi aware of the affinity the late Brooklyn rhyme God had for it’s sweaters, they used this connection to their advantage by compensating Jadakiss for the brand-drop in his tribute song “Letter to B.I.G.”

As we have seen in movies and TV, there has been a huge increase in product placement in recent years, the act of integrating a product or brand within actual programming. This practice has been rising exponentially in TV in particular to combat TiVo-like recording, where one can fast-forward through commercials.

As evidenced by Forever, the Chris-Brown-sings-a-four-minute-jingle-disguised-as-a-hit-single deal last year, this practice is increasingly finding its way into the music business as well.

Questions:

1. Is this kind of arranged, corporate-sponsored lyrics going to backfire at some point, as even the most naive-minded of audience members realizes they are constantly being duped and that there may be no “real” music anymore?
2. Should Jadakiss be “called out” for accepting corporate dollars in a song supposedly dedicated to a deceased friend (assuming the rumor is true)?.

As a personal commentary: Between this, and the Vince-McMahon’ing of hip-hop, I am getting very, very disillusioned by the music business, very, very quickly. Even more than before. And before was a lot.

Interestingly, MTV News quotes Jadakiss as crediting “stylist Groovey Lew (Groovey is also credited with giving B.I.G. his first Coogi sweater) for coming up with the idea”, that the idea for the song initially struck Jadakiss as “corny”, but that in the end resulted in a song where, “it’s nothing fabricated on there. It’s gotta be all real on there. Everything was personal.”

Now I think Jada is probably one of the top-5 lyricists out there, and I respect his work and work ethic, but as the Gawker post so eloquently said, “Maybe save the product placement for normal, non-memorial-to-my-deceased-friend songs?”