Once upon a time in a universe far, far away, HipHopDX used to host blogs. Through Meka, Brillyance, Aliya Ewing and others, readers got unfiltered opinions on the most current topics in and beyond Hip Hop. After a few years, a couple redesigns and the collective vision of three different Editors-In-Chief, blogs are back. Well, sort of. Since our blog section went the way of two-way pagers and physical mixtapes, Twitter, Instagram and Ustream have further accelerated the pace of current events in Hip Hop. Rappers beef with each other 140 characters at a time, entire mixtapes (and their associated artwork) can be released via Instagram, and sometimes these events require a rapid reaction.
As such, we’re reserving this space for a weekly reaction to Hip Hop’s current events. Or whatever else we deem worthy. And the “we” in question is I, Andre Grant, and the one-and-only Ural Garrett. Collectively, we serve as HipHopDX’s Features Staff. Aside from tackling stray topics, we may invite artists and other personalities in Hip Hop to join the conversation. Without further delay, here’s this week’s “Stray Shots.”
Does The “Whip/Nae Nae” Being A Manufactured Hit Hint That The Music Industry Is Back?
Andre: Dudes dancing came back in a major way in 2015. I guess not everything can be about beats and bars. And, of course, things are cyclical, but between Empire’s stranglehold on pop culture and Drake’s charming solo number in the “Hotline Bling” video, dance moves had a major year. Here, I’d like to compare two viral trends that seemed to dominate music in 2015 and have spilled over into this year: Silento’s “ Watch Me (Whip/ Nae Nae)” and Migos’s ‘Dab.’ The first was born to be viral. Despite the two separate dances already being fairly popular in the Atlanta area, putting them together seemed to add something extra. Silento, real name Richard Lamar Hawk, came up with the moves experimenting outside of Chem class in High School. But, just recently, Business Insider released a piece pinning the success of the single, and more importantly, the dance, to a single third party: DanceOn.
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This isn’t the first time DanceOn has been mentioned in relation to “Watch Me.” Kris Ex wrote about it last year for XXL (as he cheekily, and rightly, pointed out to me on FB), and Silento himself dropped the company a mention in a story last year with Billboard. But the digital network’s CEO Amanda Taylor created DanceOn as well as counts Madonna as a co-founder, and it spearheaded the already extremely catchy dance and track with a viral campaign that worked at scale. The company acts as a hinge between artists and labels, touting their network of “influencers” as social advertisers. They then put the dance in the hands of these creatives working outside the confines of Def Jam or Atlantic or even 300, and they let them go to work on the platforms that a majority of millennials and gen-Z’ers interact with every day. If all goes right, boom, a viral sensation is made. It makes sense for the artists, too. Ex reported that the producer, Bola, got the song coded under ISRC and created a $9.99 Tunecore to match. This paid huge dividends as the millions upon millions of views the imitators racked up started to roll in along with brands trying to piggyback off of that success.
Let’s compare this to Migos’s ‘dab.’ The dance has taken the country by storm in no small part to Cam Newton & Co’s antics during touchdown dances, but it’s also interesting because of the seeming lack of real coordination the moment has received. It seemed like all of a sudden Hillary Clinton was dabbing on Ellen, and college football coaches were currying favor by hitting the dab. Its exuberance is obviously it’s most notable feature. And while Silento uploaded the original video to Vine in late 2014, I can’t even recall hearing the term ‘dab’ until Migos’s “Pipe It Up” off their major label debut Yung Rich Nation. Before that, at least on Vine, a casual search will give you mostly allusions to weed dabs, which are a concentrated form of THC rendered into a hardened oil. Those devilish things gained traction fairly recently because vapes make it easier than ever to smoke that oil into oblivion. But for Migos’s dab dance to blow up so organically leads me to believe the music industry may be in a better place than it’s been in a long while. Not only are third parties figuring out a way to step into the roles the music industry once took on (the street team, the organic marketing team etc.), but it’s also still possible to create a sensation through pure charisma and the luck of a marquee talent picking up the movement at the right time.
The applications of the model could be extraordinary, and maybe Jadakiss’s proclamation that you won’t see labels in a few years may not be so radical. Maybe labels will split up into competing sections of a whole, each doing the work that one building would have done two decades ago. As for Migos, it also shows how not coordinating the possibility of something going viral could be to your detriment. A quick Google trends snapshot doesn’t quite put them on the crest of the wave that they started.
Ural: Silento’s success with “Watch Me (Whip Nae Nae)” could be an accumulation of new age marketing and distribution with traditional major label roll outs. This has been a long time coming considering the old music industry guards have been either historically late or wonky with handling everything from music going viral to more contemporary releases let the folks at Tidal tell it. Middle men agencies like DanceOn exists almost out of necessity as social media platforms from Instagram to Twitter have ushered in a new celebrity through everyone’s favorite buzzword “influencer.” These are individuals who may not find themselves as well known as recording artists or famous actors/actresses. Some could call these folks the evolution of the reality television star. Get one or two of these individuals to share snippets of songs on Vine or Instagram and it’ll damn near be a hit.
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This could be a new take on the 90s boy/girl band model that gave rise to groups including The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. Once a track goes viral on the internet, other outlets from television to terrestrial radio have it fairly easy. Makes sense as to why Silento’s platinum hit made its way to Hillary Clinton on Ellen and served as background music for something as silly as Dancing With The Stars. And, it’s probably the most cost-effective way in marketing someone’s music. There are some possible repercussions, however. Tastemakers change hands from those with a knowledge of the industry or press (including the blog world) to someone with enough power to get paid thousands just for one tweet, post or video regardless of quality. Companies have found a better way to streamline and filtrate the infinite possibilities of the internet for mainstream culture. This just so happens to take place as Hip Hop serves as the most dominant music genre in the world.
While this model work in the long run? Considering Silento reportedly only made $100,000 from the single’s success, I doubt that until actual logistics get better. As of now, “Watch Me” has gone platinum and earned over 500 million views on YouTube. Though his recent deal with Capitol Records have him making somewhere between $50 to $500 thousand after his debut drops, having one hit single doesn’t mean that’ll translate into an actual album. Seems like there are more questions than answers, but this is where the music industry is possibly heading.
Andre Grant is an NYC native turned L.A. transplant that has contributed to a few different properties on the web and is now the Features Editor for HipHopDX. He’s also trying to live it to the limit and love it a lot. Follow him on Twitter @drejones.
Ural Garrett is a Los Angeles-based journalist and HipHopDX’s Senior Features Writer. When not covering music, video games, films and the community at large, he’s in the kitchen baking like Anita. Follow him on Twitter @Uralg.
