Beats By Product Placement.

Unless you live under a rock, I'm sure you've seen the huge bright bulky headphones all the cool kids are sporting nowadays with a red logo on the side. That is the Beats by Dre Studio headphone product line launched by Beats Electronics back in 2008. The company was founded by Dr. Dre and Interscope Record's Chairmen Jimmy Iovine in 2006. In collaboration with Monster Cables company they launched their first headphones in 2008.

Backed by Hip-Hop's most influential sound engineer and a slew of celebrity endorsers, it was only a matter of seconds before every teenage music enthusiast had to have a pair of the bulky overpriced headphones, that where just as much of a piece a musical equipment as they were a status symbol.

Beats lined up a variety of endorsors and even gave away thousands of products to celebrities all around the industry in order to expose their product beyond that of the Hip-Hop audience Dr. Dre helped cultivate in the 1990's. By primarily using artist and athletes he's managed to make his product a household item for most households with teenage music listeners. With the hottest MC's and the world's  best athletes as his billboards, Dr. Dre has built a "Monster" of business for himself.

Squash That...

The biggest example of reciprocity I can think of in Hip-Hop has to be when Nas and Jay-Z squashed their beef. One of Hip-Hop's biggest rivalries to date, it officially began in 2001 after some prior shaky business deals fell through between Nas and Jay. Nas felt he wasn't justly compensated after producer Ski sampled his voice on Jay-Z's "Dead Presidents" hook, which you can listen to below.




After a slew of shots at live shows and the involvement of Mobb Deep's Prodigy, the feud became real in 2001 at Hot 97's Summer Jam when Jay-Z's opening verse in "Takeover" took direct shots at Nas and Prodigy.





Nas then went on to respond to Hov with the infamous "Ether", which is largely regarded as one of the best if not the best diss track in Hip-Hop history. Warning, this is pretty explicit.




The feud lasted about 4 years with each taking shots at the other but never leading to a physical altercation. The feud formally ended 2006 after Nas signed onto Dej Jam Records, of which Jay-Z was the president of. The two publicly squashed the beef live on stage after Jay-Z brought Nas out and the two continued to tour and perform together. That classic image in Hip-Hop history can be seen below...

The two went on to have a prosperous relationship as both friends and artist, boosting sales and only increasing the rate at which their shows sold out. They went on to feature on multiple tracks together and derive success from each other, reciprocity at its finest for the well being of Hip-Hop.

Are YOU Valid like Salad?

One thing you can't take away from Hip-Hop artist is their music and their influence. Artist influence is huge in determining how long or short lived their career might be which is why it's one their most valuable assets. The goal of all artist much like brands and marketers is to STAY RELEVANT. A seasoned artist with a discography and track record for high sales is a proven authority of influence and will very well warrant the high cost of using them as marketing tools. One artist who I can name right off the top my head who does this flawlessly is Kanye West. ANYTHING Kanye touches becomes gold. For example take the clothing brand "PYREX VISION" (which is designed by Kanye's personal stylist Virgil Abloh) which BLEW UP the second Kanye wore a few pieces during a stage performance.

Notice the sweatshirt and the kilt, now take a look at these following plain folk emulating Kanye's outfit.

Suddenly the uber-priced clothing garments ($125 for shorts? REALLY?) are all the rage and everyone from muggles to celebrities alike are donning the "Pyrex" wares. Here's Def Jam singer Rita Ora, Rob Kardashian and rapper A$AP Rocky showing some love.

Goes to show the marketing strength one popular Artist can have and the ripple effect caused among other lower tier celebs who want to be included in the movement. Influence is Authority.

And the Winner is...Sprite

In the early 2000's Sprite rose in the Hip-Hop scene through collaborations with MTV. Sprite blew up through many media events and even paid young enthusiast $50 to come party and enjoy live performances by some of the hottest artist at the time. In the PBS Frontline Documentary "The Merchants of Cool" you see just how Sprites Marketing took a leap from the 90's into the 2000's.

That was back in the early 2000's, Sprite still maintains a relatively strong presence in the culture today, using artist like Talib Kweli to host their new Emcee Talent Search endeavor as well as Drake in this recent commercial.



As I mentioned before the reason why these artist are so marketable is because they give the brand a new face rather than just a logo, its credibility thats as firm as a multibillionaire investor backing your small bar in a cultural sense.

Celebrities...

Now what would this blog be without Celebrities? Celebrities are usually the driving force behind mandates geared towards a particular audience. If you wanted to push something Rock related you'd probably want a famous Rockstar like Slash or Keith Richards, same goes for Hip-Hop. When you're looking to market something towards at target audience, you look for those at the pinnacle of that audience to endorse your product. The reason for this is because associating your product with that endorser gives you credibility across several levels. First you get exposure as far as their reach goes, the more fans they have the better. The reason for this is because fans often emulate their favorite artist, if their favorite artist wears this, they'll want to wear it too, if they drink RC Cola, hell they might just try to find some RC Cola just to be able to feel like they can relate with the artist. Marketing firms realize this and use the push and pull of celebrities to get their brands out while semi-covertly gaining a few eyeballs on their products.

What to expect...

Throughout this semester you can expect a series of topics and celebrities within the industry to be discussed. Namely moguls such as Jay-Z, Diddy, Dr. Dre & Eminem as well as current and up and coming artist such as Drake, Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Tyler The Creator and Kanye West. We'll see just how these artist have evolved from strictly music to becoming businessmen and even conglomerates in their own right. Ever since Hip-Hop blew up in the late 1990's early 2000's and took America's youth by storm, Corporate America has taken notice and piggybacked off the culture's success to form new markets and gain exposure. Through a mix of music, edgy advertising and the right spokesperson or Rapper, brands (such as Sprite) have been able to vitalize their product and gain credibility within the community.

Welcome to the Table

First and foremost, Welcome to "The Industry Roundtable". On this blog I'll be providing you with content from across multiple spectrums of Media and Hip-Hop as one. Detailed, subjective and slightly biased(?) material on popular topics in today's Hip-Hop scene. But before we get into the nitty gritty allow me to introduce myself... My name is Nandy Natera and I'm a 21 year old half Dominican and Puerto Rican raised in the birthplace of Hip-Hop, The Bronx. Growing up I've seen first hand how Hip-Hop music in particular has evolved and changed the culture amongst urban city youths. To us Hip-Hop was more than just music, its how we talked, how we walked, and even how we dressed. This is Hip-Hop through my eyes with a side dab of Marketing, enjoy...