“Some media is the whack” says Chuck D..was he talking about us?
image courtesy of Wikipedia
Movements or Trends?
Social Media thinks it’s a movement but most of it only translates into a trend. How much of social media is a reality and how much is hype?
“Everybody had a feeling something was going to happen but nobody knew what…” says Chuck explaining exactly what a “movement” is… No coincidence they later went on to release the seminal work “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back“.
Between 1976 and 1978 the face of urban music in New York changed; the Jackson 5 had left Motown and rebranded as the Jacksons, Cold Crush began showing up on the New York music scene, the rules of music were being broken at every possibility and every wannabe young urban New Yorker was beginning to discover block parties, boom boxes and mix tapes.
Public Enemy – Don’t Believe The Hype
Chuck D was a youthful 18 by the time rap and hip hop had emerged from a small concern to a dam of interest waiting to burst in 1978. He recalls the story of his journey into hip hop at the Red Bull Music Academy in Barcelona to an exclusive audience of 40 aspirant young musicians, DJs and performers hand selected by Red Bull to participate in their decade old grass roots project.
Your roots are your routes
Hip Hop, like Red Bull, owes its enormous popularity to its grass roots and “keeping it real” – being authentic. Authenticity is all about the “no sell out”, the grass roots credibility that makes these two icons sustainable as fashion blows its fickle winds of change.
Social Media claims to be knocking at the door of youth around the world but the reality is that 90% of it is just hype – that is based on a mere pyramid of expectation supported by enthusiastic bloggers and analysts who are clamouring to get on the social media train.
If you know hip hop, he needs no introduction but if you don’t you’ll know of Public Enemy because it is PE that can claim to making the world aware of hip hop in the 80s built on a solid foundation of grass roots support despite a media blanket avoidance of their provocative message. As they said “…this time the revolution will not be televised”.
“My exposure was through the DJs and their mixtapes” explains Chuck to an audience maybe half his age but both engaged by the story and in respect of one of black music’s larger than life legends.
“The mobile sound systems in Long Island who were doing parties. Not only were they mobile but we had to be mobile too”, he explains as he charts the rise of hip hop from its birth around New York block parties to the global music force it is today.
It was an era when the radio was dominant and pirate stations would provide the social fabric for young black communities as much as those cross the river in Inglewood New Jersey as in the Bronx, Harlem and Queens. The scene was heavily localized – sound systems in the parks supported by grass roots advocacy created local legends that had to move up if the music was to progress. Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel are names synonymous with the early emergence of New York’s hip hop mainly because they made the move from local beachheads of support to the club and later the recording industry by 1979.
Chuck D talks of Flash and Mel’s authenticity; they were “able to bleed into what’s happening at the club level and also at the college level” before they made it to vinyl. From January 1978 to October 1979 the date of the first rap record, the scene was intense carried by a wave of localized enthusiasm and localized heroes creating the foundations for a movement that was more than a trend.
Social Media – trend or movement?
Unlike trends, movements have foundations that are ultimately sustainable because they continue to offer their people a behavioural platform on which trends can be manufactured and let go.Unlike movements trends are unsustainable pyramids which inevitably collapse.
90% of social media is manufactured born as a result of a conversation that happened between a creative and a planner and a client desperate to reverse failing customer loyalty. Have you tried social media? We could run a mobile marketing campaign for you…look at these click through rates!
Want proof?
Despite Chuck D being an active pro-file sharing campaigner sharing of the original video to “Dont’t Believe the Hype” on Youtube is “disabled by request” by their label Universal.
Most Social Media is part of a “campaign“. Social media is not about campaigns, it’s about creation. Campaigns are part of the 20th century when awareness was the end game.
Like spam and dynamiting the coral reefs, it works in the short term but leaves behind a landscape where nothing can grow.
And now the good news
Then there’s the good news – that 10% of Social Media that really kicks it? That’s where the innovation is happening and that’s the Social Media that is building from the grass roots – ie using their “grass routes” to market. These guys are the ones building around the community, creating not campaigning, the media that captures the feeling that “something is about to happen” because the people on the street, not the analysts or bloggers are demanding it.
Technorati Tags: public enemy, chuck d, movement, trends, youth marketing, social media, sns, social networking, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, mobile behavior
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