Category: CULTURE

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Why I Need to Live Like a Rap Star

How I carry my thug (via vermegrigio on Flickr)

How I carry my thug (via vermegrigio on Flickr)

I fully admit to being inordinately amused by the exploits of most rappers, especially in the antics and lifestyle outlined in their lyrics. I figure if an artist is truly about their business, they’re likely are not doing all of the extra activities they list. There are only so many hours in the day.

So, in the spirit of my ratchet music appreciation, and thinking of the conversation I had with one of my coaches, Dawn, I’ve decided that incorporating some aspects of the rapper lifestyle may not be a bad thing.

Fake It Until You Make It

Going back to my earlier statement, rappers are some of the bombastic creative people in the nation. A local star who still lives at home with his mother, works the stock room at Best Buy and records in his third cousin’s basement will have you believe he was just signed to the most well-known label with a million-dollar advance and has the hottest chick the game on his arm at all times. To use an overused term, it’s “swag.” Applying this to me, I have to be more prepared to talk about my ambitions for freelance work. No one wants to hear the hem and haw of tentatively describing aspirations for excellence. Claim it, declare it, own it. Rappers have this spirit in spades, even the ones who record in their closets. Why not adopt that in your business?

Roll With a Supportive Crew

What performer do you know that goes on stage with less than one hype man? I’ll wait…Exactly. Having a passel means rappers are never alone, bored, hungry and without entertainment. And they always have a fall guy, who doesn’t want that! For my needs, my crew  consists of my sorority sisters, family, my career coaches, former supervisors and various social media accounts for inspiration, laughs and thought-provoking commentary. Since I tend to avoid any kind of legal snafus, I never have to ask any of them to take the rap for me, which I’m sure they appreciate. Instead, this assorted group provides me with feedback and guidance, as well as accountability to do even better than I think I can.

Make An Investment

As Jay-Z said years ago in a line that epitomizes the rap life mentality, “Money ain’t a thang.” Cars, jewelry, houses – but I mean, who really looks at the price tag (thanks for that one, Nicki Minaj). Since it’s all about appearances, and I don’t have to impress the masses, my investments are a bit different. For example, one of the first things I did upon realizing that I have to build my brand outside of any company affiliation was purchase business cards and rent a P.O. box. Though my initial reaction was “Why am I spending money when I don’t have any coming in?” I knew it was the right thing to do to show that I was serious about my aspirations. Now when I go to networking events, I have my own card to hand out. And should I need to receive payments or contracts, I can have them sent to a location that is independent of my home address. As I go even further down the road of independent ownership of my work, I know additional investments will be necessary, though likely not dipped in gold like a Jesus piece. Mentally, this is part of the process for which I have to prepare myself (and my bank account). Thankfully, my momma didn’t raise a fool when it comes to saving and spending wisely.

So, that’s how I plan to adopt a limited scope of the rap star lifestyle. How are you embracing your inner rock and roll star: what would you add to this list?

Also, just for fun: my 90s rap name is Smoove V Tha Magnificent Thief. I will take that, expect T-shirts soon!

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Are You Seeing This: Shifting Makeup of Media Production

In keeping up with the latest news on entertainment, I’ve noticed some trends that are exciting for more non-traditional media ownership.

I’ll kick it off with the latest news, the upfront season for television networks. I usually skim the news about what shows got the can, what shows are returning and what mid-summer drivel the networks will serve us. This year, as the Times outlined, there is a new crop of entertainment that made me sit up and take notice. Media companies that have not traditionally delved into video content are making waves – Microsoft, Yahoo, the Weather Channel (I know, right?) and the Wall Street Journal. The bottom line, as the article rightfully notes, is that media agency buyers are buying nearly as much in digital advertising as they are in traditional ads, and these networks have to show they have the content that will draw eyeballs. So if you are interested in a WSJ-produced reality show where “entrepreneurs will work with more than two dozen mentors like Richard Branson, Tory Burch and MC Hammer,” your time is now.

Next big thing is the amount of content coming from Netflix. Previously, when I thought of the company, I thought of airport layover entertainment and their pricing debacle with Qwikster. These days, Netflix has hit a nice stride with original content like House of Cards and the debut of a long-anticipated return season of Arrested Development (scheduled for May 26, do not miss it!). It’s a series of brilliant moves on the part of Netflix leadership, who were beaten down in the press and by customers after a mislaunch of a new pricing structure. By recognizing and, most importantly, providing on their own the content their customers were craving, Netflix diversified their value and output and likely at a low cost.

How can you not be excited about this? *starts singing “The Final Countdown”*

 

Finally, one of my favorite writers/producers/directors/generally hilarious people, Issa Rae, is one of five hosts of a new talkshow in the vein of “The View.” The show, which will be on the Magic Johnson-owned Aspire Network, is guaranteed to be awesome and much more relatable to women “like me.” There are a two things that excite me about this news: Issa Rae’s online origin and Aspire Network. If you’re not familiar with The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, seriously, crawl out from under a rock and watch seasons 1 and 2. You’ll laugh, you’ll feel some emotions and you’ll thank me, I just know it. ABG, as I will call it from here, began as a short episode, produced by Rae and posted to YouTube. Niche websites like Clutch Magazine promoted a Kickstarter account for the show, prompting people who were tired of not seeing themselves presented in such a positive and comedic light to donate enough for Rae to produce a full season. Enter Pharrell Williams and his production company, i am OTHER. With his backing, season 2 was even better and Issa’s name became more regularly known. Then came a television show with Shonda Rhimes and ABC. And we all know the power of Shonda when it comes to good drama, so imagine what she can do with Issa and comedy? Basically, started from the Internets, now she’s here, to borrow from Drake. Oh, and she has her own production company that is putting out new content regularly. Can I just say, my she-ro!

I want that bubble gun!

Lastly, the Aspire Network excites me because I can’t stand the majority of the programming that is supposed to be targeted to my “demographic.” Aspire is a partnership between Magic Johnson, Comcast and NBC Universal, and I’m quite upset I don’t get it with my AT&T Uverse. While it’s nice to see that some media companies recognize the influence of the Aspire target audience; just wish it wasn’t limited to one provider.

What are your thoughts about the explosion of original content? Does this pose a threat to traditional television channels?

 

 

 

 

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Ads that “know” you – Scary or The Way It Is?

Now that Thanksgiving is past us, and Black Friday only resulted in light trampling and not full out stampede, I’m trolling for Cyber Monday. Mostly I’m finding that shopping no longer brings the excitement that it used to, which is ironic because I’m finally at a point where I have disposable income to spend! While burning some time with my mom – and burning off some of the splurge garlic fries and beer from Gordon Biersch – we hit up Macy’s shoe department. With my waning interest in being a mall rat, shoe shopping is the one activity for which I find the time and energy. I need to know the shoe, experience the heel height and see how it affects my gait, it’s a tactile thing. After finding some gorgeous Michael Kors suede booties, I was disappointed to find there were none in my size. Once I made it home, I jumped online only to find the great 50 percent off deal in the store did not transfer to online shopping. Grrr…

I also jumped on DSW and Nordstrom’s trying without luck to find a replacement. My sartorial twin, also known as my sister, weighed in but my heart was still stuck on those Michael Kors booties and the 50% off. I chalked it up to the game, and went about online surfing my usual pop culture sites. But something was different…the shoes  were following me! Nearly every Google ad that appeared on the top, bottom and sides of these various sites were promoting the very shoes I’d just looked at online from Macy’s, Nordstrom and DSW. Not only the very selections I’d browsed but the “similar options” shoes as well. While I keep up with online advertising technology as a complementary topic to public relations, I’d never truly seen it in action in my own life. It was kind of freaky, and I’m not the only one that feels that way. Google is like an omnipotent “god” on the Internet, and the fact that to Google something is now tantamount to online searching, it’s not hard to see how the massive amount of information the company gathers means big money to its advertising departments – a full 97% of its revenue comes from ads in 2009. Think about it like this: in the first six months of this year, Google generated more advertising revenue than all of U.S. print publications combined, a princely sum of $10.9 billion US dollars.

If this concerns you, and you want to eliminate your web browser, which if you use Chrome like I do you may as well say Google, from tracking your site visits and turning them into advertising dollars, a quick search (I mean Google-ing) gives you these resources for putting the kibosh on turning your interest into cold, hard cash:

Google Chrome Goes After Marketers With New ‘Do Not Track’ Feature – Mashable

For IE browser users, here is some info via Business Insider

Twitter also apparently tracks you, check that out too.  Oh and Facebook does it as well.

Happy surfing, and I leave you with the ultimate stalker song.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY]

 

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What Reading Means to Me – Then And Now

You can only imagine my pleasure at reading this headline: “Generation Read: Millennials Buy More Books Than Everybody Else.” As a person that currently has books in my passenger seat, ready to head back to the library return slot in exchange for another round of new picks, I can’t say I’m surprised. My sister described her weekend as a three-hour over-stimulated journey through Waterstones (the British version of Barnes & Noble). But the way people speak of my generation, you’d think we were dolts who cannot operate anything that doesn’t have an electronic touch screen.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are the visits my mom, sister and I made to the library, a red lacquered building that held so much wonder to me. It was the kid version of “Cheers,” where you walk in and the proprietor (the librarian in this case) knows your name and your favorite selection (The Babysitters’ Club in this case).  It never failed that every Saturday, after the morning cleaning frenzy, there would be the reward: hours of time to wander around for new titles and authors. And at the end, you get to take some home with you. That was all the motivation I needed to make me do those dishes faster.

Though my desire to write wanes with the cycles of the moon, I never will turn down the opportunity to get lost for hours in a book. It is a trait that my sister shares as well – if the book is in my face, chances are I’m not hearing a word you’re saying to me. It’s never one book at a time. I like to imagine I can take on all the stories at once, letting my desire for adventure or romance or history decide which book I’ll pick up each time. I love the moments spent looking for my previous place, reinserting myself in the narrative and aligning my thoughts with those of the characters. And when I find the transformative story that draws me in, erasing time and other forms of entertainment…well that’s the ultimate experience.

As a page-turning enthusiast, my initial reaction to e-readers was one of “Ew, why would you do that? “ Nothing excites me more than when someone asks me “What are you reading?” Much as some people like to share their vacation photos or their kids’ soccer game video, I want to tell you about this great book. Some of the best conversations I have with my family begin with “So, what are you reading right now?” This usually leads to many shared Amazon.com and NPR books reviews, discussions about the genre, the background of the author and the best place to store stacks of the current reading list. (For my sister, it’s pretty much anywhere that you won’t trip over.) Over time, I was worn down and when I gifted myself an iPad, it was over. I downloaded the Kindle app and discovered that traveling with a tablet full of downloads beats lugging loads of novels any day and I didn’t look back.

A nugget of information highlighted in the Good article is that more and more readers are reading electronically, spelling doom and disaster for the brick-and-mortar bookstore. I wish I could say I was helping that cause but the lure of the library is still strong in me, and I’ll continue to go where everyone (at least in my imagination) knows my name.

 

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Finding The Inspiration

This was written last month on a plane. I’m slow y’all.

Sitting here on the plane home (no worries, airplane mode is enabled on my iPad) and I’m thinking inspiration. My headphones are blasting Jay-Z and Kanye Watch The Throne.  In addition to my intense admiration for Yeezy’s quotable quotes from life and songs, I get excited and nearly stan for Mr. West based on his evidenced passion for art: music, clothing, collecting pieces, name dropping Dali and Basqiat. Though this sometimes manifests in wearing leather aprons during performances – pause – it mainly comes through his fantastic albums and the story of grinding it out as an unknown, struggling to make ends meet. As he said, “that’s a different world like Cree Summers.”

The Vocus conference stimulated some passion for me. The overarching messages could be summed up as thus: be awesome, don’t tell everyone you’re awesome but instead tell them how your awesomeness benefits them. Never stop learning, innovate and have a good product and message. Great speakers and just overall passionate communicators. At the airport, I took the advice of one of the main speakers and fellow Houstonian Dayna Steele: take travel as the opportunity to expand your reading outside of your usual realm of comfort. For her, it was reading about NASCAR, which helped learn about new marketing tactics. Personally I agree with her; it’s men and a handful of women driving around tracks for hours on end, not sport. But they market the hell out of it!

So I picked up my first Forbes magazine. And I learned. I learned about the new Apple CEO, Jamie Dimon and the European economy. And I went on to use my American Airlines points to subscribe to Inc., Fast Company, The Atlantic (and Lucky, I still like pretty things!). It’s great to be able to hold a conversation beyond the latest pop news, both at work and with my friends and family.

So now as I move forward, not letting the “conference fire” die, where did you find your passion? And how did you keep the flames stoked?

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Lenten Season

So every year I have to temper myself from this grand idea of giving up something grand for the occasion. I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest adherent to the letter of organized religion. In my ideal world, I’d attend the best church ever and every message would resonate within my spirit. I would follow every commandment, have no impure thoughts and all would be right in the world. But the reality is that life is a series of very complicated choices, and it is a struggle to retain a Christ-like attitude toward everything and everyone.

I cheated a bit and this Lent season. I’m repeating the concept of reducing the extraneous noise of life that, in many ways, defines my life: social media. For many, this is a fun way to connect with friends, family and the personalities they connect with, be they actors, musicians, thinkers and doers and those in their chosen field. Through reading personal and professional accounts of people I follow, social media has become as ubiquitous as eating and sleeping. Their phones or iPads are constantly by their sides from the moment they wake up. And Heaven forbid that facebook or twitter be down, whatever will they do with those 30 minutes of being disconnected from “life.” I don’t intend this to be a judgement but a review of the things that I hold important in my life. Will I allow myself to be that person who “has” to check twitter before I even wash my face and brush my teeth? Will I be that person that cannot enjoy the moment because I’m already thinking of how I want to present this in a Facebook post later?

For this reason, what better time to step away than in the season of Lent? I had a great text conversation with my boyfriend about what we were giving up between now and Easter and, more importantly, what we were gaining from the sacrifice. For him, he is regaining a focus on his health and wellness by focusing on healthy eating and exercise. He ultimately wants to train people, imparting his knowledge to transform their physical and mental wellbeing.

In our conversation, he told me that Lent relates to the period in which Jesus wanders the desert, being tempted by the Devil prior to beginning his ministries. Believers use this time to grow spiritually, and I believe that the time that I’ve dedicated to chatting and various gossip and fashion sites can be more beneficial when spent focused on my relationship with God. Not sure if this means that I will become the lead tambourine woman in the Sunday choir but it surely will bring me more peace of mind in the long run. And who knows, I may keep it going after I don my tangerine dream skirt suit on Easter Sunday!

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Resolution… or Just Do It

I’m not a huge believer in resolutions. If you have a resolve to do something useful and dynamic, something outside of your norm that you think will take your life beyond, start immediately. Why wait for some special time of your life, like a 30th birthday or January 1?

So this won’t be a post about how I’m going to be so much more awesome in 2012, and how I’m going to do things differently for the new year. I’ve been reflecting on how to improve my professional profile, connections and knowledge for a while. In my personal life, I learn from my conversations with family, friends and my significant other and that informs the decisions I make.

As I’ve grown older, I recognize my personal symptoms of ennui: a sense of restlessness, a general irritation at stagnation. These all propel me into action to get beyond my “wall.”

Moving into the new job (gulp!), I am finding inspiration in a book I’m reading: Sophia Nelson’s Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Obama. I initially heard Ms. Nelson speak at the professional development conference from the Young Professionals subgroup of the Urban League of Greater Dallas. Although we are separated by a generation, and lots of income, her passion for empowering men and women to recognize their own power to make a change in themselves, their communities and their companies, whether they work for themselves or someone else, stayed with me after the event was over. I’ve been following her on Twitter, and she is prolific in her communication. She hosts #KnowURValue chats that bring some good advice from her community, and takes me to church almost every morning. Suffice it to say, you need to get up on her book.

Now that I’ve enjoyed a quiet New Year celebration, no club for me thank you very much, I’m enjoying these black eyed peas, cornbread and coleslaw. My prayers go to you and yours in 2012. Start it on the right foot with a prayer/meditation and then go be awesome!

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What’s on my mind – December 19, 2011

This week has been full of pop culture conversations. Just wanted to share some of the things I’ve been discussing with friends.

The “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” article: No one article has been more discussed and derided in my circle of friends and on the blogs I read than this article from Forbes writer Gene Marks. Upon reading it, I initially shook my head and gave it a simple “really dude?!” and kept moving. However, over the days following I read some very impassioned responses to the uninformed ignorance that Marks tried to pass off as actionable advice for children in poverty. The Root has done a nice roundup of the articles; my favorite is from Cord Jefferson at Good. I’d love to see an actual response from Gene Marks. I may be wishing upon a star for that one.

The recent report on obesity, Black women and self-esteem: I had mixed feelings about this report. On the one hand, it’s fantastic that these women, according to the findings of the study, don’t feel that their feelings of worth are dependent upon their weight. On the other hand, the staggering numbers about obesity in the African American community cannot be ignored. Shaming women into weight loss is not a solution. An honest conversation about how to improve access to fresh foods, knowledge about fit lifestyles and changing values about childhood nutrition is the beginning.

The This Week in Blackness blog: hilarious and I almost cried laughing while listening. A definite must-read blog.

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On Diet and Personal Choice

As part of my liberal (nearly socialist, if you ask my mother) indoctrination, I have grown to love NPR. When I got satellite radio with my new car about two years ago, listening to Michel Martin and “Tell Me More” became part of my morning routine much like coffee and email. On Friday, catching a rebroadcast of the Thursday program, I got to hear quite a discussion called “Put Down the Fork – Lay Off the Pork.” Michel had two guests: Natalie Moore, who recently wrote an article for The Root called “In Praise of Pork,” and filmmaker Byron Hurt (Soul Food Junkies).

As a recent convert to vegetarianism, I will say, bacon is one of the meats that I miss the absolute most. I can go without pork chops, would never touch chitterlings (or chitlins, depending upon your upbringing) and appreciate sausage. But there is something about that smell, the crunch, the combination of salty-sweet when you add it to pancakes…just joyful. I will say, my vegetarianism isn’t about religion or diet. It was a combination of my boyfriend’s eating habits (never had meat in his life) and me wanting to challenge myself. It’s the same reason I went natural: something I’ve never done before. Would it be difficult? The only thing I can say is that when I get hungry, bordering on hangry (hungry + angry) or tungry (tired + hungry), the only thing I can think of is a good fast-food cheeseburger. I’ve been tempted many a times to swerve into Whatburger after my Monday or Tuesday night class.

As I was listening to the very friendly debate on Tell Me More, one line that Natalie said struck a nerve. She mentions staying with a friend, who happened to be from the South. The family made breakfast, which included pork. Her explanation for going back on her no-pork stance (at that point in her life) was that she had “home training” and couldn’t say she didn’t eat it. I just can’t agree with that. I’m a Southerner, with home training, but if I don’t eat something, I’m not going to change my stance simply because a friend, or boyfriend’s, family cooked it. There is nothing impolite about simply saying “I’m afraid I don’t eat that, thank you.” Done, move along. This notion of Southern politeness, and to some extent, femininity defined by Southern edicts, really gets folks messed up in the game.

How long will I be a vegetarian? I’m not wholly sure. I will tell you this, I’m about to get it in on some turkey and stuffing come Thanksgiving. I call it a vacation of sorts, pretty excited about it.

On the school note, just wrapped (quite last minute :-/) my bibliography for theory class. Now I need to go into seclusion to start on the content analysis for research class and the literature review for theory. No…I’m serious. I need to go away from the Internet and text messaging, it’s the devil!