For about 4 years now, I've only listened to the radio sparingly. At the most once per month. I started getting tired of hearing the same songs all day every day a long long time ago and I endured it for a few months, but eventually, I stopped wanting to turn on the radio. As a result, I started diving more into my CD collection by listening to old music and buying more CDs. Not long thereafter, I realized that I could find a lot of new music through the InterWeb. Blogs, websites, file-sharing, etc. So as time went on, I found radio less and less useful and pleasing. Granted, I sit at a computer about 6.5 hours everyday so most of the music I listen to is either on my computer already or via the Internet. Over the past few months I've been having thoughts about why I should listen to the radio. Lots of people still listen and that's how they discover music, keep up with news, and entertain themselves throughout the day. My music discovery process is really just word-of-mouth and what I find on the InterWeb through websites and blogs. Up to this point, I've been very satisfied with that and have not gone without decent music long enough to want to go back to radio. Another thing I've found is that the Internet gets the music quicker than radio seems to. I guess those payola checks aren't getting cashed quick enough.
Today I watched a couple videos online that made me realize that radio is probably a necessity in my life if I want to be able to fairly judge whether or not I like a song. The radio does one thing that's very important and that is enabling the listener to capture the music and not so much the image of the artist. In this case, I use image to mean appearance for the most part. I'll use the following two videos to illustrate the point I'd like to make. The first, "Big Things Poppin'" is a decent song by TI. It's not great but it's an okay lead-single that will probably get radio play on most urban radio stations. That's all he needs to build steam for the rest of the album. This song has been on the Internet for a few weeks now and I've liked it, but it's definitely not what I would consider a great song. But today, I saw the video and it made me like the song a little bit more.
TI - Big Things Poppin'
The next song, "Straight to the Bank" by 50 Cent is a song that I've pretty much thought was subpar the first time I heard it. Again, this was before I saw the video. Then I watched the video today and realized that 1) I still don't like the song, but 2) I can understand why people would watch this video (having not heard just the song without the video to boot) and like the song. 50 Cent is an entertainer. He knows how to grab your attention through humor, outlandish statements, and a sense of self-worth that's extremely over-calculated at times. Because of all that, he has a knack (is that a word?) for making videos that catch your attention and enhance his songs. Even if the songs themselves are average or below, the video may very well be entertaining enough for you to listen to the song over-and-over, as long as it's accompanied by the video. By that time, you've formed a connection in your mind between the song and the video so whenever you hear the song again (even if the video isn't on), you'll connect the images from the video to the song.
50 Cent - Straight to the Bank
From a business standpoint, 50's moves are very shrewd. I think he has a keen understanding of how to market himself to urban youth. He'll see more records if he can get his video to make you think this song is actually hot. And he'll make millions off of it. From a music standpoint, I think it's weak. The music should always come before the visuals. But nowadays, that's what we're sold, images, not quality music. "Hip-hop started out in the park" and there wasn't a video camera there to enhance the rhymes. It was just rhyming from the heart about real feelings, thoughts, and emotions. That's turned into what we have now. A billion-dollar industry littered with artists who are more about the dollar than the music. We have to understand exactly what 50 is saying when he says he's "laughing straight to the bank."
From my perspective, listening to the radio more often would at least give me the opportunity to judge a new song based on the music and lyrics. That is, if I could successfully avoid hearing it so many times (10 times in 1 hour is a bit much) that I ended up liking it anyway. But that's another blogpost. If you really care about the music and not just the image that you're being sold, then I believe that radio could do a lot for you. There's nothing wrong with a dope video to complement a dope song. But dope videos should not be a substitute for wack music. That ain't HIP-HOP!
"Dope beats dope rhymes, what more do ya'll want?!?!" - Phonte of Little Brother
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