Talk About Me If You Please

Talk about me if you please.

One thing I love about my life is the fact that I am always gigging. Every weekend, if not every day, I am doing what I love most, and that is playing the drums. I joke with people and tell them that I could probably write a book about some of the things I have seen/experienced while travelling. This past weekend, I was able to add something new to my list of gig surprises.  I had to play in Gastonia, NC on the 25^th of this month. When we walked in, we realized it was the normal, church setting, bunch of different groups, as it was a benefit concert. There was a group singing gospel artist, Fred Hammond’s, “Blessed” as I was setting up my equipment. I paid no attention to them, until I heard something rather strange. The leader of the group was using Auto tune through the entire song! Never in my life, had I heard someone use auto tune to such an extreme in this genre. As you can imagine, this became the talk of the night, weekend.

That’s when I had an epiphany. As foolish as it was, it was almost ingenious. It reminded me of this year’s Grammy Award Show and the highlighted performance by Nicki Minaj.

While her performance may have been considered demonic, crazy, foolish etc., the fact of the matter remains that it is still the “talk” of the Grammy’s. I realized that these acts might have been more purposeful than people think. Whether people enjoyed the gospel hit auto tuned and the outrageous wardrobe/performance or even hated it, they still talked about it.  For the artists, this turned out to be great marketing tools for each of them. I believe I can speak for many when I say I will never forget hearing that classic gospel chart being auto tuned.  The same goes for the Nicki Minaj performance.  In a recent interview, Nicki Minaj spoke on her performance and shares how she was strategic in introducing her new movie “Roman Holiday. Minaj said, “I can't do a song like that and stand up there with a microphone and a band behind me - I have to paint the picture and I'm gonna always do that to the fullest."

One thing new and old artists should consider is their personal branding/self-marketing. What part of their performance or presentation really captures the audience and makes them continue talking about them? Once the outlying marketing tool is discovered, find out if it is working as positive or negative marketing. Deciphering between the two will help one see why they receive the recognition they receive. 

We've Lost Another Legend

We’ve Lost Another Legend

While many people are probably writing blogs, posts, tweets etc. about the late Whitney Houston, I would count it robbery, as a person in the entertainment field to not have words regarding her passing. As many know, Whitney Houston was considered one of the pioneers of pop music. Many artists from several genres recognize Houston for her talent, and those artists who know her personally recognize her for her warm heart. As I was watching CNN during the live coverage of her shocking passing, they had many interviews with various people from the industry on the line. The one that stood out the most to me was with Lionel Richie. He took time to plead that people understand the stress and heartache that comes with being an artist. He broke down the fact that it is such a struggle to go from being great to now struggling, not even touching on how the press slandered her with her drug struggle. It is my hope that new artists, artists who are already established, and even those who are not in the industry, take this horrific event as an eye opener.

One thing that Lionel said that stood out to me was “If you can imagine this, there used to be a time when all you had to do was survive your own craft; the press didn’t know anything about your personal life…Now every singe day there is a tweet, blog, blurb about some part of your personal life.” He went on to talk about how an artist is “a business of psych, how can we hold ourselves together and still maintain the voice, the psych, of who we are, and still maintain that?” It was not shocking to me to see that as soon as it was reported that she passed away, so many people went straight to discussing her past struggles. It saddens me many times to see how media now thrives off of the downfalls of people, more so than their upcoming.