Until about a year ago, I thought rap squeegee-men were the third lowest life form in all of music. Only fast-talking hip-hop A&Rs and people who ask you for your musical services for free via e-mail top them.
You remember the rap squeegee-man, don’t you? He lurked like a deranged, early-in-his-career Samuel L. Jackson character in front of your city’s main music artery (Virgin Megastore, Tower Records, HMV, etc.), CD-R in hand and Kinko’s supply section under coat, accosting any foot traffic within an earshot in the hopes of selling his lo-fi sonic Frisbee to whomever would cave under pressure. The pitch was dull, albeit to the point.
“Yo fam, you like hip-hop?”
If you were a giveaway for tourism, $10 later you chalked it up to being a part of your big city experience. If you were young, black, dressed in hip-hop fashion or any combination of the above, you sometimes had to physically fight the rap squeegee-man off you, much like you did his counterpart with an actual squeegee on the hood of your car, circa 1990.
They knew you liked hip-hop. And “if you like [insert popular rapper here], you’ll love my shit.” The one time I insisted I only liked jazz, the exchange nearly led to fisticuffs. But for the annoyances they caused in their prime, rap squeegee-men aren’t so bad considering the new heights musical panhandling has risen to. The closing of record stores, the slow death of the compact disc, the advent of hopping into social media exchanges between total strangers who apparently like hip-hop with links to what was on those sonic Frisbees (with a “follow back” command in tow)—it’s less dependent on the weather, cheaper and more convenient. Yes, most rap squeegee-men have graduated to the Internets. But the aforementioned drop in overhead and rise in convenience almost has me longing for the days of the good old brick and mortar sidewalk shakedown. Yes, rap squeegee-men, I miss you guys and my tune has changed. There’s a crew of new bottom feeders in town.
The cyber-panhandling rap mogul with the knack for unsolicited social media promo represents the natural Neil Armstrong-style ascension of the rap squeegee-man to cyberspace, but much worse is the first option Kickstarter-pimping, Gucci bag-clad celebrity. The latter never had the gumption to stand in front of a Coconuts location; it appeared too desperate. So they’ve found a happy medium of begging for exorbitant amounts of money to finance their comeback albums from the comfort of a condo, latest Apple device in hand.
Yes, we now have rap [cyber] squeegee-men who've had hit records. That’s a first. When seeking a little help to reach budget becomes a glaringly obvious cash grab / avoidance of risk, the artistry itself is knocked down a peg. Risk is an essential ingredient in the creation of art by the artists themselves, be it creative or financial. When you believe in what you create and put your shirt on the line for it every now and then, it shows you actually give a modicum of a fuck and will risk something for what you’re presenting. People see that and are usually happy to invest in you.
Yes, I know there have been efficient, necessary and well-done instances of crowdfunding to reach a goal or donate to a charity (e.g. The Winstons, the creators of the iconic and sampled-to-death “Amen, Brother” break, which I donated to myself.) Shit, I’ll admit I grinned wider than the day is long when Noboru Bitoy successfully ran a Kickstarter campaign to secure a burrito, having fun with the potential ridiculousness of poor taste crowdfunding in the process.
And sometimes you need a little help—that’s okay. A fair amount of creative types are either stringing together freelance gigs in feast or famine fashion or working day jobs that afford them the freedom necessary to finish a record on time. Some are taking out of town gigs, practicing their craft freely during the day while their neighbors are at work or are showing up to their jobs in that face tattoo that will really sell that next video (read: high flexibility, low paying jobs with little to no room for advancement).
At least that’s how it’s always gone for me, personally, and just about every other non-superstar artist I know. Sure, a cash grab campaign could’ve saved me some pounds and pence, spared me a few of these silvers in my beard and kept me out of wide-fitting Burlington Coat Factory shirt-n-tie in a box combos I wore for some temporary male clerical job. It would’ve been nice to not have to explain to other adults why I would work McJobs for six months, then quit once my next endeavor met budget, like I’m still in high school. But the longer I create, the more I can see how those “why the fuck am I even doing this?” moments have helped me gain an appreciation for the self-reliant soup to nuts method of creating music that’s become more prevalent as traditional record deals vaporize.
After all, artists who can balance a checkbook and invest in themselves without disastrous results have a fighting chance of earning a living. But the Kickstarter craze seems to be a fire drill for a few of the deal-hungry, prima donna, “let someone else handle that shit, then watch me cry broke,” “is this video gonna premiere on MTV?” artists from a long obsolete era who apparently live on a planet littered with CD longboxes and wake up to the sound of a SMPTE code alarm clock. Yeah, a lot of motherfuckers are out of the house and alert right now.
“You mean now I can pass ‘round that [online] collection plate and be in the black before I even arm a track to record because I had hits in the past?”
Yes, and I’m sure that thought is brewing in the minds of quite a few past-prime, razor bump cream model-esque 90s R&B crooners on the Grown-N-Sexy cruise circuit as I type this. If you get in touch with girls who had your poster on their wall in high school who are now miserably married and a turkey wing away from levitating, yeah, I’m almost positive you can.
A glowing example of this struck a nerve with me last month when 90s R&B act, TLC, launched a Kickstarter for $150,000 to record their “final album,” which ultimately ended up landing them over $430,000. Yes, a six figure budget for an album in 2015. Did these chicks get locked up in 1999 and just come home looking for a deal, only to find out it’s all about Kickstarter? I’ve got no choice but to probe deeper into the multiple levels of “what the fuck?” here.
Let’s give TLC the benefit of the doubt for starters—they’re gonna do this in style. Put Babyface, Dallas Austin, Diddy and Jermaine Dupri behind the boards for old times’ sake. Finance a serviceable studio for the guys to work in, even though those cats likely have their own gear. Pay your mastering engineer, photographer, graphic designer and videographer. Clear five samples from The Beatles’ Rubber Soul LP, set up an in store at Sam Goody, arrange for all singles to appear in the Personics system and run three months of ads in Word Up! magazine. Oh, and Right On! Can’t forget to cop that ad in Right On! Have a publicist arrange an interview with Donnie Simpson, if possible. After that typhoon of 90s R&B nostalgia, they’re probably still under budget for this Saks Fifth Avenue swan song. It ain’t 1991.
No, TLC. You’re covering your ass so industry rule #4080 does not repeat itself. You want to live large during the process of cutting an album that may cost about $50,000 to record. You want to invest nothing, get in there and bust some notes and come out ahead before the record even hits iTunes (where it can be for sale for about $30 a year in rent via Tunecore). The Kickstarter campaign for the album itself isn’t the issue. Artists with audiences of all magnitudes have a right to be creative and get their fans involved. It’s the arbitrary, harebrained dollar amount that far exceeds necessity. After the hardships the group endured in the early 90s, I might be able to dig it. But my main issue is this: You’re claiming if I ride shotgun in my best friend’s ride and flirt with you, I’m a “scrub,” yet you can’t secure a copy of ProTools 10 and a Roland JV-880 without launching a six figure Kickstarter campaign with a straight face. Then you’ll call it quits with a year in severance pay. Fuck y’all.
But putting all jokes and sarcasm on time out, nothing screams entitlement more than this group’s brazen pimping of crowdfunding. TLC (predictably) far exceeded their goal and this overblown retirement party will happen with all the perks intact. But that ain’t even the biggest issue here. I’m more worried about their peers and those taking notes, marveling at all the ways to get around investing in, sacrificing for and believing in your music now that the most record labels have put a combo lock on the vaults that hold the artist advance money they so sorely needed 20+ years ago.
The one upside to the slow and excruciating death of the record industry as we know it is the weeding out of those riding on fumes of the past—ahem, rappers who haven’t made any music since the 80s who request $10,000 a show because they played at The Rooftop, yet are too out of shape to perform those old 110 BPM hits and hobbyists with mogul tendencies who feel their love for music entitles them to an entire life blessed with a 24–7 focus on creative juices (i.e. sitting in the recording studio playing video games all day on someone else’s dime) and nothing more. These types need to be expurgated, similar to how rappers who squandered hundreds of hours in studio time in the 90s and claimed they got jerked in interviews when they never got paid for their hit records.
Examples of crowdfunding like TLC’s will zap all of those who desperately sniffed out any deal they could find when someone younger and thinner took their spot. However, they never could be bothered to sniff out the gumption to manufacture 1,000 CDs on their own by the turn of the century, despite being able to afford it. And inviting those old attitudes to the modern method of crowd funding undoubtedly cheapens the living fuck out of what began as a good-natured assist for creative people with huge projects that tear deep into pockets, those juggling freelance gigs or part time jobs to keep their lights on while attempting to finance their dreams at the same time.
Music no longer generates the revenue it once did, but the positive yin to that yang is music doesn’t cost all that much to create, distribute and promote anymore, either. And if you’re a household name with a deep history like TLC, half the work is already done. If you’re completely unwilling to raise or invest a portion of what it costs to finance your own endeavors, why should anyone, fan or not, invest in you? And if you’ve sold so many records that you feel your status in the music industry makes you immune from continuing to invest in your craft or work with budgets commensurate with the era we live in, you’re even more entitled than the rap squeegee-men looking for handouts.
But two things about those rap squeegeemen—they left the comfort of their computer to do their work in the trenches. The ones who stopped slinging sales pitches for a second to give the music a chance to speak for itself always got my $10.
If you enjoyed reading this, please login and click “Recommend” below.
This will help to share the story with others.
Illustrations by J.J. McCullough
Follow J-Zone on Twitter @JZoneDontTweet.
Follow Cuepoint: Twitter | Facebook
