Born In '88

Jay Electronica’s fan engagement tactics are very unorthodox and completely worth it.

My first direct message was from Jay Electronica in 2008, days after Christmas. I had just joined twitter and made the premature decision to follow every rapper on the network and Jay followed me back. Soon after, he sent a direct message—no words, just this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc&feature=related

It was a YouTube link to a music video of “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins—I’ll leave delving into the implications of this message for my readers.

Later that year, I was unfollowed. But I wasn’t alone.  It was “The Great Unfollowing of 2009.” Jay Electronica unfollowed nearly all of his fans, truncating his follower list to less than 200.  A year later, high off the heels of announcing his signing to Roc Nation, he followed everyone back—sort of.

In the small hours of Nov. 15, Jay Electronica announced he would follow back anyone who hit him up. And they did. Jay Elect was the proud recipient of over 1500 mentions just an hour after the announcement. He has since followed about 1600 fans, a Dave Chappelle impersonator, Joe Budden, and me.

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On Jan. 11, Facebook crashed, or at least according to Kanye West. Around midnight, West tweeted a screen shot of an error page suggesting the famed social network had exceeded it’s bandwidth following the release of “H.A.M.”

Rap veterans Kanye West and Jay-Z had released the first track off of their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, on Facebook but to lukewarm reviews and even more lackluster buzz.

Kanye West x Jay-Z - HAM by uristocrat

Days before the release, West and Jay-Z announced on their Facebook fan pages that “H.A.M.” would be a midnight release via a page dedicated to their joint album.

And soon after, the blogosphere was pregnant with anticipation of the duet single from the rap titans.

Facebook users rushed the Root Music powered “BandPage” for the first taste of Watch the Throne and in the hours following the release, the album page had garnered over 32k fans and hundreds of comments. “H.A.M.” was all the digital hip-hop community could talk about in the small hours of Jan. 11 but the question still remains:

Why Facebook?

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