Born In '88

Meet Dom Kennedy, a west coast rapper gigging nationally with considerable buzz. Although unsigned, his recent mixtape, From the Westside With Love, received favorable reviews, including some press from XXL, and just about anything with his name on it makes it’s way into the new music cartel’s RSS feeds.  A video for “The 4 Heartbeats” Ft. Overdoz off of FWWL was released on Oct. 1. It’s a guerilla style production on a L.A. beach that chronicles the search for the perfect video girl and Dom Kennedy wants nothing to do with it.

The artist took to twitter today announcing to his followers that if they are true fans, they won’t support the video. The seemingly “official” video is what Kennedy describes as an unapproved project produced by an “at-risk” student, Ezekiel Phillips, and was never supposed to make it onto the web.

Dom Kennedy is angry, and perhaps rightfully so, the video isn’t of professional quality and Kennedy claims to have been working on an official video with a similar angle but will likely have to scrap it due to Phillips’ release. Managing your brand is essential in any business but for an emerging artist, a hiccup like this can mean a side-eye from influential blogs and missed opportunity from listeners first discovering your music.

So what is an artist to do?

Issue a statement.

“The 4 Heartbeats…, I can’t call it a video, currently in circulation is a amateur video shot by a student who gave me his word that the footage he pieced together would be used for his student portfolio. At this point in my career when I have worked very hard to maintain quality and integrity of the highest standards in my work you could understand why I would not want a video of this poor taste to be seen by the world.

The video itself was not directed by the person you see give themselves credit for it but rather the footage was collected without my knowledge from the real director and then pieced together basically to what you see now. No money was paid… no final edit was approved… and no permission to exploit the talent of myself and others was given to release the video.”

Contact YouTube, but don’t expect any help getting it off the internet.

Kennedy said he first tried to get the video taken down from YouTube but they responded “we can’t keep him from re-posting it.” He also hit up video site, World Star Hip Hop but the owner said he was paid “$1000 to have the video posted on our site within 24 hours.”

When all else fails, talk about it on twitter.

But wait, did Dom really think it wasn’t going to leak?

Something about the situation appeared fishy.  Dom Kennedy allowed an “at-risk” student to film him performing a single off his latest mixtape strictly for a student portfolio but the student plays him for some e-stardom? After some light digging, it doesn’t appear to be that simple.

Did Dom unknowingly let somebody jeopardize his brand? Sure; By an “at-risk” student hoping for an “A” on their class project? Not quite.

Ezekiel Phillips is a student completing his final year at Morehouse and he says on facebook that he’s vying for a spot at NYU’s esteemed film school upon graduation. In a 2008 inaugural address at Morehouse, the new president described Phillips as “a freshman who negotiated the dangerous streets of South Central Los Angeles and survived a few regrettable decisions.”

While a 22 year-old student with graduation from one of the top HBCU’s at his grasp, no longer qualifies as “at-risk,” one can empathize with Dom Kennedy’s naiveté.

But here’s the first red flag.

A year ago, Phillips released a video for Overdoz’s “Creamie Says,” marked “official” and directed by none other than, himself. It’s likely that Overdoz—he provided vocals for “The 4 Heartbeats”—put Dom Kennedy and the student in touch so Phillip’s previous work should’ve tipped him off.

The second flag is the agreement for the video to be for Phillips’ portfolio. What aspiring filmmaker doesn’t put their work on YouTube? For many students, YouTube and Vimeo is their portfolio and often professors require student work be published to the web.

And the third flag, well, it’s early October and the school year has just begun. Morehouse is in Atlanta so the student probably shot the video during the summer while home in L.A., its unlikely a professor would have assigned a school project prior to the start of the fall semester. But I digress.

A school portfolio that isn’t on the internet isn’t much of a portfolio at all.

If you give someone access to your image on video, assume it is going to make it to the internet and see to it you get approval prior to release. In this case, Kennedy was quick to trust without considering the consequences of a good deed going horribly wrong. Had the video not made it to WSHH it seems as though the only thing Phillips did wrong was not make it clear that it was an unofficial student production, and if Kennedy’s statement is true, note that significant portions of the video were directed and shot by someone else. The latter is an inexcusable offense.

But at the end of the day, did anyone even see the video?

The video was uploaded to Oct. 1 and “as of press time” it has received 600 views and a handful of “great job” comments on Facebook.

On Oct. 3 the video made it’s way to WSHH and has received over 1200 views, not bad but, not great either. Kennedy said that WSHH was reportedly paid $1k to publish the video to their site within 24 hours. This doesn’t sound like the strategy of someone who is trying to get some internet fame, or at least isn’t a smart one. I’ve gotten some video and editorial interviews picked up by the new music cartel on emerging artists without spending a dime or having a particular contact. If it’s quality content, the blogs will cover it.

While a Friday release also isn’t a smart move for someone with viral aspirations, it still gives top tier blogs who have been following Dom Kennedy some time to post over the weekend. Since Friday, the music sites I follow have posted over 450 items, many on unsigned hype but none on Dom Kennedy’s video “scandal.”  It’s still too early to tell but perhaps Dom is right:

You can’t have a name like Kennedy and not anticipate a little drama.

-@SincerelyJane

An unofficial case study.

We all know that Cee-lo’s “F*ck You” is a low budget viral sensation, but how did it get there? An item’s rise to Internet fame can take a number of routes, and in the case of “F*ck You,” it didn’t necessarily start or flourish on YouTube.*

“F*ck You” was uploaded on Aug. 19 and to date, the official release of the video on Cee-lo’s YouTube account has received over 2.4 mil views and there are about a dozen unofficial versions with considerable page rank including a remix featuring 50 Cent that together have received over 579k views.

While YouTube’s metrics aren’t always the most accurate or detailed, their analytics reveal some landmarks in the timeline.

Who needs the new music cartel when you have twitter?

The new music cartel—an allegiance of the top hip-hop/urban blogs on the web—is usually the go-to tool for launching a piece of hip-hop related news, music, or video but in the case of “F*ck You,” two twitter handles proved to be more useful.**

On Aug. 20, the video garnered over 35k views from referrals from stand-up comedian @joerogan (Klout: 77 | “Celebrity”) and “actor/writer” @simonpegg  (Klout: 80 | “Persona”) —the first referral from YouTube got 26K.

A referral from YouTube’s music channel isn’t as helpful as you’d think.

After the video received referrals from Facebook (49k, and a second time 69k) and social bookmarking website Reddit (45k), “F*ck You” was picked up by YouTube’s music channel (50k) and then made the YouTube homepage (80k).

Outside referrals: 2; YouTube: 0

Real Facebook users don’t click links.

Facebook is the definition of over sharing. It links all the popular social networks and web tools and publishes their content on an already over populated feed of photos, comments and videos. So when Facebook users start posting links to a hilarious Cee-lo video, few even see it, let alone take the time to click on it. Thus enters the video embed.

YouTube videos can be easily embedded on Facebook and the first video embed got over 255K views, almost the equivalent of the 300k+ views gained from all the referrals combined. And they say Facebook won’t last.

If you build it, they will come.

All of the said events occurred on Aug. 20 and only marked the original referrals for the official release. The seeds were planted, and with time, the rest of the Internet caught on—additional digital marketing push from the Cee-lo camp would have been immaterial. As expected, the anti-gold digger anthem was the most popular with males aged 25-55—sorry kids, this grown folk business.

*An official music video for the song off of the upcoming LP, The Ladykiller, is scheduled for release later this week.

**The analytics for the remix video from 50 Cent’s YouTube account are no longer available but landmarks included referrals from Thisis50.com and members of the NMC.

Editor’s Note: Sometimes lyrics do sell. Cee-lo didn’t need a big budget crew make this viral video happen, just a designer (or really even a savvy intern) to input the lyrics into After Effects, sync the timeline and export the video to YouTube. Motion typography has long been a trend on YouTube and where creativity is concerned, Cee-lo’s video doesn’t hold a candle. The same animation was used for each composition and there were no additional effects unlike Jay-Z’s “Brooklyn” or personal favorite, Pulp Fiction video. The frank lyrics did the trick.

-@KD