I will admit that, yes, no one has truly figured the internet out yet, but I feel that this is the best time to try to make the best of what folks do understand. There are people that are fairly major internet-wise that built up their presence in the most organic of e-fashions. The cats that used MySpace early on to promote their music benefited from broadcasting, now the market is flooded and it doesn’t really work anymore.

In your question for major superstars, I don’t think that it would tarnish a person. They obviously cannot respond to millions of e-mails, but the occasional blog post probably would do a lot of good. Diddy never responds directly to any of his MySpace comments; neither does Kanye. Both of those guys see immense traffic though. I think social media has helped them, if anything.

In terms of where you are status-wise, there is probably a unique strategy you must use to gain or sustain fans. Most rap acts should be trying to build their fanbase, so we should see more interaction from them – serious interaction though. Like, with (potential) fans.

Thanks so much for your comment. I kind of feel a bit awkward when my most incendiary posts get no responses. I post a random rap track and I get 5 comments. Weird…

Rappers vs. Internet:
Yeah we don’t get it, and the interacting vs. broadcasting is a point that every rapper who plasters my comments section with advertisements needs to take heed to.

At the same time, I’m not sure anybody’s figured out the internet yet. Is it a place to network? A place where people can find info about products? What about for large companies like Coca-Cola, why would I want them to network with me? What should they do besides broadcast?

Also, isn’t there kind of a correlation between record sales going down since people have taken up with networking sites? (obviously mp3s play a larger role) I would make the argument that a star like Eminem could actually tarnish his image by interacting too much with his fans. The more reachable he is, the more average he would seem, dimming his star quality, and like many of our favorite local rappers, leaving him more open to being taken for granted.