I am a fan of hip-hop. I am influenced by hip-hop. I could totally be Sanaa Lathan in Brown Sugar. I grew up during the time when people were saying it was a fad and wouldn’t last. I recall the East Coast vs. West Coast beef. The battles. The violence. The utter shock, genius, and necessity of it all.
I wouldn’t be categorized as a hip-hop head anymore, probably because my tolerance for shock value, language, and violence has changed tremendously since my teens and twenties. Not to mention my spirituality. But I respect it as a music genre, and you will still find some of my favorite hip-hop artists on my iPod.
My point is not to argue for or against the goodness, artistry, or cultural implications of hip-hop, but to simply make a case for why it is still the top responsibility for authors to build platforms for their book projects, second only to writing an incredible manuscript.
I bring JayZ into this scenario not to make any writers irritated by his apparent global celebrity, but to point out the simple fact that even he with his insane iconic image still has to build a literary platform around his new book, Decoded.
Yes, it would seem that he could tell a million people, “Jump,” and that every one of them would ask in unison, “How high, JayZ?” But it can all change when it comes to them flocking to read a book by someone who is in an entirely different industry that is not known in the mainstream for being especially bookish.
His very actions this week prove the validity of my statements. JayZ has sought an intellectual posse and marketing strategy to wrap himself in to be positioned as a worthy member among bibliophiles. This is very smart, and I have loved following it.
He is shifting his platform so that his book will sell. So now he’s saying, “I’m not only rapper, mogul, and CEO but also thinker/writer. Here’s why you need to hear from me in this way.”
Not only did he set a new standard for engaging in social media with his websites and partnership with the search engine Bing, but he has also been on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, interviewed with Cornel West and Paul Holdengräber live from the New York Public Library, and spoke with the Associated Press about some political matters. I am not a PR person and certainly not on the inside of JayZ’s crew, but I can see his calculated effort to build a literary following.
I can predict that people who don’t necessarily listen to his music will most certainly buy his book because of this genius promotional repositioning plan.
Another thing that strikes me is that he and his team are working hard to keep the “memoir” and “autobiography” categories from pigeonholing his book even more. Personal memoirs, autobiographies, testimonies can be a hard sell, even for famous people.
So if he, with all his fame and fortune, is doing all this strategizing and working very hard to be “seen” in literary circles as an intellectual and creating innovative ways to leverage social media, why would any other author with less fame think that somehow they would not have to work to promote themselves and build an audience for their book? That the publishing company would do this for them? While his access to media and various venues is very different from the average writer, there is no reason to think that it is easy for him or that he just loves to promote himself. It’s his job to make it look that way; he’s a hustler (and I mean literally a hard worker).
What are your thoughts on the rapper-turned-author? (Only nice, objective, and observatory comments allowed, please.)