The Use of Social Media in the Rap Game

A rapper and Hip-Hop dancer named Dlow came out with this video in September of last year. This video took the internet by storm making this dance a popular trend in society. The artist challenged his fans to  a “dance off” against his crew shown in the Youtube video above. This became an interesting use of fan engagement because it challenged his fans to try and do what he is a professional at doing. This video represents one of the first viral hashtags involved with music and dancing that has hailed world attention. The #BetYouCantDoitLikeMe hashtag circulated all social media sites that prompted people to go watch this video and copy each of Dlow’s dance moves. If you can see by the viewer count, this video was viewed over 82 million times, which is outrageous.

Even though this video was made primarily for the dancing aspect, the popular trend of this video encouraged clubs and social gatherings to play this song. When this song comes on, everyone tries to implement the moves performed by Dlow in the video. This hashtag was all over Twitter as people from all over the country made their own video like Dlow’s. Most importantly, professional athletes even made these videos adding legitimacy to this video. The dance moves were most commonly seen when NFL players did their Touchdown celebrations. The distribution and spread of Dlow’s video was carried by the hashtag and legitimized by other athletes and the mass participation in the challenge.

This goes against the traditional ways of advertising by adding fan participation, while also promoting product and brand. This strategy has been used several times after this video was introduced with challenges like “Mannequin Challenge and JuJu on that Beat.”

Here is a link to the video (website wouldn’t allow me to post it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hl0aTooA90

 

One of the most iconic figures on social media is Dj Khaled. Khaled took the Snapchat world by storm creating dozens of popular trends that carried over to society. Popular phrases like “Anotha One, I like that, Ben how’s business…..boomin’, and major key” were all connected to Khaled’s brand that became trending phrases. Dj Khaled would post hundreds of snaps a day showing what he was doing, where he was at, and who he was with. People from all over the world were following his Snapchat and he went viral. Memes were made, professional athletes were using his lingo, people started using the key emoji, and his fan base grew and grew.

After doing this for months and months, Khaled became one of Snapchat’s biggest representatives. Khaled’s sponsors had him deliberately use their products in his Snapchat videos. The guy must have been making millions of dollars by just advertising his brand through a social media platform. Khaled would post Snaps at the beginning of the week conveying to his viewers that he would release a sneak peek to one of his new songs later that weekend. Khaled is probably the most effective celebrity when it comes to fan engagement and distribution.

Lastly, Khaled’s Snaps always showed all kinds of different celebrities. He would go to Grammy after parties filled with the world’s most famous stars and he would Snapchat the entire time. Fans don’t ever get to see what those kinds of parties are like or what other celebrities do outside of the stage. Khaled provided people all across the globe this opportunity. Dj Khaled is a genius when it comes to distributing his brand via social media.

Drake possesses one of the biggest fanbases in the Rap game and he has constructed this fanbase through his extraordinary use of social media. Twitter is one example of the ways Drake has captivated his fanbase and distributed his brand. The tweet above shows Drake releasing his new song with 21 Savage via twitter. Drake tends to release a lot of his songs via twitter due to the attention his song receives on the Twittersphere. By doing this, fans become more engaged with Drake’s brand and an excitement arises when one of his followers scrolls through Twitter and sees a post like this.

This tweet was retweeted about 9,000 times, which means that this song caught a lot of eyes. This tactic of releasing music is a lot more direct and it eliminates the lag that middle-men tend to have distributing content. By eliminating the middle-man, Drake owns all the rights to his music and releases his product the way he wants. It also allows his fans to view content immediately instead of waiting for record companies to advertise and distribute the music. Fans can listen to the music immediately without even having to pay for it. This distribution tactic reaches hundreds of thousands of participants of Twitter providing mass distribution.

In addition, when a person clicks on the link it directs them directly to the marketplace of his work. For instance, the link pictured above will direct people who view the link to Itunes Music. From there, viewers can purchase the song, listen to a sample of the song, or listen to other songs by Drake. This is a genius strategy for a rapper like Drake, who wants to distribute his media to as many people as he can in the shortest amount of time.

The final aspect of this example is gaining Twitter followers. When Drake releases songs in this fashion, people are more inclined to follow him on Twitter because they want to see tweets such as this one. The more followers; the bigger the fanbase.