Hip Hop and Blogging

While I was listening to my Flo Rida Pandora station I was introduced to Kayne West.

In-cred-i-ble.

Things You Don’t Know About Me

I’ve been a hip hop fan since the early 90s. I grew up listening to Digital Underground, Public Enemy, Dre, and Cube.

What I love about music in general, and about hip hop/rap specifically, is that it has rich commentary about important topics pertinent to the human condition. Old Skool rap spoke to me because it made real critical societal issues like crime, racism, drugs, and the decay/neglect of the inner city. I was turned-off by recent trends in rap that appeal to the lowest common denominator in entertainment. bell hooks has written on the topic and expressed my concerns in ways I never could. Her interview with Cube for Spin Magazine (1994) is probably the best example of confronting a rap artist on the issues of misogyny and race.

Making Rap Respectable Again

Kayne West has brought me back to the genre in a big way. I first heard Graduation and I was instantly hooked. I bought everything in his catalog and loaded it to my iPod. The political messages he hits on makes me think about how we conceptualize our educational system, where our American values reside in our cultural psyche, the disruptive impact of money on youth, and the art of collaboration. Some of his music carries the stereotypical themes resident in rap culture and has some profanity. The difference between Kayne’s style and his colleagues is that his use of profanity is targeted at the exact emotion he seeks to illicit. In other words, his application of 4-letter words is not gratuitous or done haphazardly. I respect his style because it is deliberate and calculated.

And Where Does Blogging Fit In?

Kayne, like Dre, is also a producer who mixes original lyrics with beats from classic songs and links together unusual talents like Jamie Foxx. Gold Digger is a good example. Like a good blog, a good musical piece draws on the expertise, perspective, and talents of many contributors. Blogs that are self-referential have value. Blogs with exponential value connect multiple thoughts, themes, and content from a wide variety of sources. Good songs, like good blogs, have a perspective on an issue. Whether that issue is as unique as love or as pressing as inner city crime, the artist’s perspective on the issue is what gets consumers to come back.

Good hip hop songs also feature artists of notable skill (but not necessarily of any notability) to foster the future talent of the industry. Digital Underground, for instance, took Tupac Shakur under their collective wing because they recognized raw talent in their back-up dancer. Bloggers in many ways have the same responsibility to foster the future talent of the industry. Good blogs also feature up-and-coming talents or perspectives from other writers and seek to build on the collective knowledge base of the topic. This is something that separates the popular press from the blog-o-sphere. Knowledge sharing in the press occurs only when it suits the needs of the journalists involved. Bloggers are knowledge consumers, but they often do not need to worry about the WIIFM factor.

I have come to the realization that blogging is not an individualized activity. It is a collaborative activity because it draws on the collective knowledge and perspectives of many people. Without the crowd, blogging would be neither rewarding nor informative.

So while performing a musical piece for your own entertainment may be personally fulfilling; a large audience makes a big difference.

(Stadium status . . . )

So what is “collaboration consulting?”

As I type this, I can’t help but think about the thousands of blogs that are out in cyberspace and wonder about the place of this small planetoid called the Green Dotted Line. Seeing as how this is my first public blog, I thought a little explanation of my discipline and perspective was an important departure point.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of working with others is . . . well . . . working with others. This is partially due to the human condition; a deeply seeded desire to compete against, not with, others. Its also partially due to other factors such as compensation, credit, and bureaucratic/organizational forces which make working collectively hard.

Collaboration consulting starts with this recognition and then seeks to apply methods and techniques to mitigate these factors.

This is hardly a new problem. People have hated working together as long as the institution of marriage and coupling has existed. The difference is that technology has created a new market for consulting companies seeking to sell tools to fix this age-old problem. This used to be called “information sharing” and somebody would install a multimillion dollar electronic filing cabinet. That got tiresome.

The most recent trend is Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 solutions to enable information sharing and collaboration. This is, at least, a step in the right direction. Low to zero cost software costs, flexible platforms, and open-source coding has made the technology accessible to anyone. This has not, however, fixed the problem of building electronic file cabinets. Why? Because we think about the technology first, not the people or the problem.

Collaboration consulting puts people and their problems first. This means making technology do our bidding instead of being beholden to it. So what does that mean?

We connect:
* People-to-people,
* People-to-data,
* Data-to-data, and get
* Data-to-people.

Some of these steps need to be enabled by technology, but not all of them. The last thing we consider are the technological solutions. We speak in terms of human factors, alternative causalities, and co-creation solutions.

That’s plenty for now.

Great to make your acquaintance. I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship.