Your Favorite White Boy

With MTV and other “music video” networks essentially undertaking a business model to cater to the lifestyle of young people rather than primarily the music they listen to, shoving money into your video budget makes less and less sense.

However, with TV, the Internet and easily utilized video technology, consumers of music increasingly expect a visual component to their favorite artist’s work.  They want to see who these rappers are, what their vision of their music is through a visual medium and, most importantly, they want to be entertained.   So rappers can’t just cut out the video treatment entirely.

Not to worry.  It doesn’t take a budget hundreds of thousands of dollars to craft your video assault on unsuspecting viewers.  Two recent videos that have popped up recently illustrate this point well.  The first comes from ATL artist B.O.B. for his track “Generation Lost”:

Grayscale. Simple. Showcases the artist and his particular style. Full marks. Okay, its a tad boring, but the song is the strength anyway. And it was probably recorded for under $5K – with editing.

The second is a little bit more expensive, but simple enough. It also gives me the opportunity to post the only other song after “Amazing” that I actually like on 808s, “Welcome To Heartbreak”:

A few more bucks for the pixel effects, but still puts Kanye and his music front and center via another medium.

Promotional costs and a lack of budget are often sited as a primary reason for artists not being successful.  As with so many things in the music industry, the world is changing,  paradigms are shifting and the old model of 20 years ago no longer applies.  We all know ever artists wants to be a movie star too.  But instead of rented mansions and “making it rain” on camera with  fake 100′s, it makes much more sense to take that advance and put it into your music and developing who you are as an artist.

History has showed us that when it comes to videos, creativity and uniqueness is paramount.  This is even more true today than it was 5 years ago.  If you spend time on developing your own sound and style, the related visuals that go into your videos will be that much easier to develop and promote.

Tags: BoB, Kanye West, Kid Cudi