Mutual Exploitation - Hip Hop and Main Stream Corporations

On Apr. 7 a group of Hip Hop artist took the stage at Manhattan's Dodger Stages, for a select audience of about 50. This wasn't a VIP concert however. The artist, Ludacris, Big Boi, and Jermaine Dupri where there to tell marketing execs from Coca-Cola, Wendy's International, L'Oréal, and Verizon Communications what kind of sponsorships and marketing deals they would be interested in.

Rappers are aggressively courting marketers for sponsorship deals. In the past most musicians considered having their songs used in marketing campaigns as selling out. Artist today however, see this as an opportunity to extent their brand and earnings power.

Most recording artist never sees any money from their record sales other than the advances they receive up front from their record company. Rappers however, have learned to use the record companies as a way to launch themselves as a brand. Sean Combs has done very well at this. He has used his music career to launch himself as a major consumer brand, selling everything from apparel (Sean John) to car accessories. Another rapper who is pimp’n the music hustle to the max is 50 Cent. He has his own line of hot-selling Reebok International shoes and apparel, which has surpassed Reebok's sales for any NBA star and for fellow artist Jay Z. This Reebok deal has reportedly earned 50 over $20 million last year.

You can dive deeper into this subject over at Business Week Online which explores this mutual exploitation in an article by writer David Kiley which can be found here.