.:Professionalism - Your Rap Biography:.

Besides your music your Biography will have a major impact on how your are perceived by the public. You want to have a well written and informative Biography that sells you and your talents but does not come off as an advertisement. Your accomplishments as a musician and an individual are both very important to highlight in your Bio. Have you won any rap music contests? Have you played at the CMJ Music Marathon? Have you had your music chart on any major rap music charts? What is the press saying about your music? In life what have you accomplished outside of music? Have you attained a basketball scholarship? etc.

I mentioned these specific points because they are all things I have personal accomplished and they all feature in my biography which was written by a professional publicist that works with eMultimedia Group, Inc. Please note: You don’t need a professional publicist in order to have an effective Biography and wrote a very effective biography for myself well before I had any label situation. The reality is most you will be an unsigned rapper for a while before you have a record label behind your career. Therefore you have got to develop a lot of the key elements of being a professional rapper on your own and it is my aim to see that you do!

Another other important element your rapper biography will need is the human element. What have you been through in your life? Was life amazing for you or was it a struggle? A lot of people would think that having had struggle in your life would be the best thing to mention in your biography. However, it is not necessary to have struggle to bring the human element into you bio. A well written biography could very well mention that you have been rich all your life but because if this you have been privileged to experience a lot of things others haven’t and this makes your music more well rounded. If you weren’t born rich but had some setbacks in life mention that. I was diagnosed with a heart alignment that forced me to give up my basketball scholarship after reading about that in my biography a lot of journalist who interviewed me asked about it and wanted me to expand on the whole thing. Yes, it was a devastating time in my life which contained a lot of pain for me but it made me who I am today and people want to know.

Hip Hop has always been about taking a negative situation and putting a positive spin on it so stay true to that when writing your biography. It is not good enough to just tell people how long you have been rapping, you are in a local crew and work with this producer and that producer. Tell your potential fans who you are, what you have been through and what you are about. These same elements should also be applied when you write your songs. Trust me, they will connect.

I know I have touched on this before in previous posts but I think it is worth expanding on a little bit more. Presenting a professional package is very important in order for the industry to take your music seriously. When I speak of the industry I am not only concerned with record labels because record labels are the last step in this new information age. Before record labels even consider your music these days you have got to build. You have got to build with DJs, Journalists, Bloggers and last but not least Rap music fans.

In my next few posts I will go into more detail about some of the most important elements required to present a professional package. Stay tuned.

Being a rapper on his grind, over the years I have come to realize the value of relationships and the value of networking. When I started rapping I was hungry to get on and I would hit all the local shows and events just networking and meeting people in “the industry”. Through all of this I met a lot of people who were in charge of putting on these events and I was able to pass on my demo CD and eventually get involved in a lot of shows and events going forward once they heard my music. When I started out I wasn’t the most out going cat so meeting people and networking was often a very tiring task for me. But with the help of other more out going members of my crew I quickly overcame all of that and was so focused on hustling my talents we ended up as far as Atlanta handing out Vinyl and selling CDs.

My networking also brought me to meet a lot of other rappers and producers. Through those relationships I formed common alliances and furthered my knowledge of my local industry and the politics that govern it. Unfortunately, politics never seems to go in my favor so I had to hustle to earn every opportunity that came my way. Lucky for me my talent helped me get over the lack of political favor. I’m talking having to audition for show slots where I shouldn’t have had to etc.

Moving forward many of my lasting relationships have pointed me in the right direction when it came to getting a team behind me, a label behind my team, and fans behind my music. So network your ass of and build lasting relationships. These relationships will be key to your long lasting career in the Rap/Hip Hop industry.