Post #7

Marguerite de Bourgoing describes seven practices of transmedia and how they effect hip hop. She first talks about how "hip hop today feeds from both an active online and offline presence that contaminate each other" (de Bourgoing). I think this law is the most important because fans today want to feel connected to their favorite artists. Say I attend a music festival and want to know more about a new artist I just heard peform, I can hop online (on my phone of course) and immediately start following them on Twitter, finding out what they're doing after the show or where they're going to perform next. Online and offline presences have become essential in hip hop because everyone isn't always online or offline, you never know when a performance or blog is going to generate another fan so as an artist you have to be available in both realms, the digital and the real.

de Bourgoing also talks about how to be authentic yet marketable and I think that is another important law, though pretty self explanatory. Run DMC is probably the best example of this, what he did for Adidas is pretty remarkable. He STILL rocks head to toe Adidas, more power to him.

The third law, "be the change you want to see," is also self explanatory and de Bourgoing makes this point, "After the Obama election: the biggest transmedia movement to date, arguably any successful transmedia franchise is a movement" and I would have to agree with her. Movements, with the help of transmedia, are happening more and more. This hip hop movement in LA that de Bourgoing describes shows how media across several platforms can generate enough buzz and excitement to start something real special, something bigger than you or I.

The fourth law, "collaborate," is even more important and relevant today than it was when hip hop was first emerging, simply because it is now so easy to do. Hip hop in general is a very collaborate "genre." I hate that word but didn't know how else to describe it. Without a beat, all a rapper has is some dope lyrics. Without lyrics, all a producer or DJ has is a sick beat. Dope lyrics + sick beat = Hip hop gold. Technology has made it incredibly easy for artists to collaborate with other artists, producers and DJs. According to de Bourgoing, "All hip hop albums with hardly any exception, feature other artists." Collaborating has become essential in hip hop and in music in general and always will be.

de Bourgoing's fifth law is very confusing to me. I read it a few times over and still am not exactly sure what she means by "it ain't hard to tell." I would assume she is saying that the building of the story is just as important as the story itself, but I still do not see how "it ain't hard to tell" fits in..

Law six is all about women. The hip hop community is predominately male but that is slowly starting to change because of technology. Women in the hip hop community are starting to realize that if they are better marketers then they can be just as successful in the hip hop world. de Bourgoing also describes how much power women actually have in the hip hop world, saying that "you still haven't quite made it if you haven't been endorsed by Devi Dev," a female radio personality based out of LA. La Stereo, de Bourgoing's franchise, was started by her and another female. 

The seventh law, "we were scholars before colleges," describes hip hop's ever changing ways because of its lack of structure. It isn't assigned to a rigid structure (de Bourgoing) therefore "it's a reminder how oral cultures manifest themselves in ways that aren't just verbal. Hip hop is an art form that has developed its own mythology, world, and prophets within contemporary society. It is an art form that constantly references itself as well as the previous eras as expressed with the practice of sampling" (de Bourgoing).

DJ-ING IS WRITING/WRITING IS DJ-ING - In this section Miller states that, "Writing is music, I cannot explain this any other way" (Miller 57) and he basically backs it up by saying that like writing, creating music is a collaborative process that requires the use of one's own ideas but also those of others. He says, "Today, the voice you speak with may not be your own" (Miller 69) and he is referring to the fact that there are a wide array of mediums available for expression and that you may be using someone else's voice to speak, or rather you may be using their knowledge or ideas as a foundation to build upon to create your own, unique voice. Miller also talks about how culture has a significant influence on the creation of both writing and music, reiterating the fact that writing is music, and music is writing.

I definitely think de Bourgoing's arguments are related to the things we talked about during the first half of the course. We recently talked about sampling and that ties into her "collaborate" law. The first law she discusses is also related to what we have been talking about. "spread your brand: open mic" (the first law) talks about converging media and making yourself available on several different platforms at once. We have talked a lot about "convergence culture" and I think, from what I have read, that LA Stereo and hip hop in general are great examples of that. LA Stereo is incorporating film, photography, live performances, social media and other online and offline practices to expose audiences to the LA hip hop scene. Millers arguments are also related to what we talked about during the first half of the semester because he talks about how "Today's notion of creativity and originality are configured by velocity: it is a blur, a constellation of styles, a knowledge and pleasure in the play of surfaces, a rejection of history as objective force in favor of subjective interpretations of its residue, a relish for copies and repetition, and so on" and I think the reason for this technology, technology is changing the rules of creativity and originality and enabling the collaborative process to take place on an entirely new level.