Negotiations, an interview with G.F. of Problem Child Records.

By C.D. Wright

What's good my friends? Today I'm here talking about negotiating deals with other business owners. I did a quick interview with independent rap artist and CEO of Problem Child Records, G.F. out of Oklahoma City. Before I get into all of that here is a brief background of G.F. The Godfather.

G.F. short for Godfather, is an independent rap artist in Oklahoma City, reppin’ Port Author, Texas. G.F. has a great lyrical flow, descriptive like a Stephen King Novel, with an original “gangsta swag” that’s impeccable. G.F. has worked with rap artist like C-Bo, Killa Tay, Marvaless, Mob Figas (Rhyda.J.Klyde), and Fed-X. G.F. also went even further to record the underground classic "See Me Flossin", with deceased rap legend Pimp C. He has been shown interest by Scarface while Face was over Def Jam South. MCA Records also sought out G.F., alongside with several other well-known independent labels. Since then G.F. has been running Problem Child Records, his own independent label and has went on to open up shows for Slim Thug, Foxy Brown, Juvenile, West-Coast vet C-Bo, E-40, and several other prominent hip-hop factors.

The first question I asked G.F. about negotiating was when I asked him how does he separate the people from the problem when negotiating?

When I asked G.F. that question he went on to tell me about the time he negotiated the deal to get Pimp C on a track with him. G.F. said he first spoke to Pimp C’s manager at the time and his manager gave him a price of $20,000 for a verse. G.F. stated to him that he thought that was too high and out of his price range. The manager went in the positional bargaining tactics direction. He used his position to belittle and attack G.F’s ego and position to negotiate his side of the deal. Then G.F. told the manager that he wanted to speak to Pimp C directly to see if this was legit, but when he got Pimp C on the phone he could only pay Pimp C $5,000. Pimp C told G.F. that he would only freestyle his verse if that’s all he was going to pay him. G.F. then flipped the game and attacked Pimp C’s ego when he told him he would “murder him”, lyrically of course, if he decided to just free-style on the track. G.F. seen Pimp C later that night a show Pimp C was doing and the sound equipment had messed up so he caught him in a situation were he was in Okc and he might as well make a few more thousand while he is here. G.F. separated the people from the problem by focusing on what both parties truly wanted and not the positions people.

Next, I asked G.F.,do you utilize objective criteria when negotiating? How?

G.F. said of course. Having objective criteria when negotiating is like a war tactic G.F. explained. He went on and spoke about a negotiation deal he did with West-Coast Mafia CEO and artist C-Bo. He spoke about that he knew first hand that C-Bo would do a track for a cheaper rate than what he requests. G.F. knew a friend that just got C-Bo on a track for one price that sounded reasonable. By G.F. knowing that C-Bo had done a verse for cheaper and was not in high demand as earlier in his career, G.F. not only said that he only had a certain amount and put the cash on the table. He knew it would be hard for C-Bo to turn down the cash that was in his site and plus C-Bo was cool with artist in Oklahoma City so he didn’t put up a fuss about it.

Can you give me an example of how you worked toward mutual benefit when you were negotiating a deal?

G.F. started speaking about a time when he had to negotiate with a club owner when he was promoting a show with Trae’ The Truth. G.F. said the club owner wanted a fixed upfront price. G.F. said instead he asked the club owner to take a percent of the door. Also he added that he would buy out the bar and give the club owner a cut of the bar sales as well. By doing this, G.F. was able to come to a mutual agreement for a mutual benefit for both him and the club owner. The club owner was cool with that deal and G.F. was able to have the show with Trae The Truth and the club owner made his money for the club.

G.F. has demonstrated various negotiation skills with his label for business. It is very important that we negotiate to make things happen instead of being so cut and dry with each other when we want to do business but our egos sometimes get in the way.

Real Talk!

Check out G.F. The Godfather on; Reverbnation.com/7deucegf, Facebook.com/joegfcool, Youtube.com/tokool72, and Twitter.com/@gf72

Upgrade your web presence for cheap!

When it’s time to get professional sometimes you need to upgrade your web presence. Most of us starving artist upload our music online on several sites like YouTube and Soundcloud to get exposure. That’s great and the right thing to do, but after a while you will want to upgrade your online presence. I would think around the time that you’re doing shows consistently and maybe have CD’s distributed to those regions where you’re doing the shows. 

What I mean when I say, “upgrade your online presence” is to have a website of your own will make you look professional. Now most of you knew that all ready but you didn’t know how cheap you could do this and be ready to go in a few hours. No more blogging from a sub- domain names like yourname.blogspot.com

 Introducing FatCow, a webhosting company that has the cheapest rates in the business. Fatcow has been in the web hosting business for over 10 years. While most web hosting companies charge $10-30/month for web hosting, FatCow charges just $2-3 per month in web hosting for your site. They’re cheap but they are good. A professional look but affordable for the starving artist. So when you have time go ahead and check FatCow out. This might be what your were looking for, Real Talk!

Mobile Marketing For Your Music

If you got great music and you want to be heard then mobile marketing is the way to go. Smartphones and tablets are becoming like extra limbs on the body to humans these days. Everybody and their momma got a cell phone. The Pew Research Center’s Internet& American Life Project states that 70% of 18-29 year old cell owners have used their phone for entertainment when they were bored. That’s a lot of people to market your music to.

So with that in mind, we as artist need to accommodate our fans and potential fans’ current trends. There are several ways of doing this. A recent study of cellphone usage in the U.S. showed that text messaging (besides talking) is the most frequent task done on a cellphone. Developing an opt-in phone list is key to text message marketing success. 

It’s all about visuals. Did you know that YouTube is responsible for 22% of all mobile bandwidth usage? Me neither until I read this article on Gigaom.com. According to Allot Communications YouTube now accounts for 52% of all global mobile video streaming. So just think, all of those cool videos you got on your YouTube channel of your group can reach all of these people if you let them know you exist.

Last but definitely not least is Social Media. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud.com, etc. are great for starters. Social media sites are a great way of reaching your fans directly. There are plenty of tools to help you build your social media presence up. For instance, Facebook has Top News feeds and Most Recent news feeds. You want to be in Top News feeds because it’s the default news feeds where you are most likely to be seen according to Facebook’s EdgeRank. 

In all, you want to do the most you can for free when marketing online. Taking advantage of the mobile technology that’s out there can help you and your career flourish. Keep in mind of all the potential fans that will want your music out there that access the Internet through their cellphones. It’s enough to keep me motivated, Real Talk!

SXSW Can Help Your Career In The Entertainment Business.

What’s good everyone? 

This week on Real Talk I want to talk about SXSW (South by South West) Music Conference that’s held every March in Austin, Texas. Well it’s actually a music festival that started in 1987 and grew currently into a film and an online interactive conference as well. SXSW states that their original goal was to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas.

Well if you ask me, we really needed something like SXSW, especially in the region where I’m from. Being in the music business as a rap artist out of Oklahoma is not the easiest thing to do and the resources were like slim to none. SXSW created a great resource for entertainment business people to network with others and create future business partners or job opportunities.This was very important for us, especially for the independent artist in the South West region.

SXSW offers a variety of resources to help us in the music business as well as the film and interactive communities.  Resources like talk panels, for professional discussions in music, film, and interactive industries. SXSW also have shows going on about 100 different stages showcasing new artist around the world. SXSW has a program called Startup Village. Current and future entrepreneurs benefit from learning and networking with investors, technology trailblazers, media representatives, as well as digital creatives from their exciting industries. Along with the Startup SXSW offers Accelerator. Accelerator is a competition of companies in presenting the latest innovating technologies in music and the interactive industries. They also allow companies to sell equipment to potential clients in the expos for music, films, and interactive, which is the cutting edge in technology like video games and software etc. This type of resource for independent artist is extremely helpful for our careers.

SXSW has been around for years. Since it’s conception, it has grown to over 48,000 registrants from the music, film, and interactive fields of the business to Austin Texas every March. They have affected all of these industries in numerous ways since they started. By bringing like minds from all around the world together and to give them an opportunity to discuss and share ideas with each other or even receive advice from a professional in our field of entertainment business is priceless. Thanks goes out for SXSW for giving us a platform for entertainment business heads to collide and expand the industry with knowledge we share. So if you haven't beent in a while or never attended before, make plans to make it to Austin in March to the SXSW Conference for an upgrade in your entertainment business network. Real Talk!

Videos Are The Way To Go!

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This week I want to talk about Kevin Alloca, a TED speaker that works for You Tube as a trends manager. Kevin watches You Tube videos for a living. Kevin’s unusual job is very informative for many of us out there especially those of us who are in the music industry and need to know how important it is to upload and promote your videos.

Kevin is an expert in his field and he examines videos everyday and he see’s which videos go viral and which ones that don’t. He says that it’s three things that make uploaded videos go viral. They are unexpectedness, community participation, and tastemakers. Tastemakers are the influential people that always bring new and interesting things to a larger audience. People like Jimmy Kimmel, Tosh.0 and Oprah Winfrey. These are the people that has a big influence on everyone. Once we think it’s cool to them then we want to be cool like them and do what they do. This happens more when the videos are unique and has something unexpected to them. By sharing, remixing and twitting about these videos we are community participating with them. This is how they go viral.

This approach works for anything new we do creatively. Kevin teaches us that unexpectedness, community participation, and tastemakers are characteristics of a new media and culture where anyone has access and the audience defines the popularity. We should utilize this media for our music careers. This is the future in entertainment.

We live in a visual world and these days it’s important to do as many videos as you can and upload them on You Tube. This is very good for building a buzz and a fan base for the artist. When I say videos, I’m not just talking about music videos. I’m talking about the behind the scenes action. Let the fans get to know the artist on a more personal level. People love reality television. This doesn’t mean go and do stupid incriminated stuff to get some attention on camera, that stuff can get you locked up.  Real Talk! 

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P.S. Here is a site that I came across that has plenty of pointers of how to promote your videos online, http://promotingyourvideo.com

Mr C.D. Wright

                                   

R. Kelly Still At It

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R. Kelly has done it again!

R. Kelly has done it again! After all R.Kelly has been through, he still sells millions of records and writes hit songs for himself and many other artists. R Kelly continues to show up and show out in the music game with his newest efforts, Write Me Back, which is a twelve-song collection that is part of this year’s -- The Year of the R. Also with his new album, R. Kelly is publishing his first memoir, Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me.
R. Kelly is definitely staying busy on his marketing efforts. He recently signed with the IFC Channel to add chapters to his hip-hop opera Trapped in the Closet. I can’t lie ya'll, I was kind of caught up like everybody else when the first series of Trapped in the Closet came out. They had me waiting to see what else was about to go down. This new series is featuring all of the original players in 20 brand new chapters. It will debut this year on November 23, Black Friday. 

R. Kelly is utilizing several angles of entertainment to stay relevant in the music business. These mini-series he keeps putting out are showing us more and more of his skills as a writer, producer and  an actor. His talents spans across the horizon. I'm not posting this story of R. Kelly because I'm in his fan club or anything I just have to recognize his hard work in the music industry. He is definitely doing his thang, Real Talk!
 
I mean really, does anybody even remember when R. Kelly was in trouble with that sex tape scandal that almost ended his career? I barely do. You don’t even hear about it anymore. Shout outs to his publicist and his record company for saving his life and his music career by helping him deliver his musical gift from God to the rest of the world. Maybe it’s over, I don’t know, but I know that R. Kelly must be one of the hardest working-men in the business. Real Talk!

Hip Hop Hooray!

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Hip Hop Hooray!

Bet Hip Hop Awards Show 2012 was a great night for Hip Hop.  I had to admit that it made me get that old good feeling about Hip Hop again.  I was starting to think that Hip Hop needed a flushing but I have to say the cyphers this year was one of the best thus far. It was like a movie starring all of your favorite actors or a comic book with some of your favorite super heroes.  I got to see Mystikal, DMX EVE, Snoop Dogg, DJ Quick, Kendrick Lamar & E-40 again. It was great! If you ask me Kendrick Lamar killed it. Once again I felt proud to be involved in this magnificent art form.

The night was filled with memorable moments. You had Taylor Gang leader, Wiz Khalifa in a black leather jacket performing his hit “Work Hard, Play Hard.” Young Jeezy joined him representing the ATL. to the fullest.

P Diddy came through with his Bad Boy Records entourage that included Machine Gun Kelly with his off the wall antics performing “Wild Boy.” French Montana also stole the scene when he showed up in about 100 gold chains. While Future brought his #1 hit single, “Turn off the lights” to be joined by all his Bad boy comrades.

Leave it to 2 Chainz to show up or show out jumping out of a Gucci printed coffin performing his smash hit “Birthday.” He was dressed in a white shirt with a suite jacket and tie. He reminded me of Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction”. Then to top that off he sat down at a white grand piano playing the keys like a pro for the intro of his hit “I’m Different” that blazed the stage.

The night was toped off with a special tribute to the great late music executive, Chris Lighty. Artist like; LL Cool J, Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Missy Elliot, and 50 Cent performed their hit records they recorded during the times while being managed by Lighty. They all were representing Violator and the Chris Lighty brand with high regards.

The Bet Hip Hop awards, by far has out down themselves in 2012. From the commercials of Kevin Hart’s new show to Mike Epps hosting the entire extravaganza, Bet’s Hip Hop Awards show 2012 left a great impression on the world for the genre. What a night for Hip Hop!