MUSIC SWAGGER LIKE AVS: THE HOLE IN SL WHERE HIP-HOP SHOULD BE
In a stylish Brooklyn brownstone on the Millions of Us sim, the intermittent stream of adult alternative music makes a listless attempt to break up the hush of utter inactivity. Promotional posters for Talib Kweli’s 2007 Warner Brothers CD release, “Ear Drum” adorn the walls like preserved relics of abandoned ambition that was to be Kweli’s foray into virtual worlds. The project had buzz, celebrity appeal, and a thoughtful build for showcasing live performances in-world but with a current day traffic rating of seven, it points to the greater question of why urban music has yet to capture audiences within Second Life®. By Jura Shepherd
To be fair, major label music acts have yet to utilize SL in a meaningful way and there’s also the fact that urban music isn’t the real world juggernaut that it was three years ago. Even so, at any given time roughly twenty percent of iTunes sales are songs classified as Hip-Hop /Rap. Look at ranking charts for terrestrial radio and you’ll see similar numbers so why is the genre so under-represented in SL’s live music community?
age and Kzero quotes the number of 18 to 34 year olds at roughly 60% of the whole. That number is well within the real world audience for urban music. If you consider that the Sugar Hill Gang’s, “Rapper’s Delight” was from 1979, it’s safe to assume that even SLer’s well into their 40s probably have at least some Hip-Hop on their iPods. We know at least anecdotally that there’s no glaring reason for SL audiences to not welcome live urban music. In fact, an informal survey by popular SL DJ and blogger, Doubledown Tandino suggested that live performance HipHop/Rap was among the top genres that residents considered ‘missing’ from the live music scene.
Could there be something about the demographic of SL that makes its residents less interested in live urban music? “Not at all” says Joi Price, a real world Hip-Hop insider and co-founder of SL’s gritty urban sim, New Jack City. She continues: “Hip-hop transcends races, religions, geographic lines and cultures. Second life is a just sampling of the real world”. Much is made of the Hip-Hop demographic but in truth; hard numbers are no less elusive than those supporting SL’s demographic make-up. One reasonable constant within SL is that the population’s age begins at 18 years of
At a Thursday night gig at Phemie Alcott’s Firefly Café, Kafka Dinzeo, A.K.A. MicRocka, is freestyling using words and phrases typed into open chat. The audience interaction is a hit and is the cherry on top of a great, high energy performance. The audience of 30 plus avatars is doing it’s best to head-nod and 69