Jon and F.A.B.

Yesterday, I got a chance to see MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and Mistah F.A.B. talk about internet music entrepreneurship at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford. The panel, moderated by Quincy D. Jones, III, was an opportunity to get advice and pick the brain of successful rappers who have used the Internet to build musical networks. Here are some tidbits from the session:

Own your content
Chamillionaire, whose success on the Internet came as a result of mixtapes and ringtones, explained that when he negotiated his first contract, he wouldn’t even talk to a major label unless he had ownership over all of his cyber-entities. Had he backed down, he would have lost big on his record-breaking ringtone sales of “Ridin’ Dirty”. But even with this autonomy, Universal has required him to remove his songs from Myspace. Strange request when you consider Myspace is where his young fans go first to visit him online. Cham pointed out that die-hard fans are starved for content and prolific artists who put out tons of mixtapes (such as Lil Wayne) are well-rewarded when their actual albums hit the stores (1 Million copies of The Carter III in the first week).

Make friends with a true geek
Mistah F.A.B. spoke of the need for any entrepreneurial MC to make sure that they have an “MC CPU”, or a geeky buddy with a laptop on his chain who can pimp out your myspace (or Facebook page for the “grown and sexy” people). “Fabby Davis Junior” pointed to the interaction with the fans as the most important piece to Internet success, citing the Ghost Riding Grannie fan video that has gone “totally viral” on Youtube. F.A.B. claimed that you could find anything on Youtube, from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to some footage of him in bed sleeping while he had “the dream”. In other words, F.A.B. was one hilarious panelist.

Never give up
MC Hammer, whose well-documented financial woes might make him seem an unlikely digital entrepreneur, got interested in web video after he was unable to find any of his old music videos on Youtube. Despite his past monetary transgressions, Hammer is the first person from the hip-hop community to go straight to a silicon valley venture capitalist to start his company. His latest venture, Dancejam, seeks to be the Youtube of dance videos.

The discussion went long and they cut the Q&A session, so I was never able to ask my Debbie Downer questions like: Why is there such a paucity of politics in your lyrics? Would you be willing to post a few songs under a Creative Commons license? Which of you dudes showed up in the streched hummer out front?

In Episode 4, we met Hakan and Laura, a couple who use bio-fuel made from waste vegetable oil. They introduced us to Ray Kemp, the man behind KF3 BioDiesel Production, and the subject of Episode 8. Ray has spent the last few years perfecting a process for locally made biodiesel that he produces with reclaimed equipment. He has also found valuable uses for the byproducts of the production process, making his company completely sustainable. Check out this four-part episode:

Part 1.
Ray shows us the differences between biodiesel and petrodiesel. He explains how he able to return all of the byproducts of his process to the earth.

Part 2.
Ray explains how localized production of biodiesel is best for a distributed resource such as used cooking oil. Using Ray’s business model, a community biodiesel production facility could be started with a capital investment from between $ 5-10 K.

Part 3.
We learn about the four parts to Ray’s process: Collecting the oil, processing the oil, distributing the fuel, and dealing with co-products of production. We find out which kind restaurants are preferred to collect from and we see the production facility that Ray uses to convert cooking oil into biodiesel.

Part 4.
In this final segment, Ray explains how a Biodiesel Users Group works. Due to the skyrocketing fuel costs, biofuels have become relatively cheaper, though Ray tells how his production costs have also gone up. Ray articulates his dream of all biodiesel going to power school buses and explains how the do-it-yourself mentality of his process hearkens back to America’s founding principles.

We started this site for many reasons: To venture into something new, to have something to do, to have a creative outlet, to meet cool people, to counter some of the garbage thats on the internet, etc, etc. Most importantly, we wanted to provide an alternative to the doom and gloom side of environmentalism, and do this with a “hip-hop” point of view. I’m not sure we’ve accomplished this goal, but I do believe that we are on the right track. If affluent westerners are going to become active participants in saving the planet sooner rather than later, it is their higher needs that must be addressed, since their lower needs won’t become affected for some time. Let me explain.

I recently got a chance to listen to Chip Conley, an entrepreneur who started a hotel business at the age of 26 and who now runs Joie de Vivre Hotels, California’s largest boutique hotelier. Conley suggests that much of his success is due to looking at business through the eyes of psychologist Abraham Maslow. Anyone who took Psych 101 might remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or at least the pyramid image to the right. At the bottom of the pyramid are primitive needs such as food and water, and toward the top we approach less tangible needs such as creativity and morality. While standard hotels address their customer’s base needs, such as water and shelter, Joie de Vivre tries to address needs at the peak of the pyramid: Matching hotels to customer’s specific personality, retaining staff so visitors see the same smiling faces time and time again, and addressing complaints immediately so upset customers don’t boil over into a mouth-to-mouth PR nightmare.

A friend of mine once applied the hierarchy of needs when discussing the situation in Iraq. Issues such as a well-run government or education tend to fall by the wayside when you have no food or water, let alone security. You can look at environmental challenges conversely. Though it is evident that global warming is occurring as I write these lines, the average reader’s life probably wont become affected by it for some time to come, therefore the base of the pyramid is not threatened. How can environmental issues become relevant to people’s lives if it is not currently affecting the first four tiers of the pyramid?

To become relevant, solutions to the environmental issues challenging our world must be ingrained into every facet of our life. In 2008, “green” is now almost as played out as “presidential politics”. So how do you break through the clutter of media to actually address people at their higher level needs? Well, one way is to get celebrities on your side. When Ludacris and Tommy Lee go on Youtube and claim to be green, you know that greenwashing has reached epic proportions… But then again, it would have been inconceivable that five years ago, pop-culture icons of this stature would be mentioning the environment. You have to dumb it down to reach the masses, but Planet Green knows exactly what they’re doing. They’ve managed to meet people in the middle of the pyramid. Celebrities are like friends that we really don’t know, but feel like we do.

But how do you get to people further up that pyramid? How do you get people from being passive spectators who watch An Inconvenient Truth, to becoming “self-actualized” and engaged at a higher level in the struggle for the environment. Organizations like the Crissy Field Center are well on their way. They have educational programs that inspire discussion, creativity, and problem solving - some very important higher-level needs. My goal for the second half of 2008 is to figure out how to incorporate some of these aspects into Chitta Chatta With The Green Rapper.