source: http://www.jsonline.com/onwisconsin/music/apr05/320596.asp
Jail can boost rappers' sales — for a while
Infamy seems to increase word of mouth, demand for CDs
By RAFER GUZMAN
Newsday
Last Updated: April 24, 2005
As Lil' Kim faces a possible 20-year prison term for lying to a grand jury, she's keeping a low profile and refusing to grant interviews to the press - for now.
Rappers
Photo/Bloomberg News
Kimberly Jones, a.k.a. Lil' Kim, has been busy preparing projects in case she goes to jail.
Photo/Associated Press
Beanie Sigel got busy after pleading guilty to gun and weapons charges.
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Undaunted by the prospect of prison, Lil' Kim is forging ahead with her career. She's working on a new album and even hoping to launch a reality television show, "Lil' Kim's Hollywood Makeover," on VH1. If the rapper does go behind bars (her sentencing date is June 24), she's making sure she'll remain in public view as much as possible.
Lil' Kim is just the latest rapper raising an issue for record labels: How can an artist behind bars continue to make money?
Over the past year, Beanie Sigel, C-Murder and Shyne have found ways to sell albums despite, or perhaps because of, their incarceration.
Sigel's latest album, "The B. Coming," debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts earlier this month even as the rapper is serving a one-year jail term for weapons possession.
"Record companies are dependent upon releases, and they don't want to lose momentum," says Erik Parker, music editor at Vibe magazine. "If an artist is in jail and they hold the record, it could interfere with plans for other releases. So in many cases, it's better to just get it out."
But as labels become adept at marketing their jailed rappers, they're raising questions about their methods and testing the limits of the law. Prison authorities cracked down on C-Murder (who recently changed his name to C Miller) after discovering that most of his album was recorded within their walls. And a Brooklyn court recently froze profits from Shyne's latest album, citing the so-called Son of Sam law that prevents criminals from making money from their crimes.
"The argument on the part of the prosecutors is that rappers have capitalized on their criminality," says Brian MacNamara, assistant professor of law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "That increases their popularity, so when they come out with new songs, their sales are higher."
But the Son of Sam law "wasn't meant to prevent people from profiting from work they were doing before they were ever imprisoned," says Richard Klein, professor of criminal law at Touro Law Center in Huntington, N.Y. "It's not in society's interest to have people come out of prison absolutely impoverished."
Tupac Shakur enjoyed a No. 1 album, "Me Against The World," while serving a prison term for sexual assault in 1995, but other jailed rappers haven't fared as well. In 1991, Slick Rick recorded two albums' worth of material before entering prison for attempted murder, but he never regained the popularity of his 1980s heyday. Keith Murray's 1999 album, "It's a Beautiful Thing," flopped while the rapper sat in a Connecticut prison for assault.
Record labels don't want those histories to repeat themselves. After Beanie Sigel, born Dwight Grant, pleaded guilty to gun and weapons charges last October, he and his label, Damon Dash Music Group, went into action. Sigel shot five videos in five days, put together four TV specials and finished a movie, "State Property 2."
Sigel's album, "The B. Coming," debuted at No. 3 despite the fact that it has yet to produce a hit single, notes Minal Patel, charts manager for hip-hop and rap at Billboard Radio Monitor. Sigel's incarceration, she says, is what's driving sales.
C. Miller workin'
That may also be the case with C Miller, the younger brother of Louisiana rapper Master P. The 34-year-old, born Corey Miller, recorded the vocals for his new album inside the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna, La., where he's serving a life sentence in the shooting death of a 16-year-old boy.
The rapper's lawyer brought in a digital recording device during visits, Miller says, allowing him to listen to beats created by producers and then record his rhymes. The room's small confines and flat acoustics are clearly audible on the album.
"Most of the time, I listen to the beats and then write them right there. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes," Miller says during a phone call arranged by his label, Koch Records. "I work fast. My biggest challenge is learning how to function in here."
The rapper's activity didn't stop there. He also made a video for his single "Y'all Heard Of Me" while behind bars. How? Koch Records essentially gathered bits of footage from interviews C-Murder had conducted and pieced them together.
"When someone says, 'Hey, can I hear a piece of your new album?' - and when he performs it - well, we can edit that," says Dee Sonaram, vice president of crossover promotion for Koch.
The video became a major component of the label's promotional campaign, says John Franck, vice president of marketing at Koch.
"It was us being clever and us doing certain things to create additional controversy," he says. "The news of this guy making a record behind bars ended up getting picked up by over 100 different TV news shows down south."
Miller's album has sold 43,000 copies, a fraction of his million-selling solo debut "Life or Death," but a satisfying figure for the independent Koch label.
"Given the reality of the situation and given the type of artist that he is, we're very happy with that," Franck says.
Meantime, though, prison officials have restricted Miller's lawyer from bringing anything to visits except for legal documents and a pad and pencil. Pens, whose hollow tubes could be used to conceal lyrics, are also prohibited. (Phone calls are still allowed.)
"Of course they put restrictions on me, but that's going to be lifted when they realize their mistakes," Miller says. "My main thing is, I'm a hustler. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."
Shyne abandoned?
Things seem equally difficult for Shyne, currently serving a 10-year sentence for assault and possessing a weapon. As recently as last summer, he was a bona-fide celebrity: His new album, "Godfather Buried Alive" was the talk of the rap world. But these days, he appears to have been abandoned by many of the people who once worked with him.
Shyne, born Jamal Barrow, became famous for his role in a 1999 shooting involving rapper and Bad Boy Records owner Sean Combs. Combs initially was under suspicion in the shooting, but Shyne was the one found guilty. While in prison, he landed a deal with Def Jam to release the album that he'd been working on before his incarceration.
"Godfather Buried Alive," became a sensation upon its arrival in August. Shyne managed to conduct several interviews with journalists before prison officials revoked his phone privileges, but that only sparked more stories in the press. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard chart.
Within two months, however, the album dropped off the chart completely. To date it's sold 434,000 copies.
Shyne's imprisonment may have hurt as much as helped him. By the time the album came out, the pre-recorded tracks (completed some three years earlier) felt out-of-date.
Shyne was unavailable for comment. According to an official at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, the rapper is in disciplinary confinement following an altercation and must spend 23 hours each day in his cell with no phone privileges.
The rapper seems isolated in more ways than one. He's no longer with his former label, Def Jam. Kevin Liles, the former Def Jam president who helped sign the rapper, did not return repeated requests for an interview.
That's the flip side of being a famous jailed rapper, says Stephen Hill, vice president of music, programming and talent at Black Entertainment Television.
"You can only write that story once," he says. "For a lot of people, it may help their next release. But it won't help their career."
Jail can boost rappers' sales — for a while
Infamy seems to increase word of mouth, demand for CDs
By RAFER GUZMAN
Newsday
Last Updated: April 24, 2005
As Lil' Kim faces a possible 20-year prison term for lying to a grand jury, she's keeping a low profile and refusing to grant interviews to the press - for now.
Rappers
Photo/Bloomberg News
Kimberly Jones, a.k.a. Lil' Kim, has been busy preparing projects in case she goes to jail.
Photo/Associated Press
Beanie Sigel got busy after pleading guilty to gun and weapons charges.
Advertisement
Undaunted by the prospect of prison, Lil' Kim is forging ahead with her career. She's working on a new album and even hoping to launch a reality television show, "Lil' Kim's Hollywood Makeover," on VH1. If the rapper does go behind bars (her sentencing date is June 24), she's making sure she'll remain in public view as much as possible.
Lil' Kim is just the latest rapper raising an issue for record labels: How can an artist behind bars continue to make money?
Over the past year, Beanie Sigel, C-Murder and Shyne have found ways to sell albums despite, or perhaps because of, their incarceration.
Sigel's latest album, "The B. Coming," debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts earlier this month even as the rapper is serving a one-year jail term for weapons possession.
"Record companies are dependent upon releases, and they don't want to lose momentum," says Erik Parker, music editor at Vibe magazine. "If an artist is in jail and they hold the record, it could interfere with plans for other releases. So in many cases, it's better to just get it out."
But as labels become adept at marketing their jailed rappers, they're raising questions about their methods and testing the limits of the law. Prison authorities cracked down on C-Murder (who recently changed his name to C Miller) after discovering that most of his album was recorded within their walls. And a Brooklyn court recently froze profits from Shyne's latest album, citing the so-called Son of Sam law that prevents criminals from making money from their crimes.
"The argument on the part of the prosecutors is that rappers have capitalized on their criminality," says Brian MacNamara, assistant professor of law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "That increases their popularity, so when they come out with new songs, their sales are higher."
But the Son of Sam law "wasn't meant to prevent people from profiting from work they were doing before they were ever imprisoned," says Richard Klein, professor of criminal law at Touro Law Center in Huntington, N.Y. "It's not in society's interest to have people come out of prison absolutely impoverished."
Tupac Shakur enjoyed a No. 1 album, "Me Against The World," while serving a prison term for sexual assault in 1995, but other jailed rappers haven't fared as well. In 1991, Slick Rick recorded two albums' worth of material before entering prison for attempted murder, but he never regained the popularity of his 1980s heyday. Keith Murray's 1999 album, "It's a Beautiful Thing," flopped while the rapper sat in a Connecticut prison for assault.
Record labels don't want those histories to repeat themselves. After Beanie Sigel, born Dwight Grant, pleaded guilty to gun and weapons charges last October, he and his label, Damon Dash Music Group, went into action. Sigel shot five videos in five days, put together four TV specials and finished a movie, "State Property 2."
Sigel's album, "The B. Coming," debuted at No. 3 despite the fact that it has yet to produce a hit single, notes Minal Patel, charts manager for hip-hop and rap at Billboard Radio Monitor. Sigel's incarceration, she says, is what's driving sales.
C. Miller workin'
That may also be the case with C Miller, the younger brother of Louisiana rapper Master P. The 34-year-old, born Corey Miller, recorded the vocals for his new album inside the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna, La., where he's serving a life sentence in the shooting death of a 16-year-old boy.
The rapper's lawyer brought in a digital recording device during visits, Miller says, allowing him to listen to beats created by producers and then record his rhymes. The room's small confines and flat acoustics are clearly audible on the album.
"Most of the time, I listen to the beats and then write them right there. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes," Miller says during a phone call arranged by his label, Koch Records. "I work fast. My biggest challenge is learning how to function in here."
The rapper's activity didn't stop there. He also made a video for his single "Y'all Heard Of Me" while behind bars. How? Koch Records essentially gathered bits of footage from interviews C-Murder had conducted and pieced them together.
"When someone says, 'Hey, can I hear a piece of your new album?' - and when he performs it - well, we can edit that," says Dee Sonaram, vice president of crossover promotion for Koch.
The video became a major component of the label's promotional campaign, says John Franck, vice president of marketing at Koch.
"It was us being clever and us doing certain things to create additional controversy," he says. "The news of this guy making a record behind bars ended up getting picked up by over 100 different TV news shows down south."
Miller's album has sold 43,000 copies, a fraction of his million-selling solo debut "Life or Death," but a satisfying figure for the independent Koch label.
"Given the reality of the situation and given the type of artist that he is, we're very happy with that," Franck says.
Meantime, though, prison officials have restricted Miller's lawyer from bringing anything to visits except for legal documents and a pad and pencil. Pens, whose hollow tubes could be used to conceal lyrics, are also prohibited. (Phone calls are still allowed.)
"Of course they put restrictions on me, but that's going to be lifted when they realize their mistakes," Miller says. "My main thing is, I'm a hustler. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."
Shyne abandoned?
Things seem equally difficult for Shyne, currently serving a 10-year sentence for assault and possessing a weapon. As recently as last summer, he was a bona-fide celebrity: His new album, "Godfather Buried Alive" was the talk of the rap world. But these days, he appears to have been abandoned by many of the people who once worked with him.
Shyne, born Jamal Barrow, became famous for his role in a 1999 shooting involving rapper and Bad Boy Records owner Sean Combs. Combs initially was under suspicion in the shooting, but Shyne was the one found guilty. While in prison, he landed a deal with Def Jam to release the album that he'd been working on before his incarceration.
"Godfather Buried Alive," became a sensation upon its arrival in August. Shyne managed to conduct several interviews with journalists before prison officials revoked his phone privileges, but that only sparked more stories in the press. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard chart.
Within two months, however, the album dropped off the chart completely. To date it's sold 434,000 copies.
Shyne's imprisonment may have hurt as much as helped him. By the time the album came out, the pre-recorded tracks (completed some three years earlier) felt out-of-date.
Shyne was unavailable for comment. According to an official at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, the rapper is in disciplinary confinement following an altercation and must spend 23 hours each day in his cell with no phone privileges.
The rapper seems isolated in more ways than one. He's no longer with his former label, Def Jam. Kevin Liles, the former Def Jam president who helped sign the rapper, did not return repeated requests for an interview.
That's the flip side of being a famous jailed rapper, says Stephen Hill, vice president of music, programming and talent at Black Entertainment Television.
"You can only write that story once," he says. "For a lot of people, it may help their next release. But it won't help their career."
