Very interesting! It's funny as D12 spoke of the same thing down here in Australia. I am sure already opportunistic record company reps are trawling through tapes of Detroit acts now that various Detroit acts are blowing up, so why Detroit radio should sleep on it is beyond reason. The bias towards NY and LA in hip-hop has long gone since Atlanta/the South and more recently Detroit and St Louis have spawned multi-platinum acts (Em/D12 and Nelly/St Lunaticks respectively). Funnily enough Nelly speaks of the same kinds of things in St Louis - he refers to it as a love/hate thing. Like I said last week I think there are parallels between the plight of Detroit hip-hop and Detroit electronic musicians in finding recognition. Also it's a shame that magazines like Vibe & The Source don't ask acts like D12 more about the music cultures in their own cities because Kid Rock, Slum Village and D12 are well aware of techno and its players (esp The Wizard) and if they talked about it, or were given the opportunity to, in the US then they would at least expose their own fanbases to the music culture - this is particularly important with D12 & Slum Village because more so than Kid Rock they have a hip-hop base. I still can't believe Vibe, being 'the' urban lifestyle mag in the US, did nothing to cover the DEMF when it is reviewing Boy George's mix-CD and getting ad revenue for it.
We have the problem in Australia of labels signing tokenistic homegrown hip-hop acts like The Avalanches & Resin Dogs - progenitors of 'skip-hop' - who have no fanbase in the urban music scene (albeit DJ Dexta) but are defacto rock acts. There's brilliant R&B here that gets slept on too, because the acts are ethnic Australians or Indigenous Australians and not Anglo and so ignored by mainstream radio, and then you'll hear some of it (eg Kaylan) on an obscure mix-tape outta NY. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
