Adapt or Die
It’s been three years since the highly-anticipated solo debut album from Apathy, Eastern Philosophy, finally hit shelves. The release was postponed, I’m sure, more than the DemiGodz golden boy would have liked, in large part due to woes with labels and could-have-would-have-should-have bouts with Atlantic Records in particular. Two unofficial releases later—mixtapes, he’s calling them–and Apathy seems to have found a way to side-step all of those headaches by releasing his official sophomore album without an imprint at all, a move that may just be the future of the hip-hop, or music for that matter.
“The industry isn’t even the same it was three years ago—now you’ve got major labels that are almost washed up and irrelevant and bullshit. And you’ve got all [of] these indie labels that jerk people and do all sorts of foul shit,” explained Apathy in an interview with aboveGround about the October 6 release of Wanna Snuggle?. His almost-crass directness drove the point home; labels aren’t the devil, but they sure as hell aren’t doing much that can’t be done by a couple of motivated individuals and some hired help.
I don’t want people telling me what to do.
He outlined the motivation clearly and without hesitation, “I don’t want people telling me what to do,” he explained, “It’s just another person with a hand in your pocket who accomplishes relatively the same results. We want to do things ourselves.”
The copyright on Wanna Snuggle? reads “DemiGodz Enterprises,” a sure sign that this album was a home-brewed piece of work and point in proof that a well-established artist that was once signed to a major record deal can go back to making a rap album independently and still see shelf space in Best Buy. Ap himself and long-standing DGZ affiliate and punch-line professor Celph Titled form the pseudo-label of sorts. “It’s not really considered a label, maybe in a technical sense as something that you put stuff out on,” Apathy said, “it’s a label in that it’s an imprint—it’s our name, it’s what we’re putting it out on, but there’s no label; it’s completely independent, we’re doing it ourselves.”
Apathy’s approach to putting out an album wasn’t exactly revolutionary, but his personal connections in the music industry are what helped bring home all of the big-name appearances. Production on a new Cypress Hill track secured a verse from B-Real on the single “Shoot First”, his links to Styles of Beyond and Ryu’s involvement in previous DemiGodz projects made their collaboration on “Back in L.A.” a no-brainer and his standing relationship with Wu-Tang’s lesser-known soulstress Blue Raspberry (“The Winter” from Eastern Philosophy) made her a lock for “Guys and Girls”, just to name a few.
Aside from vocal guest appearances, the majority of the musicianship was really done on a solo basis; with the exception of drums laced by Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park, Fort Minor) and a few others, the brunt of Snuggle was self-produced and the album was mixed entirely by Apathy himself.
As soon as people figure it out in the next few years, labels are going to be almost obsolete.
However, as previously mentioned, this wasn’t an entirely in-house job; once the creation process was complete the business side was left to professionals. Apathy utilized free-lance public relations and marketing and contracted Traffic Distribution to disperse the project. This allowed him a chance to more freely negotiate the terms of his album, rather than turning it over to another label and having them head-up the logistics, a modern day coalition that Apathy says could easily de-utilitize most record labels.
“As soon as people figure it out in the next few years, labels are going to be almost obsolete,” said Apathy, explaining his vision of the future music industry. “Oh, fuck yeah,” he said confidently about a shift toward almost exclusively-digital releases in the future. He’s prepared for that reality he said, as he explained the workings of his second self-released album with rapper Ryu and Scoop Deville, a project they have dubbed the Get Busy Committee. The group album was released on October 27, under the Tokyo Sex Whale imprint, something that himself and Ryu started for GBC’s “different sound”.
Their album was released digitally and via Uzi-shaped USB flash drive, with physical copies made available, but printed on-demand and ordered directly from the group. That’s a major departure from the usual model where artists have hundreds or thousands of copies pressed initially and try to get them into stores and move them through their own outlets.
This method of distribution is smart because it tackles the two major concerns artists have with releasing albums completely independently: investment and risk. Pressing up gobs of albums is expensive, and what’s even worse is the prospect of dumping your life savings into getting discs made only to find out that no one wants to buy your music—then what?
In most instances, this is the appeal of a record label; they cough up the up-front expenses and they’re stuck with the albums if they don’t sell. They get paid back by what is generally an artist’s most-hated word in the English dictionary: recoupments—or, the label’s cut of the album sales money. But, if artists can forgo the initial investment (and therefore risk) by releasing their work digitally through various new online outlets at little or no cost to them, what role can a label possibly play?
We want to do things ourselves.
That question may be the next one to cause major shifts in the way music is produced and distributed in the still-shaky new market. As artists compete in an ever-crowding collection of musicians and technology makes connecting with listeners more direct, the burden of proof could land heavily onto the laps of labels. Artists are immersed in a landscape of do-it-yourself-friendly technology and have potential customers at their fingertips, so labels will have to prove their worth more than ever if they expect to survive in this new era of music. Adapt or die is the name of the game.
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November 4th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
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