Fresh in Chicago for the “Scream Tour” and reppin’ QUEENS to tha’ FULLEST, Diggy Simmons stopped by the AKIN sneaker boutique on Halsted in Chicago to talk with me about what life is like being a Rapper, Sneaker Designer and the son of Hip Hop Royalty!
This past weekend Mid C Media had the pleasure of reconnecting with Hartinder Dhami better known as H-Dhami at Chicago’s Copernicus Theater this past Friday night. Despite the venue being packed, H-Dhami was nice enough to hold a few tickets for us. He even allowed us to join him and Imran Khan on stage! It’s all ways great to link up with cool artists that are passionate about creating art. H-Dhami electrified the audience and I don’t think anyone excepted to see him face dive into the audience! He jumped off stage with almost little to no warning and surfed through the crowd, until he eventually made in back onto the stage. The fans loved it!
After the show we got a chance to link up with him and talk about some of his upcoming projects. Being the passionate mate he is, we even got to do a photo shoot with him and a little viral video for his new unreleased track that is surely going to make the girls fall in love. Below are some photos taken from the behind the scenes crew during the video and photo shoot. We hit the streets of South side Chicago were we found some unique murals.
H-Dhami is signed under Rishi Rich Productions and Sony BMG India, we first met H-Dhami last year while shooting the Raghav “So Much” music video at iCream, located in Wicker Park. In case you missed it, check it out below. Keep you eyes out for H-Dhami this winter and another collaboration with Mid C Media soon!
Check out photos from our most recent video production at Chicago’s Chizakaya Japanese Pub for Elit Vodka by Stolichnaya. During the video production, we captured 3 Chicago entrepreneurs mindset’s regarding luxury and how the Elit by Stoli brand fits into their daily lifestyle. The 3 entrepreneurs highlighted were Dr. Dominic Gaziano, Sebastian Walas and Matthew Sapaula. What items do you consider to be ‘luxury?’
Matthew Sapaula
Dr. Dominic Gaziano
Sebastian Walas
Recently the city of New York has partnered with AT&T in a 5-year digital initiative to provide 26 parks throughout New York City with free Wi-Fi. Currently, there are free AT&T hotspots in the following parks: Astoria Park in Queens, Herbert Von King Park and McCarren Park Field House in Brooklyn, Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan and Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island. I wonder what city will be next???
How great it is to hear him talk about climbing mountains as a team sport.
David Banner is a rapper, producer, actor and businessman–and, as his name suggests, he’s also something of a superhero.
On a recent bicycle trip to a Los Angeles recording studio, Banner hit a curb and flipped over the handlebars, breaking his arm in the process. No matter. He continued on to the studio, where he worked two hours to finish the commercial he was working on before heading to the hospital.
“The joke we had was that we’d buy us a RoboCop arm after we get this check,” Banner explained in a video interview at FORBES’s New York offices, where he showed me a picture of the fracture on his iPhone.
Born Lavell Crump in Jackson, Miss., Banner has been living up to his Incredible Hulk-like moniker in other ways. His latest projects include production for the likes of Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown and Justin Bieber, as well as commercials for Gatorade, Marvel and Mercedes-Benz. He’s also been scoring movies and video games, doing a bit of consulting, and working on a new album, tentatively titled The Make Believe Album.
Banner didn’t earn quite enough to claim a spot on this year’s Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, but he’s getting close. His wide range of extracurriculars rivals that ofJay-Z or Diddy, and underscores the fact that in today’s declining market for recorded music, commercial side ventures are more of a necessity than an option for an artist looking to build a personal brand.
Banner has come a long way from his humble roots. Just six years ago, he was homeless, living in his van. He attributes his eventual success to a few of the usual factors–hard work and intelligence (he carried a 3.9 GPA at his masters program at the University of Maryland)–but also to something foreign to many entertainers: punctuality.
“There are a lot of artists on the urban side who believe that since they’re stars in one genre of music, there’s an excuse to do whatever they want in business,” he says. “Your word and your timing is everything.”
He pauses. ”I wasn’t on time for this interview, but that’s because I got dropped off at the wrong place.”
And Banner is determined not to be too late to our list of hip-hop’s top earners.
“Hold a spot for me at Forbes,” he says with a smile. “I’m coming, I promise.”
For more on the business of music, watch the David Banner video interview.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2011/10/07/david-banner-on-music-business-and-the-importance-of-punctuality/
Video:
By Zack O’Malley from Forbes.com
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson isn’t someone who often seems uneasy. He has maintained his unapologetically aggressive stage persona and trademark scowl through myriad battles with other rappers and real physical violence, famously surviving nine close-range gunshots in 2000. But standing on a leather armchair in the Hudson Hotel, 50 proclaims that he’s a bundle of nerves.
“I thought I was supposed to be finished with being nervous in front of people,” he says, addressing the group seated before him. “But for me, this is the most important project I’ve participated in.”
The audience gathered last week to celebrate the launch of 50’s latest venture, an energy shot called Street King. Working in partnership with the United Nations’ World Food Programme, the product promises to deliver a meal to a hungry child for every unit sold. According to the U.N., 50 Cent and his company have already written a check to cover the cost of 2.5 million meals.
“We are absolutely delighted about this partnership, it really can change the world,” says Bettina Luescher of the WFP, which provides regular meals for some 90 million people every year. “The U.N. can’t do it alone. This can be a role model of how one can do philanthropy in a different way … he’s a lovely man.”
Lovely, perhaps, but 50 Cent is also a shrewd businessman. Though he’s never been able to surpass the musical success of his 2003 album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, he has continued to make some of hip-hop’s best entrepreneurial moves—most notably taking home $100 million from the sale of VitaminWater parent Glaceau to Coca-Cola in 2008. He topped FORBES’ annual Hip-Hop Cash Kings list that year, and has finished in the Top 20 every year since.
Street King aims to eat into the market share of the wildly popular 5-Hour Energy drink, leader of the $1.5 billion energy shot category, which is growing at a 50% rate. Experts say the sector carries a whopping 50% profit margin. That should come as no surprise; the New York Times pointed out that the stuff costs twice as much per ounce as Coca-Cola.
“There’s no Number Two in the market,” says Chris Lighty, 50 Cent’s manager and frequent business partner. “5-Hour Energy markets to 40-year olds; we’re looking for 18 and up.”
“We’re talking to an 18-24 year-old consumer,” adds Street King’s co-founder Chris Clarke. “We believe it’s possible to get 20-plus percent of the category.”
Though the Street King deal is certainly a boon for the fight against hunger in poor nations, it should also profit 50 Cent and his partners handsomely.
According to the U.N., it takes $0.10 to provide a single meal (or $0.25 for a complete package of nutritional food that includes take-home rations and additional inputs such as de-worming pills; even if you aren’t a rapper, you may donate here).
The precise breakdown is staggering. Street King retails for $2.49 to $2.99, so assuming the lofty 50% profit margin, 50 and his partners will be evenly splitting a per-unit profit of $1.15 to $1.40. Though Clarke says the company won’t be profitable for the first two years, he believes annual revenues of $300-$500 million are possible by year three; 50 says his goal is to feed one billion children.
“It’s mind boggling that people are living under these circumstances,” he says. “It makes me feel like my motivation for some of the decisions I made early on were made blindly. If you weigh it morally after you’ve grown, it doesn’t make any sense.”
He believes that if Street King is successful, it will force beverage giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi to initiate similar give-back programs. The United Nations says it would cost $3.3 billion per year to feed 90 million of the world’s poorest citizens for a year, or less than one percent of all corporate profits.
“That’s a small enough amount for the shareholders of all these companies to let go,” says 50 Cent. “Going forward, I want to do things in a bigger, better way. And I think I can achieve it with this actual project … it will influence entrepreneurs, not just musicians. I can influence the artist community in a song. If I were trying to influence them, I’d make a record about it.”
As for his own interminably-delayed album, he says it will be out in November. He downplays the strife between himself and Interscope, saying that “most artists have an issue with their record company at some point” and that the label simply didn’t move as fast as he would have liked.
“Out of frustration, I say things,” he says. “Now, people listen to me so much I can say it under my breath and everybody hears me … I said in the past that I’m a work in progress, and I feel like I’m progressing.”
Facebook users come Sunday morning Oct 2nd are in for a big surprise. When they login and look for their precious wall, they will find it has been replaced by a Timeline. The timeline is a virtual time machine that can now take you back into your past memories. It’s a little eerie and some say borderline creepy but I think most will find it very nostalgic after the first few weeks. I had my initial gripes about it, but it grew on me after I played around with it for a bit. You can now see things people posted way back when, things you forgot, things you missed, things you thought you lost forever. It really is a time machine. Facebook’s new timeline also utilizes what computers do best, compute raw data. So now you can go to specific years in your life and things are categorized. You can see how many friends you made in a specific year, how many pictures you uploaded, where you checked in, and how many likes or comments you received. It really is quite magical. It even goes all the way back to when you were born and now you can write details about that or post a baby picture.
Here’s a screenshot of my cover page, that will be seen by all my friends Sunday morning.
New Facebook Timeline
According to Twitter’s VP of Engineering, the social site has seen more growth over the last nine months than in the previous five years, and that’s nothing to the explosion in use that Twitter’s expecting to see when Apple weaves it deeply into the software of the iPhone with the upcoming iOS5 update. And this source should know because he’s had to tweak Twitter’s infrastructure to cope with the flood. The news comes just as Facebook is maneuvering its public image in the press toward a future as a “mobile” platform, and shortly after efforts to attract users with Facebook phones.
Did Zuckerberg’s spine just shiver?
The current speculation is that Apple’s iOS5 and iPhone 5 will arrive in a couple of weeks, and that iOS5 will be suitable for most earlier iDevices. If backwards compatibility is there as expected, the iOS5 install base could include roughly 60 million units already in use (not including some older ones like the 3G iPhone). With the iPad, iPhone 5 (and 4S?), and iPod Touch likely to be popular holiday gifts, and an updated iPad 3 edition due in early 2012, to boot, Apple’s iOS device install base could easily top 100 million by March next year.
Wound throughout the core functions of all of these machines sporting Apple’s iOS 5 will be Twitter. Not Facebook, or Google+. As far as we can tell from Twitter’s assertion that the integration will let you “Tweet anywhere,” hints from Apple itself and from leaks showing the functionality from within Apple and Twitter’s developer circle, Twitter is included in many of the upgrades and new features iOS5 will bring to the iPhone, and will include just a single effort to set your device up to sign in to Twitter automatically. This means the threshold to access Twitter in order to share a status update, a video clip (from the iPhone 5′s allegedly impressive camera) or a relevant web link will be very low–as simple as dabbing at the touchscreen a few times from within whichever app you’re using. The camera app is a great example of this, because sharing a new snap on Twitter is as easy as pushing the “tweet” button and adding a caption. But we also know tweeting is just as slickly integrated into Safari, for link sharing, and Maps for sharing your location data.
Using Twitter via iOS is going to be faster than using Facebook, then, because you’ll need to seek out Facebook, tap into the app, then enter in your status update…requiring a slightly longer and more deliberate interaction.
While Facebook does have some integration with iOS, and individual third-party apps have also embraced Facebook for sharing information, the fact that Twitter is integrated into Apple’s code can’t be overstated in importance. Michael Abbot, Twitter’s engineer quoted above speaking at GigaOm’s Mobilize 2011 summit, expects that developers will rush to embrace Twitter because all the necessary hooks are going to be available directly inside Apple’s code–making it easier and perhaps less troublesome to incorporate Twitter’s functions.
Of course Facebook will remain hugely popular with both developers and iPhone users. It has its own particular attractions. But people really are lazy, on average. Or at least they want efficient user experiences on mobile devices and online. If Twitter’s interactions are easier to use on an iPhone and iPad, then folks may prefer to use Twitter–especially since Twitter’s largely avoided the “invasion of privacy” bad press of Facebook. Plus there’s the thrill of the “new” if a particular iPhone user hasn’t embraced Twitter before.
Meanwhile, also speaking at Mobilize, Facebook’s head of Mobile Erick Tseng gained much media attention by saying “within a year or two we’ll be a mobile company.” Facebook has made no bones that its future is in mobile use, and already about 43% of the active users among its 800 million clients access it while on the move.
But Facebook’s got to be feeling the heat from Apple and Twitter potentially ganging up. There’s that enormous installed iOS userbase to think about. Then there’s iCloud– Apple’s innovative effort to take iTunes into the cloud, and the growing influence of Twitter in the world of music discovery. Today, iTunes is the largest music vendor online, and that’s something Apple will try to protect from Facebook’s direct attack…meaning we should at least expect users will be easily able to tweet (perhaps automatically) which track they’re listenting to from inside the Apple Music app. Facebook’s own efforts at music integration are brand new, but already facing criticism (Spotify’s “forced” Facebook integration being perhaps the most prominent example) and the firm’s recent big update which included music sharing also landed Facebook in the critic’s cross-hairs because the adjustments again exposed users to unexpected privacy violations. Apple could see this as an opportunity to capitalize on the trusted status it and Twitter have.
There’s also social media and mobile advertising to think about. If brands suddenly see a better opportunity to promote their goods and services through Twitter and iPhones, not least because Twitter’s user base is primed to suddenly expand, Facebook could take a hit.
Twitter also seems to be planning on leveraging the extra data about its users that’ll come from location-awareness in iPhones–Abbot hinted that Twitter will curate some tweets based on location: “I apprecitate information coming to me rather than having to go find it,” with an example about news of a local fire emergency. If Twitter is collecting such location data, you can bet it’ll also wind this into its advertising plans–which could turn Twitter on iOS into a very powerful location-sensitive advertising platform.
Twitter-Apple may, then, be a very significant threat to Facebook both in terms of cannibalizing some day-to-day use cases from its users, and in offering a mobile advertising platform that could offer even more precise audience targeting. But, let’s face it, Facebook’s not going to go away and it’s already deeply integrated into Apple’s biggest competitor smartphone OS Android–which currently outsells the iPhone. Don’t expect hundreds of millions of users to flee Facebook for the convenience and assumed “safety” of Twitter on iOS.
But do expect to see changes and threats to Facebook’s plans to mobilize itself. A Facebook skeptic may sense a tiny element of fear in its decision to delay launching an official iPad app until the moment of Apple’s press event about the iPhone 5 next week–but is this a desperate effort to make sure a corner of the limelight shone around at one of 2011′s most highly anticipated tech launches lands on its properties? It could also be a sign that Facebook is trying to make amends with Apple management, after what’s reported to have been a protracted and frustrated (via Facebook foot-dragging) debate over the largely failed Apple social music experiment Ping.
Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.
From Wired.com By Christina Bonnington
The Kindle Fire could be the first truly successful Android tablet. It touts a very reasonable $200 price tag, a well-curated app store, easy access to Amazon’s cloud-based services, brand trust and recognition. It’s Amazon’s most ambitious foray into hardware since the original Kindle’s debut.
And the Fire has the potential to engulf all its Android tablet brethren.
To date, Android tablet sales have mostly been lackluster. The Motorola Xoom only shipped 440,000 units in its first three months. Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab fared better, hitting the one million mark before it had been on the market for two months. But there are countless other Android tablets, and none of them are making a big splash in the iPad-dominated space. Many have taken to slashing their prices just to make a tiny grab at the tablet market.
But the Kindle Fire has the ability to change all that.
The failing point of many existing 7-inch tablets as that they thought of the iPad as their competition. But a 7-inch “tweener,” as Steve Jobs dubbed it, is an inherently different device, and Amazon, with the Kindle Fire, has embraced that difference.
The Kindle Fire is a device created for content consumption, not creation — for reading, listening to music and watching video. As such, at least to start, it’ll rely heavily on Amazon’s own apps and services.
Whether Amazon’s 7-inch tablet fires up Android development will depend on the success of the device.
“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem,” Gartner analyst Van Baker says. If the tablet is successful with consumers, then it will spur Android tablet development.
But it really doesn’t look like the Kindle Fire will have any problems being successful.
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman-Epps expects “rapidfire adoption” of the tablet, which will finally give developers a reason to develop tablet apps. Elaine Coleman of Resolve Market Research shares a similar sentiment. The Kindle Fire will elevate Android app development because Amazon has already done such a standout job of establishing itself in the space with customers, and the Kindle Fire has direct access to its built-in app store.
“This will finally give mobile app developers a much stronger alternative and opportunity to develop their apps beyond the Apple App Store,” Coleman says.
What do developers think? Reviews are mixed.
“The Amazon Kindle Fire looks like an amazing product,” says Eric Setton, co-founder and CTO ofTango. As Tango is a video calling service, his product won’t be compatible until Amazon outs a tablet with a front facing camera.
Michael Novak, an Android developer with the GroupMe team, has a number of reservations.
Novak is disappointed that the Kindle Fire supports Gingerbread, rather than Honeycomb, Android’s tablet-specific build. It’s not a big issue, because Google has a compatibility library, but he still feels it’s a let down. He’s also more excited about developing for a 10-inch screen, like that of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Unlike in iOS development, he notes that developers need to pay close attention to user experience on these different-sized screens to ensure they take advantage of all each device has to offer.
Novak is also concerned that the tablet ships with Amazon’s app store — he currently sees far fewer downloads of his app from the Amazon app store than from the Android Market (and also far fewer downloads on tablets compared to smartphones), but perhaps that will change when Amazon’s own tablet starts landing in households.
And existing Android tablets better watch out when they do.
“The Kindle Fire will definitely harm the sales of other Android tablets,” says Baker. So far, 7-inch tablet sales have not been doing well, he says, but what we’ve largely had so far is a piece of hardware without any services behind it. Manufacturers are focused on the hardware features and specs, but that’s not what consumers care about. Consumers want the full ecosystem, something Apple, and now Amazon, are able to provide.
Amazon is bringing far more to the table than its competitors, and will likely dominate the 7-inch tablet market and drive competitors’ prices down. It will also force competitors to adopt more cloud-based services, Coleman says.
The Kindle Fire should give the Android platform a major boost, while simultaneously killing off its many players.
