For 10 years straight, Bama Hip Hop, has helped unsigned and independent artists tackle the difficult task of finding places and events at which to perform. We recently spoke to the company's founder, Ali Shabazz, about how and why Bama Hip Hop was started, what they do to help artists and how the work they do with those artists benefits others in the industry.
"...a performance opportunity [network] to help unsigned and independent artists get seen and heard in front of a live audience by people who could become their fans or someone who could help advance their music career. That's our mission statement."
I'm talking to Ali Shabazz, and he's talking about his company, Bama Hip Hop, which helps artists to find places and events at which to perform. No matter what's going on - open mics, music festivals, showcases, concerts, or clubs - if it's happening in the southeast, Ali probably knows how to get you on it.
How's he do that? Well, having years in the game, a great track record, a lot of credibility and the trust of the local industry doesn't hurt. And when you throw in a large, strong network and some well-chosen strategic alliances and partnerships, you've got music industry gold.
This type of "gold" is an extremely valuable asset in the entertainment business, and it doesn't just come overnight. Ali's had to work hard for that gold - and he's been doing it for years - since way before Bama Hip Hop was ever even thought of.
He didn't know it at the time, but Ali started paving the way for Bama Hip Hop in the very early 90's when he founded Anniston, Alabama's Juneteenth Heritage Festival.
This yearly celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation was one of the few events where local artists could showcase their skills. Each year, after the festival was over, Ali would get some variation of the same question from the artists: "Do you know where else I can perform?"
"I didn't really," he admits, but since he wanted to help out, he started digging around, and lo and behold, he began to find other shows that would allow unsigned artists to perform. "After awhile, I started to keep a file on other festivals and other events, [and] that built up to open mics and showcases and things."
Ali soon found that all this work was just as helpful to him as it was to the artists. He had a festival to run and he needed acts for that festival. By providing this performance-finding service, he always had direct access to artists who were ready, willing and able to perform.
"So it kinda worked out both ways," he says. "I had information going out that the new talent could use, and I had information coming in that the festival could use."
Often, when companies or organizations create this type of auxiliary program - one that is meant to help that company achieve its own mission - that new program can quickly take over and take on a life of its own. Demand for it grows, and it becomes more time-consuming. And eventually, as it becomes more defined, it gains a purpose and a mission all its own.
True to form, the little side-line service that Ali had begun providing simply to give local artists a boost became its own thing. Realizing that he had something totally new that could stand on it's own, Ali decided it was time to take it to the next level.
In the year 2000, Bama Hip Hop was officially created, and since then, the company has helped numerous hip-hop and R&B artists from around the state to get gigs both inside and outside of Alabama.
So what exactly does Bama Hip Hop do? Well, again, they're kind of like a broker, a middle man, that plays match-maker between artists who are looking for places to perform and promoters, club owners, event planners, etc who are looking to book stage-talent.
What they are not is artist management. They're not concerned with getting artists a deal. Their sole purpose is to get artists on the stage. "Not everybody's gonna have that major deal. Some people will have a career in music as an artist-performer, but they may not become a celebrity artist."
Knowing that, and knowing that most of an artist's income comes from performance fees, Bama Hip Hop has decided to stick to one thing: "provide artists with instructions, opportunities and strategies for finding shows."
One of the most basic ways in which they reach that goal is to simply make information about performance opportunities available to artists in one easily accessible place. "On our MySpace, for example, we have a continuously running slideshow that has fliers in rotation."
These fliers are advertisements for performances and open mics that are currently going on. Click one, and you get a full-size version that shows you all the pertinent information about that event - including contact info for the promoter.
"There are programs up there that happen weekly. And some of them happen monthly. So if someone's looking for something to do, we literally can set you up [so] that you're performing at least 3 times a week."
Artist Enrichment Services
Bama Hip Hop doesn't just stop at providing performance opportunities. They also seek to help artists learn about the business through their Music Biz Store.
This online book shop has almost 70 titles which cover just about everything you need to know about the business (marketing, management, booking, labels, accounting, law and more).
For entertainers who really want to up their business game, these books are sure to make worthwhile reading .
Besides the event flier slideshow, Bama Hip Hop also uses their MySpace blog to keep artists informed. Recent posts include information about the upcoming Atlantic Beach Black Bike Week festival and the Atlanta's NDaGame Entertainment Black College Football Tour among other events, as well as links to interesting articles and other helpful information.
But Bama Hip Hop isn't content to just tell people what's going on, they like to take a more hands-on approach by directly setting artists up with events, some of which are their own.
"We planned open mics for many years," says Ali, "[and we're] still involved in them." Until recently, they held one called the Open Mic Check at Gadsden's Club 231 which helped put lots of artists on the stage in front of potential fans.
Unfortunately, due to the bad financial climate of the last year or two, the Open Mic Check has been put on hold indefinitely. "You know, the economy kinda changed things a lot for nightclub owners and for concert promoters." The event has been back-burnered for about a year now, but Ali assures me that that's not a permanent thing. "We will do those again," he says.
For now though, Bama Hip Hop doesn't seem to be hurting for anything to do. They have other hands-on ways of finding shows for artists. When they aren't planning their own events, they help out with others' events.
While it's not an explicit part of Bama Hip Hop's mission, by default, their service benefits event promotors, event planners and venue owners just as much as it does the artists. In fact, one of the biggest ways in which Bama Hip Hop helps artists to find shows is through strategic alliances and marketing partnerships with other entertainment-related businesses and organizations.
These aren't the companies who just come to Bama Hip Hop looking for acts. These are the folks who rely on Bama Hip Hop to provide actual artist recruitment and placement services for them. "At times, we had occasions to have relationships with them, where we’d actually do the pre-screening. We did the the evaluation, and we did the submission for someone to be on a program."
This type of outsourcing arrangement can occur for a variety of reasons. For one thing, recruiting can be very time-consuming and many companies simply don't have the time to handle it.
In addition, some of these folks are simply out of their league. "A lotta these guys are older, so they're not really, socially speaking, into hip-hop and rap music." Basically, they're providing this type of music because they know it makes their customers happy. "It's a business decision for them," says Ali.
Ali, himself is closer in age to a lot of the guys he just mentioned, but unlike some of them, he actually is into hip-hop. He listens to it, he understands it, and he enjoys it. Because of this, he can relate to people on both ends of the spectrum.
Artists can trust him because they know that he understands where they're coming from and that he knows how to help them to get on the stage. Venue owners and promoters trust him because they feel like he's on their level and because they are confident that he knows what - and who - is hot in hip-hop.
Because of Ali's ability to bridge the generational gap between both of the afore-mentioned groups, he and his company spend a lot of time acting as the go between for them - and handling a lot of the business activities that promotors, venue owners, festival committees and the like don't care to handle.
For instance, Bama Hip Hop has helped run various open mic events over the years, says Ali. "I have a club owner who turned his open-mic program over to us 'cause, again, he did not want to deal with the artists on an individual basis," he explains. "He filtered them through me."
Stage management is another activity that they help out with. The Player's Picnic in Tuskegee is a good example of that. For several years, "we handled the artists and the schedule for the program," Ali says. While the event’s organizers took care of the celebrity artists, “we took care of the many, many unsigned or independent artists."
Bama Hip Hop has even set up performance contests where the winner gets to perform in a bigger event. At one point, they did a lot of this for a club that was booking a lot of major, signed, celebrity artists for shows. "We were setting up [competitive] showcases for [the winning] independent artists to be the opening act at these concerts," says Ali.
Probably Bama Hip Hop's biggest partnership is the one they have with Atlanta's NDaGame Entertainment. NDaGame's approach to helping artists out is simple: take a mobile stage, set it up at various events around the southeast and put on live shows. Artists are charged a fee to perform on the stage.
Since 2006, Bama Hip Hop has taken care of the stage management, marketing and artist membership services for these events.
In particular, they've spent a lot of time working on Atlanta's NDaGame Entertainment's signature event, the Black College Football Games Tour which sets up at several HBCU football games around the country.
For the last 2 years, they've helped NDaGame build their spring program which, this year, will be visiting Atlantic Beach, SC for BikeFest.
And now, the two companies are pushing toward the future with an effort to put together a national tour of military bases.
Atlanta's NDaGame Entertainment is not Bama Hip Hop’s only big partner. There’s also Hot Block Magazine, a company whose main purpose is to provide advertising and promotional opportunities for the entertainment industry. It’s an independent franchise, so there are Hot Block Magazine’s all over the place.
Ali handles sales for Hot Block Alabama. He can help you get just about whatever you need at a price that’s affordable for you.
"You have ways of [advertising] on a small budget of $25 or on up to getting the cover with a double-spread or two-page article, an advertisement inside and cover on the outside and other promotional services.”
And if that's not enough for you, Hot Block provides several other ways to get yourself seen and heard. From their quarterly magazine-release parties to their TV show to their mixtapes and DVD's, they can always find a place to put your face, name, or music for all to see.
Ali considers larger partnerships like the ones he has with Atlanta's NDaGame Entertainment and Hot Block Magazine to be a “top priority” because they give Bama Hip Hop and by extension, the artists they serve, much more exposure.
Of course, Bama Hip Hop will continue to hold it’s own events, but for right now, we’re playing a supporting role for other people’s programs,” says Ali.
In order for companies to allow Bama Hip Hop to play that supporting role, they have to have a lot of trust in Bama Hip Hop. Fortunately, as is mentioned at the beginning of this article, Bama Hip Hop is very well trusted in the local industry. But why is that?
Well, for one thing, they've always been highly visible and accessible. Being able to get up close and personal with people is always an asset because it lets those people know that there's a real live person behind the logo.
Until recently, Ali could meet, greet, pass out business cards and whatever else to his heart's content, as he was on the scene a lot at both his own and others' events.
"We were seen almost everywhere," says Ali. "People like that. People [like to be able to] see you and put their hands on you."
Bama Hip Hop makes sure to make their presence known in the virtual world too. "We're very heavy on the internet," Ali says, explaining that its very easy to find them online. Just type phrases like "Alabama open mic" or "Alabama hip-hop" into a search browser, and Bama Hip Hop will show up in the top search results.
It can take a good bit of work to get into that upper echelon, and Bama Hip Hop has done a whole lot of that. Ali credits their top spot to "years and years of doing a lot of internet promotions and search engine optimization."
Another reason that Bama Hip Hop is so well trusted is that they’re always as informative and straight-forward as possible. Besides being able to see and touch, people also like to know – and Bama Hip Hop makes sure that they do.
Besides dropping business cards, they also post current phone numbers and email addresses on their website, so that people can get in touch with them. And they include all kinds of “about us” information - who they are, what they do and why - on their Myspace page so that people will know who they're dealing with.
Bama Hip Hop is just as informative about their events and programs. "Our policy is, when we have an event, we do what's called a full disclosure webpage and that tells people everything about who, how, when, where, what to do, how to participate, how much, what the benefits are."
Okay. So being visible, accessible and informative has gained Bama Hip Hop a lot of trust. But what does that do for them?
It's gets them more work. People can see them, touch them, talk to them, know them and subsequently trust them, so they're much more eager to work with them.
Even when people can't work with Bama Hip Hop right away, they keep them in mind. It might be as much as a year or two down the road, but they’ll eventually call.
Not only are people more likely to want to work with Bama Hip Hop, but they have no problems sending others their way. "You get referrals from people," says Ali. "They'll find you somebody."
Bama Hip Hop does get a lot of referrals. And its things like that that let Ali know that he's on the right track. People may not always give him the feedback he needs (a major pet-peeve of his), but for the most part, says Ali, "it appears that we've been doing pretty well by people."
He cites the huge response that Bama Hip Hop gets when they put together an event or program, the number of artists who send their music, and all the email blasts they receive. They also have large numbers of friends and followers on MySpace and Twitter.
And with 2010 award nominations from the Southern Entertainment Awards and Real Talk Magazine (both for Internet Hustler of the Year) as well as a nomination for a similar Hot Block Magazine award, it's easy to see that Bama Hip Hop is doing the right thing.
The cherry on top of the pie is that Ali really loves what he does. For one thing, being in the music industry can definitely be fun. "It's entertaining," says Ali. "I get to be around music, and I get to go to clubs for free."
"When I was really active, I never paid admission to go to anything," he tells me. "Very rarely did I have to buy a ticket. Or if somebody was having a concert with a major artist it's like, you know, 'Mr. Shabazz? Oh, okay. He's in.' So it had some perks."
But Ali's enjoyment goes deeper than just the fun and the free perks. He feels a great sense of accomplishment when artists that he has advised get positive results.
"I don't really do mentoring as such. I stopped doing management, per se, but I still like it when somebody I've taken a liking to or somebody who I just shared a consulting moment with calls me back (the few times they call me back) and say, 'Hey. You know, I did what you said, and it got me where I wanted to be.'
"I get a kick out of that," says Ali. And he's not afraid to compliment himself on a job well-done, "so it's a little bit of breaking my arm to pat myself on the back that goes on."
For Ali, helping artists to find performance opportunities "is stimulating for my mind, the creative side of me." He's not musically inclined at all, he admits. "I can't write songs. I can't rhyme. I don't have a good singing voice. … I don't play an instrument."
But he makes up for his musical deficiencies in another way. "I can create and organize an event. And so I like to do that."
And just for the record, "we're not seeking any credit for it. That's just something we do..." So if Bama Hip Hop helps you to get ahead, "It's all good," says Ali. "Send me tickets to your show."
Yeah. A little thanks would be nice (and Ali wishes he could get a little more of it), but tickets or no tickets, thanks or no thanks, it doesn't really matter. The thing that makes Ali happiest is "when [Bama Hip Hop's events] come together and go off well," he says. "That's my sense of accomplishment."
