First question that normally we hear is “What the hell happened?”. Thats a good question but who has the right of answering it and is able to get away with it without ridicule? No one. However, I sincerely believe Hip Hop is not dead in this country as contrary to what many are saying that it is.

The rise of local Hip Hop was somewhat capitalized first by Positive Tone to take it to the masses and milking it. But was the milking actually what made it sink? Yes and No. Yes because it made the select few at the time to be recognized at the commercial level. No because it spurred many to do a lot of gigs all over the country just to satisfy the thirst of Hip Hop heads at the time.

The gigs educated and reached out to so many people. The big names today all came or grew with that scene as means of reaching out and it worked. But that scene is now paralyzed for many years now. So what is the next step?

Internet is the cheapest and opens up the sky to the whole world in one shot. Start off with services that are free to sign-up. This is like MySpace, Friendster and most recently Facebook. It is important to have good networking. These sites definitely help or else why would Snoop be on it? Next get a blog…there is Blogspot, Wordpress and many others.

Enhance these pages with music and video players. Put up a condensed profile of you or your group. Add lots and lots of pictures and search for people whose music preference is Hip Hop. Leave comments or pokes (applies to Facebook only) everytime you log into your account. And always always reply personal messages and inquiries.

Get on Channel V AMP or Imeem, do the same as what you did on the other free social networking services. Update once every two weeks or once a month on your shows or the urban events you went. Now it does not take that much time to learn how to work all these services but worse come to worse ask someone who knows to help you get started.

Once all of that is in place and your network and fans grows it would be good to make some investments. Buy a domain (RM30 or USD10 per year) and get hosting (should not be more than RM200 per year). You might want to pay someone to design your own official website for you or again get some help from a friend. Make sure it looks good and not complicated to navigate around. Then spread the word. Leave links to all your social networking accounts and your website in all the emails and private messages you send out.

However marketing Hip Hop online is not a pay and forget program. You have to constantly maintain and update. The mistake that plagues every genre is that they don’t seem to know the millage of online presence. Hip Hop in Malaysia can very well capitalize on this marketing medium and bring life once more to the scene and market. It is somewhere where you know the mainstream can’t be that much bothered to use.

But but….what is the use of this if there is no gigs or shows? Well, that is a simple answer. When no one lets you perform and shine…..you create your own event. How can it be done? That will be in my next article.

Peace~!