Here’s Your Chance To Be A Rapper
Loud.com And Today's Hottest Producers Are Ready to Hear You Now
Beatmaker and producer Zukhan Bey lends his expertise to give you some pointers on how to win and become the next big superstar.
Loud.com is running an online battle rap competition for a pretty steep prize -- $100,000 plus a recording contract with Street Records Corporation. If you're really good and waiting to be discovered as a rapper, this is the place to do it.
Here's how it works : you have to upload a song each week for ten weeks and will be judged by celebrity judges including Zukhan Bey, producer of Jim Jones' We Fly High.
"It's an active game where you download the producer of your choice's beats," says Bey. "You cut a record and upload 'em back. We judge on song structure, character, style, and creativity."
This absolutely means that even if you're some kind of shut-in kid in a small town far from the kind of metropolis where Hip-Hop thrives, you too can be discovered. You don't have to have a following at all. You don't have to have ever performed a song in front of anyone.
But you do need to have friends.
Part of what you'll be judged on at Loud.com's competition is how many friends you bring to the site. So it's a contest where you have to be not only savvy of what makes a hit record, you also have to be well-versed in what makes a successful Web 2.0 social networker.
And The Beatmakers Are...
You get some assistance from Loud.com and beatmakers like Bey, whose beats you can buy for 99 cents a piece. Actual registration for the contest is free. So for ten weeks of trying to prove you're the next Jay-Z or Kanye West, you'll only be out $10. Other producers you can download your beats from for the Battle Rap contest include Blackout Movement, Cool & Dre, David Banner, DJ Khaled, Rythum & Ghetto, Teflon, and Battle Rap's own stock beats. The art you make with the beats available is up to you. The ears that created those beats will also be judging what you do with their work.
Advice From Zukhan Bey On How To Win
"The way to get to me is kick a beat, lay it, get a concept," says Bey. "I would get a beat from every producer and put together like an album. And upload them all at the same time with maybe a theme that ties them all together. Get creative with the ways to record these records."
Bey recommends doing songs about life and relationships. He thinks MCs should be versatile and definitely need to tell a story. His advice comes from a high place as he's worked with Jay-Z, Beyonce, Ludacris, and Jim Jones. But he says his big break was when his grandmother told him to dance. Bey has been playing music as long as he can remember.
No Fancy Software Required
Maybe the coolest thing about the Loud.com Battle Rap competition is that it provides an online multi-track editor so all you need is the Internet in order to compete. You don't need to have an Apple G5 and Pro Tools to lay your beats and edit your song; you can do it all online at Loud.com. The contest gives a level playing field where the cream can rise to the top.
