Is Roc Nation Building the Next Music Empire?

Arts & EntertainmentBooks & Music

  • Author Jess Foppet
  • Published April 15, 2011
  • Word count 448

Roc Nation, the record label of hip hop superstar Jay-Z, may indeed be building the next music empire. The label is already home to several of the industry’s up and coming talents, including J. Cole and Willow Smith, with the most recent to the ranks being the budding star Jay Electronica.

The label, formed in April of 2008 through the partnership of Jay-Z and Live Nation, is a music industry original, merging talent and management in a unique and ingenious manner. The company is made up of songwriters, producers, artists and engineers.

An artist like Jay Electronica is bound to bring incredible benefits to the company, not only in terms of music and emcee talent but as a marketing and merchandizing expert as well. The reason for this is that "Jay Electronica download" is one of the most common internet searches performed by hip hop fans every day.

The manner in which the young rapper has reached viral stardom online is certainly a method that will be of benefit to the Roc Nation label. Releasing his first major track on his own MySpace page in 2007, Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), Jay Electronica managed to rocked himself into the hip hop without a big record label or a huge marketing budget.

The emcee continued to release his work online via sites like MySpace and Twitter, taking advantage of the free publicity such social networking sites provide and marketing on the word-of-mouth activities of fans. The next single released,  Jay Electronic Exhibit A was an instant hit among current fans, and managed to win the young artist even greater attention.

Beginning his formal career in Detroit, by making industry contacts that included some of the hip hop world’s best known producers, Jay Electronica managed to go from an internet sensation to an artist with a big name record deal in just three years, signing with Roc Nation in 2010.

So how did he manage such a feat? It was the Jay Electronica Exhibit C that likely secured his place in the hip hop industry, winning an "Instant Classic" award from the Sucker Free Summit Awards on MTV2. This formal recognition introduced even more music fans to the unique sounds of the artist and drove further online investigation of the artist, with internet searches for "Jay Electronica lyrics," "Jay Electronica music" and "Jay Electronica download increasing exponentially.

It seemed somewhat unlikely during the first few years of his career that he would release a full album, but since signing with Roc Nation it now appears that Jay Electronica will do just that. Tracks from the new multimedia venture began to appear online in 2010, with the official release date planned for 2011.

With a major label now behind him and even more exciting ventures in the future, Jay Electronica moved from obscurity to stardom in a period of just a few years, and made his path through very non-traditional means. Roc Nation’s other artists could certainly benefit from the up and coming star’s marketing playbook.

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