Edumacation?

So late last night I was on a conference call with my manager (@diamondent) and heard a guy say something that kinda got to me. He said that you can't be a college student and a rapper at the same time. That school would take you away from music and that eventually you'll either fail out or just stop rapping completely. Now, I for one don't agree with this. I have two college degrees and I'm still doing this. I still found time to hit the studio, pass out fliers, research marketing techniques, rehearse, and stay on my grind. At the end of the day, if you want something bad enough, you don't have any excuses. Matter of fact, you don't even think that far, you just do. I'm here to tell you guys that I'm a living example that you can get your degree(s) and still rap. Also there are major artists out there that went to college and graduated with degrees such as; Common (Baton Rouge), DJ Premier (Prairie View A&M), Talib Kweli (City University of NY), Paul Wall (University of Houston), Mos Def (City University of NY), and Killer Mike (Southern). There are also artists that attended college but didn't finish, however, they did attend (which may be the reason they even became great artists); Lil Wayne (University of Houston) Kanye West (Chicago State University) Cam'Ron (Navarro) and Chamillionaire (University of Houston). Having an education gives you an edge over the competition anyway especially if you are trying to build your own label or learn how to read jargon (look that one up). So hit the books and know that it'll help you in the long-run

Websites-R'-Us

A website is very important to have because its the one thing that your fans will refer to when they mention you. Chamillionaire has Chamillionaire.com, 50 Cent has Thisis50.com, and Russell Simmons has GlobalGrind.com. The reason why owning some web space is important is because its just like owning a house. Music in today's era has officially gone digital so much that even Timbaland has released an album that you can only get by downloading it to your phone. When plugging yourself (promoting yourself, not what you thought) its good to have one site where everyone can find you at. Its a mouthful when you say "catch me at Myspace.com/SuchandSuch213." When its much easier to just say "hit me up at suchandsuch.com" (MAN! That's sounds professional) I am in the process of doing this myself. I'm using a free web service right now http://www.freewebs.com . What that server does is allow you to take a template and design your own site. However, it'll come up as suchandsuch.webs.com. So your next step would be to buy a domain name. This is pretty much buying the title to the house. A domain name is what people actually type into the address bar to get to your site. No matter what web host you use, that will always be yours. You can buy them monthly for like $10, yearly for $35-$45, or for even 10 years for $89.99. Once you've gotten that far, I would recommend learning as much as you can and playing with the site to learn how to add flash, pictures, music, and make it as interactive as possible. You want this site to be fun and for people to really get something out of it, and add value to their experience. I'm still in the learning phase, however, mine is interactive and informative. http://www.hastyle.webs.com Check it out and enjoy.