“When I didn’t have a mic, I rapped on headphones”

Although I am white dude from suburban Finland, I have always been quite serious hiphop-head. This song below has always been one of the favorites. Raw simple drums and raw battle rhymes. That is all you need in a perfect hiphop-song:

One Charizma line has become a legendary hiphop-quotable from the song. It is almost like a rally cry for the indie hiphop movement and DIY spirit in mid 90´s and early 2000:

“ When I didn´t have a mic, I rapped on headphones”

For those who know, in the absence of microphone you can usually plug headphones to microphone input of mixer (I have done that as well). More street credible rappers have also been known to rap their records in telephones from jails. However, the line has lived on through the years within the song and also with this cool t-shirt designed by Parra:
tshirt
Now 18 years later, this legendary line has found again a new life with this awesome collaboration by headphone brand AIAIAI and legendary West Coast record label Stones Throw records. You can actually get to the record by rapping to your headphones:

This project is a great example that although you do a contest it can have some innovation with it. The contest promotes actual product launch. Many headphone brands do bespoken collaboration products and some might also do music contests. Stones Throw & AIAIAI have been one of the best ones creating quite holistic and enjoyable consumer experience from the website to the app. Because of that legendary Charizma line, it also makes perfect sense for headphone brand.

Also a good example that you should mine your good ideas way more often from old underground rap songs.

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: