Chuck D on Evolving Beyond The Limitations of The Old Music Business Model

(The Sydney Morning Herald) — Albums are very last century to Chuck D. As is record-company power. The rhyme-animal from Public Enemy, who helped shape the foundation stone of hip-hop, has moved on from both, having spent the past decade immersed in cyberspace, building online communities outside corporate governance. “My joy over the last 12 years [firstly] has been in the digital forefront, seeing some of the big monster [companies] being levelled down to planet Earth,” he says. “[Secondly], building portals on the web . . . seeing that there’s a world connected beyond the power and the corporations of radio stations and TV.”  “But you have other artists who have not been so fortunate because of the lack of infrastructure, so I built hiphopgods.com . . . So if someone like Dana Dane or a Digital Underground comes out with a single, they don’t have to go through the whole bureaucracy.”

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