Victor's Blog: May 2015

In this post I will be analyzing two artists and what they did in their campaigns.

Logic

Sir Robert Bryson Hall II aka Logic

Firstly I'll be analyzing Sir Robert Bryson Hall II aka Logic, he was born on the 22nd of January in 1990 making him only 25 years old. He is originally from Gaithersburg, Maryland. He has been active in the music industry since 2009 with his group known as the RattPack, but only really gained a considerable amount of global recognition with his latest album Under Pressure. Before this album he mostly just made mixtapes without much help, his first step up was with Mind Of Logic when he got signed to the music label Visionary Music Group. Since then it is clear that his music videos and digipaks look much more professional.

Logic's color theme tends to be black, white and grey, we can see this in many of his music videos, digipaks and on the merchandise on his website. On the right is a picture of Logic, at first glance one would think that hes just a normal guy yet he came from a household of drug addicts and never graduated. One of the reasons many of his fans have respect for his music is because of how honest some of his lyres are that tell the truth about his past. Not something that can be said for most artists now a days. The picture below shows a great example of his color

Digipak for "Young Sinatra"

theme, this one is from his mixtape "Young Sinatra" released in 2011. He named it Young Sinatra as he considers himself to be the reincarnation of Frank Sinatra. It is also clear that he wanted to give of the impression of this being an old school mixtape. Even on the actual disc Logic is just wearing a casual sweater in a small looking room, This shows how he isn't a millionaire (like many rap and hip hop artists try to fake to give the impression that they were successful) as he is proud of where he is at in his life.

Gif from "Walk On By" by Logic

Here is an example of how he includes his color theme into music videos, in this gif we see a couple seconds from Walk On By, one of Logic's more successful songs prior to his Under Pressure Album. It has surpassed three million views on youtube, which in early 2013 was a big jump for Logic since most of his songs were reaching around 500k views at the time. As seen there are many clips that are in black and white and also have this old camera effect to give the impression that this footage was possibly from "back in the day" as he often refers in his music. Here is an example of how his merchandise follows this black, white and grey color theme. Below is some of his clothes from his website.

I believe that the overall goal that Visionary Music Group is trying to get to is give the impression that this guy is a old school hip hop artist. I think this is a very successful campaign, not because of his fame because he isn't that famous globally but because of his growth rate in the past year or two. In the course of two years, Logic went from the being in the underground of being popular on social media to making his way to world tours, many of which get sold out in the first week of release.

Logic was even recently on the XXL magazine with much more famous artists such as Big Sean, YG, French Montana and of course Kendrick Lamar. In this magazine he is described as "Hip-Hop's New Threat" and I couldn't agree more, in fact I find it strange that he isn't so much more successful then he is now. Below is the Cover of the XXL magazine, logic's name and subtitle is seen on the top right of the cover.

Cover from XXL Magazine.

Here is the music video that was previously mentioned, "Walk On By" by Logic. Personally one of my favourite songs by Logic, partially because of the great soundtrack in the background but also because of some of the incredibly smart lyres. Such as when he says "My flow un-killable when I be murdering syllables But I take my time, slow it down, check the rhyme Perfectionist to the dime," (at 2:39)
This represents how is flow is like no other artist and how he'll take his time to perfect his rhymes like a "dime". This part also begins with Logic rapping very fast but then half way through slows dow in a more rhythmic fashion which reflects his lyrics as well. IIts the little things like this that I think really keep his audience interested in him and his work.

A$AP Rocky

The next artist that I will be analyzing is Rakim Mayers, better known as A$AP Rocky, unlike Logic he is at a very different point in his career. He is a Hip Hop artist originally from Harlem, New York. He created the A$AP Mob with A$AP Yams back in 2007, A$AP represents "Always Strive And Prosper". Since he has had two major peaks in his career thanks moistly to two albums, "Live. Love. ASAP", released in 2011 and "Long. Live. ASAP" in 2013.

Immediately from looking at these albums its easy to tell the general theme, the most visible aspects being the black and white color theme on all three albums and the american flag on "Live Love A$AP" and "Long Live A$AP". In the most recent album (At Long Last A$AP) released this year (2015) he put a little bit of color, but this was in memory of his friend A$AP Yams (Co-Founder of A$AP) as he had a black patch below his right eye. This goes to show how important it is for artists to keep their themes on their products, mostly because they want to give the product that the consumer expects and wants to get.

This black and white theme is also applied on A$AP Rocky's shared Mob clothing website as shown below.

Screen Capture From The A$AP Mob Website (http://goo.gl/aXlNI4)

As seen on the majority of his clothing, after having helped the well known clothing brand "Hood By Air" he has now focused more on his own brand, which I personally like. Of course following the black and white theme, here are some examples.

The entire A$AP Mob smartly all wear clothing from their own store at concerts, this encourages the fans and just normal audiences to want to look and feel like one of them. It definitely works, after having been to several hip hop & rap concerts (even a A$AP one) it doesn't shock me.

Below is one of A$AP Rocky's brand new songs named "L$D", whats really interesting about this song and music video is that its very different from Rocky's tipical song and videos. Normally he goes for a crazy intense beat while he raps considerably fast, and normally his music videos will tendto be relatively dark. In this new song and video we see a much brighter video with beautiful scenery and a much calmer phase in his lyres. Very rare to see such a big change like this in such a short period of time in the music industry, but I definitely think it worked as I personally really enjoy the song and the video.