Say the word “blog” and most people picture an online diary from a 15-year-old girl who writes things like: “Math is hard. I like hamburgers. My teeth itch.” But the world of blogging, or the “blogosphere,” is changing the game of hip-hop as we know it by bringing tracks, artists and trends directly to the fan without the middle man. By the time the music press gets spoonfed the fruits of this new online culture, the Internet has often already been going nuts for months.

The Houston Effect
Before every white girl at Bananas (RIP) knew who the Houston rapper Mike Jones was, the blogosphere knew the Texas city was blowing up. While New York and most of the mainstream media were ignoring the boys down South, Blogger Matt Sonzala was steady pushing the slowed down, cough-syrup-haze flows of Jones and his Swishahouse Records brethren like SlimThug and Paul Wall. Sonzala is the host of the Houston based radio show “Damage Control” and the man behind the “Houston So Real” blog (http://houstonsoreal.blogspot.com). Typing with one hand and feeding his five-month-old baby in the other, Sonzala waxed over AOL Instant Messenger about his belief of the impact blogs had on getting the Houston sound world wide exposure.

“Well, it definitely helped spread the word,” he says. “It helped take the buzz to the media and it helped spread the word of Houston music beyond just the streets of Texas. The work the artists put in for the last 10 years tho(ugh) is what really blew up Houston.”

Blogs allow access to culture and music one might never have access to otherwise. You’re just not going to find the latest from the Houston hip-hop underground at Bullmoose or probably anywhere else in the Live Free or Die state, but the blog world makes the newest tracks available to anyone with a modem. Houston isn’t the only area to benefit, either. Blogs can show you what’s making kids in the Bay Area hyphy (the area’s term for crunk, or, excited), plus the best in DJ mixes and remixes/blends (white folks call these mashups), or the best in ass shaking-beats from Brazil to Baltimore. Says Sonzala of the Houston scene, “You couldn’t just go and buy a lot of this shit outside of Texas, so the posting of mp3s with a little background information helped a lot. Just to let people actually hear the songs that paved the way for ‘Still Tippin.’” (“Still Tippin” was Mike Jones, Slim Thug and Paul Wall’s summer smash that brought the Houston stalwarts nationwide exposure.) “Plus,” adds Sonzala, “blogs helped the media pick up on (the Houston scene), because so much of the music media is lazy and needy and definitely needs to have shit handed to them.”

The Mindset of a Champion
Missourian Byron Crawford is living proof of the opportunities that blogs also provide to aspiring music writers. Crawford went from being a virtually unknown student on his own dorm floor to running the blog “byroncrawford.com: The Mindset of a Champion,” a site that receives over 10,000 unique visitors a day. “(I) would have never gotten this large in other forms of media,” says Crawford. “I don’t think you can build this kind of following writing in magazines and newspapers.” It’s Crawford’s unorthodox style of posting, exposing the issue of race in pop culture through a hip-hop context, that is largely responsible for his newfound fame. As a black writer, the 24-year-old does not shy away from controversy and says what’s on his mind. 

“Black people have a tendency to say insensitive shit to each other and it’s just kind of understood,” Crawford says. “So when I set out to do this blog shit, that was the level I approached it, since this was after all, a hip-hop blog. I don’t feel like I’ve really invented much of anything in these past two years. As far as things being off limits to me, I suppose there are things that I wouldn’t post, but I’ve yet to have a situation in which I refrained from posting something I really wanted to.”

Looking at a few of Crawford’s previous posts proves he is indeed unafraid to express himself. Post titles include “Kayne West vs. Adolph Hitler,” “Let’s Hunt and Kill Kanye’s West’s Mom,” and “Oliver Wang Called Me a Nigger,” which struck up controversy over Crawford’s posting of a fake letter from respected San Francisco journalist Oliver Wang after Wang removed Crawford from his blogroll (which is a list of other blogs listed on a blog site). Crawford isn’t the only one taking advantage of this new opportunity.  Other writers are using blogging as a way to get their foot in the door in more traditional avenues of journalism, and they’re bringing with them a new style of writing to the mainstream press.

Sergio Ornelas (a.k.a. Serg Dun) runs beerandrap.com, a blog basically dedicated to proving just how much he rules and how much you suck. It’s this flavor of writing on the Beer and Rap blog that got Ornelas noticed by the southern based rap magazine Down, as well as the East Bay Express, where you can now find him ranting about his hatred for opening acts, love songs about weed and how much he sucks at being a hipster. “Another hurdle in my path to hipsterness is race,” says Ornelas, “I have too many black friends to be hip, and the ones I do have, are not that ‘one black kid from an almost all white high school’ who wears glasses and listens to noise bands.”

Why stop there?

“I could just get a Japanese girlfriend and that might be enough to overcome that hurdle but I doubt it,” he continues, “because of the number one reason I suck at being a hipster. I’m Mexican. I will never be a softhanded frail white kid in a shitty band wearing women’s slacks with star tattoos because he thinks he is so fucking cool but that I think is a stupid ass bitch who cries too much.”

Serg’s style is raw, abrasive, opinionated and, most importantly, funny as hell. He does not care whether you like him or not, and he is willing to tell you this. This new breed of writers is transforming journalism by injecting their own gonzo style, one weaned on a love of beer, rap, and the hip hop “who gives a fuck” attitude.

Portsmouth kids might remember Chris Nelson (a.k.a. Lemon-Red) from his summer residency at the Red Door’s “Tuesday Scissor Test.” Lemon Red’s DJ career has blossomed as a result of having the blog/mp3 game on lock. He was posting some of the best music found online, and people noticed, including The Boston Phoenix, which approached him about writing for them solely based on his Lemon-Red blog (lemon-red.org).

Nelson, typing on IM during his lunch break, a meal of sushi in his deluxe office at the Turntable Lab compound, writes, “The (Boston) Phoenix came to me after one of the editors there saw Lemon-Red. They said they wanted to bring less ‘traditional’ voices to the paper, which I took to mean ‘We want it to sound like a blog.’

“I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing or living where I’m living if it weren’t for Lemon-Red.” Nelson lives in Brooklyn and writes record reviews at the previously mentioned Turntable Lab, one of the best record stores in New York, and online (turntablelab.com). He’s also embarking on a career as the manager of a new record label, Mad Decent, run by Spin’s number one DJ of the year, Diplo (also of Hollertronix and Big Dada fame). All this success came from the exposure he earned from his blog.

While bloggers in general do not necessarily follow the rules of journalism or of how one is “supposed” to write, and this can lead to some horrible writing, it’s also leading to some talented writers and artists getting noticed. This revolution, which owes as much to Chuck D as it does Bill Gates, is already changing everything from the idea of music journalism to the musical landscape as we know it.

see what the buzz is about
Houston So Real (houstonsoreal.blogspot.com)
Mindset of a Champion (byroncrawford.com)
Beer and Rap (beerandrap.com)
Lemon Red (lemon-red.org)
Drunk and Focused (beatpervert.blogspot.com)
So Many Shrimp (somanyshrimp.com)
Get Stoopid (hyphie.blogspot.com)
Catchdubs (catchdubs.com)
Skitzophrenic Tenant Number One (emynd.blogspot.com)
Pop Licks (poplicks.com)
Cocaine Blunts (www.cocaineblunts.com)