S. Samuel
[After the recent release of his HomeGrown EP and blowing up courtesy of an online buzz, Connecticut rapper Chris Webby schools SOHH readers on how he made it big through social networking.]
Social media was a huge tool. I took it to my advantage.
I was one of those artists who was coming up right when artists were starting to get into social networking. I’ve been rapping for 15 years but I would say I have been on the hip-hop radar for about five years.
Social media is a huge tool. As much as the face-to-face interaction and freestyling at parties is very, very important, don’t get me wrong, but for the big picture? Those social networks are unbelievably f*cking important.
My Twitter has been f*cking [crazy]. I haven’t even been able to keep up with it [since my EP dropped]. The sh*t is crazy. Apparently the pound sign #HomeGrown got tweeted like 10,000 times in 12 hours or some sh*t like that.
I would say YouTube is always important. That’s where people can actually listen and check out the music. I would put that one to the side because you don’t really communicate with people through it. You need that and you need to have your library of music on there organized so people can go there and find it.
But I really started on Facebook. I was pretty much strictly Facebook. I remember when Twitter first came around and at first I was like, “Ehh, I’m not really f*cking with it. I’m using Facebook.” But at this point, the way sh*t’s going, it looks like everyone’s moving more toward the Twitter format and it’s a little harder for me to Facebook from my phone.
I’m so much on the go these days and I don’t always have a laptop on my lap. I’m not doing nothing and playing video games all god d*mn day like I used to, so it’s a lot easier to be tweeting.
I’m watching Instagram creeping up from behind and that’s starting to seem like the most viable social outlet because we’re such a visual generation.
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