S. Samuel
SOHH reached out to Rhymefest to find out how he handles receiving negative feedback from music fans on social networks like Twitter and MySpace.
Fest said he once took more than four hours to reflect on a blogger’s feedback.
“If five people think you’re sh*t, then not only will it bring you down a few notches, it will affect the art that you’re trying to create,” Rhymefest told SOHH. “Because it’ll make it so that you’re stuck, so then you can’t create freely because you’re thinking about what those five people said and not even what the fifty people said about how they loved it. And I sat and thought in the studio for four hours, ‘Why does my existence disgust this person, what is it about the way God made me that disgusts another individual?’ It took me four hours to snap out of it to say what the f*ck am I doing? This dude is probably 11 years old, it could be anything. And then what I noticed is a lot of people that write that sh*t, if you give them attention like, ‘So what songs don’t you like?’ dude, these same people be like, ‘Oh my God, he talked to me. I love your sh*t!’ You figure out, all this person wanted was for someone to recognize them. Where I’m with it now, I’m a f*cking star dude. Like, I’m popular — people want to knock you off whatever it is….artists have to keep looking straight.” (SOHH)
Last month, Fest discussed the effect bloggers can have on a person’s overall well-being.
“One thing I’ve realized about negative bloggers or commenters is the power a 12 year old has to fuck up an adults self esteem, haha f*ckem,” he wrote February 28. “Simple people can make life so complicated, and complex people often prefer to live simple If you want attention figure out how to be beautiful because that’s the only way they’ll recognize your existence.” (Rhymefest’s Twitter)
Rapper Memphis Bleek recently admitted to using bloggers’ feedback as “fuel” for his writing skills.
“I’m not a blogger but I definitely do read the blogs,” Bleek said in an interview. “I read the comments. It’s fuel for a guy like me because I love to hear what people gotta say. If you look at it, on a percentage scale, 20% of the s**tis real, and 80% of the s**t is bulls**t but that 20% is what matters. Somebody is gonna comment something real that you can take wit’ you and put into your craft or your daily routine. Somebody gon’ care about you.” (All Hip Hop)
Bleek’s former labelmate, Freeway, also said he takes note of Internet users’ comments.
“When I was doing the whole month of madness — I would read the comments and I would respond to comments on some of the joints people would be saying this and that and I would respond,” Freeway explained in an interview. “But when I first, like, two years ago when I really first started dropping joints on the net, like, people wasn’t f*cking with me. N*ggas was like, ‘Ah, get the f*ck outta here,’ but once I started building up the substance and material and people were seeing that the material was good, slowly but surely they started f*cking with it. The comments used to make me mad but when they be hating, they’re Internet thugs so I ain’t worried about that.” (Vlad TV)
Check out a portion of Rhymefest’s SOHH interview below:
