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Originally uploaded by goodnight october.
Thanks to The Couch Sessions, a favorite site of mine that focuses on hip hop, particularly the indie variety, for turning me onto Marv Ellis and Cosmos Corbin’s Highs and Lows. Stone describes it as “psychedelic hip hop”. I prefer to think of it as another example of just how “transcultural” hip hop is. Marv is a white guy from Oregon and Cosmos is part of Raging Family, a collective of artists from the Pacific Northwest. One of the things this collective is about is freely making their music available, which is how I got a copy of the album.
There's lots of good stuff on the album. But the track I keep returning to is “She Wants Too,” which is has a very simple, yet powerful, message for men: If a woman doesn’t want you, let her go. In light of what seems like a constant stream of news stories about domestic violence and men killing wives/ex-girlfriends, here’s a perfect soundtrack to an anti-violence campaign. A brand whose attributes are about empowering women or one of the national anti-domestic violence organizations (Eve Ensler’s V-Day Project, anyone?) should jump on this.
Quite often, cause marketing is overlooked by both brands and artists. However, when the intellectual property has authenticity--as I believe the case is here--there's no reason not to look at this angle. And, it would most likely be valuable for the organization, since they are quite often underfunded and will look favorably on any legitimate opportunity. We're squarely in an age of niches. Leveraging a developing artist enables the organization to build their message from the ground up while most likely avoiding being overshadowed by a celebrity's star power.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it that "She Wants Too" is a good song. Listen here:
MP3 File
More info on Marv Ellis.
More info on Raging Family.
