Posted without comment. For a while.
Quote of note:
Overcoming the hurdles prison places on marketing is not impossible, as the rapper Tupac Shakur proved.
"The truth about it is," said Antonio Reid, the chairman of the Island Def Jam Music Group, "there are times when our marketing plans don't really include the artist anyway - maybe it costs too much to move them around, maybe the artist doesn't live in the U.S.''
"I know I can't do anything with him,'' Mr. Reid said of Shyne. "We approach it like he's just in Japan."
Aiming for the Top of the Music Chart From Behind Bars
By JEFF LEEDS
In the calculating eyes of music industry executives, the rap artist Jamaal Barrow possesses the sort of street credibility that instantly draws fans and sells records - a prison sentence. Unfortunately for them, he's serving it right now.
Mr. Barrow, professionally known as Shyne and a former protégé of the rap music impresario Sean Combs, was heavily courted this winter despite being just three years into a 10-year sentence for a shooting while he was with Mr. Combs at a Manhattan nightclub. But now, after signing Shyne to a multimillion-dollar-record contract to put out some of his unreleased recordings, executives at Vivendi Universal's Def Jam Recordings are finding that some of the very traits that stirred up such interest - his hardcore image and tangles with the law - may prove to be major drawbacks as they market his new album, "Godfather Buried Alive,'' due in stores Tuesday.
