Are you a Shawty Lo or T.I. Leader? (Video)

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Before I became a Christian, I was a hip hop DJ.  I DJ’d @ house parties and clubs, made mix tapes, promoted concerts, and more.  Every dime I had went to music.  A good number of my childhood friends and college roomies are now full-time rappers and producers.  Although I mainly rock audio books and podcasts on my iPod nowadays, I know enough about hip hop to pull some leadership lessons out of it that will apply to all of us.

Suspend your criticisms for a moment while I ask you this question…Are you a Shawty Lo style leader or a T.I. style leader?

"Shawty who?" you ask.  "Isn’t T.I. the name of the scientific calculator that I paid too much for in college?" you wonder.  Don’t worry…your reformed hip hop junkie is here to make it all plain.

Shawty Lo & T.I. are two popular rappers from Atlanta.  Both have done some time in jail.  Both have some catchy songs out right now.  However, the two are on very different ends of the pendulum swing in terms of their success.  T.I. has had multiple platinum albums, fills stadiums all around the world, has been in a few movies, and is a contemporary hip hop icon.  Shawty Lo really just broke big into the hip hop industry, has a few successful singles, and is working hard, with a good degree of success, at making a name for himself.

In reality, most of us are on the Shawty Lo end of the spectrum of life.  We’re still pretty local in our influence, have done a few things well, some people know us, but we’re not quite as known as "those" other folk and we’re hoping that the best of life is yet to come.  One of the key reasons guys like Shawty Lo are so successful is that people feel like he’s not too far removed from the hood and he gives folk hope that if he can make it out, they can too.  I can dig that, but…

HERE’S THE LEADERSHIP LESSON:

At one time, not too long ago, TI was in the same pivotal position as Shawty Lo.  He was pretty local, had a few big hit singles, had major street credibility, and listeners felt like T.I. was "one of them."

T.I. then DIDN’T do two things that has gobbled up a lot of "successful" rappers recently.

• He didn’t start dissing and challenging the BIG rappers on the block at the time.  This move always gives the up and comer a temporary boost in YouTube hits and blog coverage, but ultimately alienates thousands (even millions) of potential fans of the bigger, more known rapper that feel a greater sense of loyalty to the proven star.  Furthermore, when you diss the big named dude early in your career, it has a way of defining you as "the guy that dissed the big named dude early in his career" instead "the talented rapper with street cred."  Canibus admits this regarding his feud with LL Cool J.  Shawty Lo is now dissing T.I. with what seems to be every chance he gets.  While this may give him some fame today, history shows that this will likely cause his career great harm.

• Once T.I. started having some hit singles and was making a name for himself, he worked really hard (too hard in some ways) not to present himself as the brand new rich guy that no longer relates to the hood, sips designer champagne straight from the bottle, dates ethnically ambiguous super models, and lives in a mansion with 12 bathrooms.  It wasn’t that those things weren’t true, but T.I. understood that it was his relatability that was a major reason for his success.  Once folk can no longer relate to you, they move on.  Master P. fell prey to this in some ways by beginning to film all of his videos in mansions with goofy paintings of himself in the background.  By the time he appeared on Dancing with the Stars, all credibility had been lost! Shawty Lo is starting to run this risk as well.

The moral of the story is…don’t try to make it big by dissing other people in your field (Google has no need to diss Yahoo) and don’t act brand new once you start to have some success (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dress just like they did 20 years ago).

For laughs and giggles here’s a video of Percy Miller (Master P) on Dancing with the Stars.  What was he thinking?!