Many developments!

A lot of developments have happened lately. I'm on Eminem's upcoming mixtape, which should be out within a week or so. I will be on the cover of the mixtape (shout out to my photographer Dietrich Graves @DietrichGraves) and another track that I remixed will be on the mixtape as well. A track that me and Yung Miss did back in the day called "Lemme Hold Suhn" will be on another mixtape that is going to drop soon. Some complications with DJ Bankrupt's mixtape has resulted in "Up At The Club" being used instead of "Get Ya Where I Want Ya", so it looks like I'll find another home for that song. Also, an open collab track by me and Tequila from back in the day made it on to a mixtape called "My Better Half" (hosted by Three Words).

The song "Keep On Pushing" has continued to spread around the world. My stream team has almost finished all of the French-speaking world, after which we plan to hit Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, and Kenya before focusing on the German-speaking world. Lately, we've been interviewed by the media in the USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Mauritius, Senegal, Chad, and several other nations. The songs is receiving airplay in many more nations than that, as well. The song performed so well after first appearing on DJ Insane's mixtape "Hood Games Vol. 4", that it was reissued on Three Words' mixtape "Welcome To Germany". We plan to promote this song around the entire globe. In fact, everything has been going so well that there will be another collaboration between Godhand Black and Three Words on another positive vibe song similar to "Keep On Pushing".

There are also several other projects that I am working on. First is a song called "Runaway" by Turkish musician ASAP that I was supposed to finish years ago but never got around to because the Great Recession stopped me from doing anything but paying down debt for a few years. Next, there's a song called "Demolition Man" that Kriojinix and C Vegus will join me on. I found an old copy of a little-known remix of Adam F and MC Conrad's "F-Jam" that I rapped on way back in the day. I think that I'll touch it back up with my current set of plug-ins and se what happens. There is a song called "Tropic Thunder Kryptonite" that I've written the chorus and lift for, but still need to write the verses. It has an Andre 3000 meets Kid Cudi kind of vibe to it, though the delivery is nothing like either artist.

I'm about to get a radio show on Crescent Hill Radio, a local internet radio station that is going to get a low-power FM station. The show will be called "The Weekly Grind" and will cover news about that local music scene and advice for aspiring musicians. Several of my songs will also be featured in African movies this year, which is great! Also, spring is almost here so I will be hitting the road soon. I plan to put together a show or two in West Virginia in a month or so, as well as a radio appearance or two in Baton Rouge, Louisiana this May. I will also hit South Carolina in June, but I haven't mapped out the details yet. Other than that, I'm working on bringing a major music conference here to Louisville. But there aren't enough details ye for me to say more about it at this time.

I have been systematically weeding out egg followers, spammers, and bot followers from my Twitter account. I typically follow back anybody that follows me because I think that the whole point of social media is to be social and accessible. But I've picked up a lot of followers that are getting banned and suspended lately. This has caused my ReverbNation rank to drop occasionally. But after I'm done weeding them out, my Twitter fanbase will me much more interactive and my timeline will be more usable. I really enjoy connecting with followers on the Twitter platform and its hard to do that when there is so much spam in my timeline that I often dread looking at it.

I will also be performing at Poetry Night at the Wagon Wheel Lounge in Louisville, Kentucky this upcoming Friday at 8pm ($5 admission). There are also about a hundred other developements that I am forgetting right now. I am also to a point of needing either an artist manager or a fan club manager because it is getting difficult to handle all of the business side, fan interactions, and creative side (including engineering and producing my own tracks). Right now I'm doing most everything in-house and its starting to become a headache to manage on my own. But anyways, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great week ahead!

~Godhand Black~
@Godhand502

Runaway Mine Train

The past week or so has felt like being trapped on a runaway mine train. My career has started to take on a life of its own and has begun snowballing. I've reached the point where I keep gaining fans off of momentum, even when I halt promotions. Around the same time that this happened, my mixtape dropped (with many mistakes), I got cofirmation that reggae artist Dutch Diamond will be on my album, and I came across a good rehearsal space. Also, I started to pick up celebrity followers on Twitter and I'll tell you one thing: when somebody with a verified account follows you, expect to see a spike in followers!

The song with Dutch Diamond will be called "Up At The Club" and will be a club banger geared towards people on their way to the club, with value as a dance floor song as well. I'm going to use some of the songwriting tips that I've learned from Ralph Murphy's video lectures. Hopefully, it will have serious radio potential.

I had a few days where I went out and fliered most of Louisville with the ads for the old mixtape just to get rid of them. I kept about 600 of them just so I'd have a few for merchandise tables at shows or trade show booths. I noticed that there are far less community bulletin boards in stores as there were when I started rapping. The stores feel more cold and corporate, less warm and community-engaged. I miss the bulletin boards because they had a much higher conversion rate. If I fliered total strangers on the street, maybe 1 in 50 people would show up. With the bulletin boards it was more like 1 in 20.

Lastly, my song "Don't Stop Now" ft/ Big Beat is on 'Coast 2 Coast Mixtapes Presents: The Indie Top 50 EDM Edition Vol. 1', which was released on 1/10/14. I've worked with Coast 2 Coast back in the past when they were establishing their brand with good results, but this time around is something totally different. There was a voting contest to see who would be on the top-tier mixtape, the rules stating that the top 5 songs would automatically be on Coast 2 Coast EDM Vol. 7 w/ DJ Dysquo. I came in second place, only to get a form letter in my email saying that I wasn't selected but if I paid them $75, they would put my song on the mixtape that I had supposedly won a slot on through the voting contest. When I replied that I wasn't going to pay $75 after going through a long drawn-out voting contest that I won, they immediately (in less than 2 minutes) had my song on the second-tier mixtape as the first song after the intro.

If that wasn't bad enough, the second-tier mixtape has generic cover art and only streams (no downloads). After playing email tag with several of the people at Coast 2 Coast mixtapes, I have come to the conclusion that it's not very organized over there. Nobody seems to know why only 23 of 50 tracks will download, or have any idea at all about how to fix the problem, or even care, for that matter. It's almost like nobody understands coding and troubleshooting over there. I'd send detailed error reports and get incoherent replies like "you gotta use a computer dog". WTF?

Until Coast 2 Coast fixes the problem, I'm taking my foot off the gas pedal on promoting the mixtape. We reached 25,000 streams which is okay. If everything was done properly, I would have no problem getting the mixtape to over 500,000 streams once the full force of my street team focuses in on it. But if nobody can download the song, what's the point? It's basically just an internet radio station with only 50 songs that always play in the exact same order.

Unless Coast 2 Coast rectifies the situation, I'm done dealing with them directly unless a REALLY popular artist hosts it. I'm still down with a few of their affiliated DJs (no beef towards them, for the most part they've been great) and will continue to do their mixtapes, but I'm not down for Coast 2 Coast's annoying vote contests followed by demands for payola, and bad coding.

But anyway...at least I have a second mixtape coming out this month and I have much more faith in the DJ releasing that one. Peace.

PS: A big shout out to The Artist Formerly Known As DJ Dietrich for hosting such a dope bourbon tasting party last night. It was a blast!