BFochs: Mr. 5 Star, what is the good word sir? Thanks for taking the time to chop it up wit the Fochsman, I know things are gettin' crunk with final exams and what have you. What's happenin' though, what are you up to?
Mr. 5 Star: I'm good; finished wit school yesterday (not done overall). I'm back in Detroit, where it's "SO COOOLD" (smh). Besides school, my main thing is 5STARHIPHOP.COM, I wear one of the five shirts I made in my Imaging class with the logo on it almost everyday, so yea, that's how much I'm into it man. School. 5 Star Hip Hop. Girls. and that's pretty much it.
BFochs: You need to slang them shits on your site mane, you can put me on the waiting list haha. Let's start this thing off properly with the proper introduction. Let the kind readers of BBB know who you are, the name of your site, where you're from and the most ridiculous thing you've seen on a blog (doesn't have to be a music blog.)
Mr. 5 Star: Most definitely, we tryna get a store setup as we speak, not to make any profit really, all you'll pay is the cost of the shirt and shipping. Anyway, I'm Mr. 5 Star from Detroit, founder of 5STARHIPHOP.COM, which I started around the same time you started BFochs.com, back at the end of May when you had to go to bfochs-beats-blog.blogspot.com. By the way, I'm takin' credit for you changing it to BFochs.com, but we not gon' speak too much on that. Haha. Since then we (it's more than me runnin' the site) been doin' good, averaging about 3500-4500 visits a day. 5 Star Hip Hop is a site where you can catch a bit of everythin; politics, sports, hip hop, rock, pop, beautiful ladies, classic songs, and our signature segment, The Sunday Rewind. The most ridiculous thing I've seen on a blog lately off the top of the dome was probably the posting of the single most degrading song to the city of Detroit, "It's So Cold In The D." Most people just go on Youtube to laugh at it, but I actually saw it posted on a website like it was hot. I'm not joking, the blogger really thought it was hot, it was probably her. Now you can't even mention Detroit without somebody sayin' how "cooold" it is. The funny thing is that it is cold as hell right now in Detroit though.
BFochs: It's not too warm in Wisconsin either haha. We get shit on when it comes to cold temps being in the Midwest, all you cats in the South got it made! You indeed influenced me to change the domain to BFochs.com along with smokeYYY. A very sound piece of advice I must say. You got 5STARHIPHOP.COM rockin' pretty heavy, big ups to being in the same "blogging class" as me haha. Every blogger has a story or a motive for getting into the blog game, what is yours? What made you say "I need to get in the blog game.?" If you had to cite 3 factors for starting 5STARHIPHOP.COM what would they be?
Mr. 5 Star: Well, first, Imma be completely honest, I started 5 Star Hip Hop as a temporary site. It was only supposed to be up for a minute. If you look at the early format, I just listed like 20 singles a day and only updated once a day. I planned to make money for a hip hop website me and my boy we're gonna start, but our idea had somewhat of a startup cost. We had some good ideas, which might still go down. But over the first month, my outlook on the site changed. I realized that I could do whatever the hell I wanted. So I didn't even look at my site as a good blog to be honest, because I didn't put quality into it. I wanted to be more than just a big ass download center.
I wanted people to hear what I had to say, because I noticed people started to respect my opinion; the higher I rated a song, the more downloads it got. So, with that in mind, we changed the format. I recruited other people to help out wit the site (shout to Exclusive1, Ts Wun, Luminati, and Source). And from then on, we decided we we're gonna become a quality hip hop site. We went from posting only 20 singles a day to posting all kinda stuff; from mixtapes to hot models.
You can notice the progressive change if you look back through the old posts. So, I'm not even gonna lie and say I got into it "for the love of music," as many other bloggers say. I started it as a temporary site to build the name up, but I ended up building what I believe to be a great blog today. So instead of me making the site "for the love of music," the site ended up evolving me into more of a music lover; not only hip hop, but other genres as well.
BFochs: Indeed, I noticed as time went on you put more stuff up, it was far more than just a spot to download from, you gave the site a good identity. The blog game is wild as fuck, we both know this because we blog. If you could compare the blog game to any event that has happened in Hip Hop's history what would it be and why?
Mr. 5 Star: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of blogs and Hip Hop history is the birth of Hip Hop itself. Hip Hop started out and wasn't widely accepted, and took a while to become mainstream. The same thing can be said about the Hip Hop blogs. If you look at it, in this current state, blogs are not widely accepted by labels, but I don't know a single person who doesn't visit a Hip Hop blog on a regular basis, so labels need to recognize we are here to stay, and we are revolutionizing not only the Hip Hop world, but music and how listeners are getting it.
BFochs: That's very true, Hip Hop was taboo at it's start just like the blogs, even though everyone there mom looks at blogs. You mentioned that blogs are becoming the new hot spot to find music. "Bloggers are the new DJ," that comment right has ruffled some feathers, do you think because there is truth to it or do you think it's just not true and it's making folks angry just cause?
Mr. 5 Star: I think there is some truth to it. There are 2 types of DJ's to me; one who's job is to let people know of new music and artists, and have some opinion and personality with it, and the other, is essentially the same, except he has the technical ability to mix, scratch, make beats,etc. So, in essence, I think bloggers are a lot like the first kind of DJ I described. I can't tell you how many emails I get asking me to feature an artists, I almost feel like I'm an A&R of a label, because I have the power to put an artist into the light, and until you just asked me that, I never really felt like a DJ, but I guess I can say I'm one now? Not really, but it depends on what your definition of a DJ is.
If your definition is the first one, then yes, I do think bloggers are the new DJ. If it's the second, I'm gonna have to say not quite, cause I can't mix, scratch or do none of that DJ ish. The radio DJ is being hurt the most right now, not because they are bad, but because radio is being listened to less. I don't even turn the radio on in my car. It's like B.o.B said "if you make good music, that's okay...but, on the radio that they don't play" The club DJ is still goin' pretty strong, though, eventhough they get a lot of their music from blogs. Another reason labels need to get familiar....
BFochs: For real, a lot of these half-assed mixtape 'DJs' get their music from blogs for their tapes, no real effort in making tapes anymore unless you get wild concepts/crazy exclusives. Nice response, well thought out. You mentioned you are from Michigan, Detroit to be exact. You already mentioned the "It's so cold in the D" comment, which seems to be true. The only way to really find out though is to ask a true Detroitan, do you think the "D is so cold"? Explain your response please.
Mr. 5 Star: HAHAHA. “What's A Detroitan”? Detroiter would probably be the proper term I guess. Haha. In terms of weather, at this moment, hell yeah the D is cold. But in the context of what I'm dubbing as the most embarrassing song from a Detroit artist, I would say it's not as bad as people make it seem. A lot of people paint Detroit, or any dangerous city for that matter, in a way that assumes as soon as you cross some certain street or border you gon' get jacked or shot. Bullshit. I'm not trying to sound tough, but I've never gotten messed with, even in the bad neighborhoods. Put it this way; if you ain't doin' nothing wrong, ain't nobody gon' mess with you, for the most part.
Yea, there will always be that one guy who will try and catch somebody slippin' for the hell of it; he doesn't represent Detroit, he's just a hungry dude. At the same token, one thing I can say about Detroit is, we don't just mess with people for no reason; you don't say or do nothing to me, I won't say or do nothing to you. When somebody does either, then you have situations such as the Yung Berg incident. If you look at the whole spectrum, there are gonna be ignorant people in any city you go to. The difference is Detroit cats just ain't gon' take disrespect lightly, so that's why it might seem like more murders go on here, but it's no higher than some of the other dangerous cities in America.
BFochs: That's very true. It's a fucked up way to look at it this way, but the D is unified by doing shit like the Yung Berg incident, they don't take fuckery as a whole, not just a few cats, everyone rides for the D. Milwaukee, Chicago, etc. get gully too non-midwesterners, don't get it twisted haha. Do you think negative situations/actions like the Yung Berg fiasco contribute heavily to the Midwest as a whole not taking over the game, or do you think there are bigger/more important variables that contribute to the Midwest not taking over the game?
Mr. 5 Star: I don't think the Yung Berg situation has a single thing to do with the Midwest not taking over the hip hop game. I think it's other factors, and I'm gonna quote my man Joe Budden on this one; "Or was it when the whole East Coast fell off, or got too comfortable, maybe dudes was too well off." The Midwest was in there for a minute, but I don't know what happened that the Midwest is not what's poppin' in hip hop right now. One thing I can say about myself personally, though, I don't look at the geographic aspect at all when listenin' to an artists. I love The Cool Kids, and I didn't even realize that one of them was from Detroit until one night I was on Wikipedia. I noticed he talks about Detroit a lot, but I didn't know he (Chuck Inglish) was actually from here. I just don't pay attention to where an artist is from, because if that was the case, I would pre-judge songs.
For example, people say the South is all crunk music, and snap music, whatever. If I paid attention to that, I wouldn't even have touched songs from some of my favorite artists B.o.B, David Banner, Young Jeezy, or Chamillionaire. All of them prove that the South stereotype is wrong, so that's why I don't pay attention to what coast is hot, or what city somebody is from as much, cause it don't matter to me as long as they makin' good music. To add on to that, just because somebody is from my city doesn't mean I have to show them support. If I don't like an artist, I don't like them; I'm not gonna show some kind of artificial support just because he hails from the same city as me.
BFochs: True, you must listen with open ears or you will miss out on some sick shit. What are 3 things you think the Midwest must do to take over the game? Do you see this happening in the near future or do you think it'll take another 4-5 years?
Mr. 5 Star: (Laughs) How you gon' ask me about the Midwest taking over when I just said I didn't pay attention to that? That's some comedy for you there. Anyway, I don't really know what the Midwest needs to do to take over. But what seems typical is to 1. Drop good music. That's the most important thing. 2. Drop good music with a catchy hook, which can be a hit too, because if you do that, you have both crowds behind you; those who love lyrics and good music and those who follow commercial type music too. 3. Market the hell out of yourself. Blogs like yours are what I mean. Reach out to your local blogs first. Once you got they support, branch out to the bigger blogs. Another thing is 4. Make hit records with people in your area. Look at the St. Lunatics. Nelly came out tough with “Country Grammer”, but then he put the group, St. Lunatics on too, so everybody was paying attention to St. Louis because of the success of Nelly and the St. Lunatics. They got the ball rolling not only in St. Louis, but the whole Midwest region.
The Midwest cats just need to emulate what worked in the past and put they own spin on it; do something with the same effect, but a different approach. I can't put a timetable on it 'cause I'm not a label cat, they decide when ish drops and comes out; timing is everything. If they plan a bunch of Midwest artists releases in the same span of time, it could work out great, but to be honest, I don't think labels really care about regions or cities as much anymore. Labels only see in one color; green. With that said, I don't see it happening any time soon.
BFochs: Damn you just killed my hopes for a Midwest takeover haha, either way, Midwest will still have its artists who do it big, I guess that's more important than a 'takeover.' The Midwest, amongst every region in the country, is going through a big ass recession. Shit is literally fucked up beyond belief; the auto industry appears to be in the shits permanently, which can really put the nail in our coffin. What is your take on all this fuckery before us? Do you think the new president elect, Barack Obama, can do anything for the U.S. or are we just permanently fucked? If you could compare the economy to a moment you've had on your blog which one would it be and why?
Mr. 5 Star: Haha Good question. I honestly would compare the economy right now to our blog just a couple weeks ago. We we're all busy, so it didn't get updated and our hits suffered overall. We were at the peak of our game, just reaching 5K visits a day, but they went down because we weren't on our game. But as of late, they have stayed consistent, and is growing back slowly as we market in free, yet effective ways. I do think Barack Obama can turn the economy around. If I didn't believe so, he probably wouldn't have gotten my first vote ever cast in any election (OH YEAH!). As far as the auto industry, I don't even understand how they are in that much debt. It looks like auto industry is set for failure at this point, but they are supposedly trying to bail them out as I type this. In the comparison to our blog; we dealt with a recession, but we didn't let it fall into a depression, which is basically a long term recession. Hopefully, the same thing goes for the U.S. government. If not, here I come, Canada!
BFochs: Right, I think many folks will be joining you in 'Operation Clean Nawf" if the economy takes the big plunge. You just mentioned something about marketing your blog, which is crucial of course, marketing is just overall important in anything you're trying to make popular. What is your take on these fuckery blogs who spam the shit out of chatboxes? What is your take on these wiseguys who talk slick in said chatboxes, also known as e-thuggin'? If you could compare one Detroit classic song to e-thugs which one would it be and why?
Mr. 5 Star: I can't front, I've spammed a chatroom like 3 or 4 times before in the early stages of the blog, and I ain't gonna lie, it works. If you look at your site statistics, you can see people coming from the box you spammed. I did it once on a big hop hop website and got a quite considerable amount of hits. But the thing is, you need to know when it's okay and when it's not. Some places allow it and even encourage you to advertise your site and some have strict policies against it. But pasting the link 50 times is annoying, so anybody doin' that needs to step they marketing game up, flat out. Needless to say, I don't do that anymore, 'cause I feel its disrespectful. I encounter "e-thuggin" on 5 Star Hip Hop every day. Most site owners ban the IP of the “e-thug” immediately. I find them to be highly entertaining characters, because there's no way they could possibly be this way in real life.
Online chat rooms/boxes/forums allow you to be a different person, and usually people choose which role they want to take on with their online identity. It's almost like having split personalities without the classification of being schizophrenic. We only have one rule in the chatbox on 5 Star Hip Hop; no adveritsing/spam. Advertising costs money, but if you know how to do it, you can market for free in respectable ways. So when someone spams us, we warn 'em, and if they don't take it, they get the plug pulled. Haha. But for the guys who come in talkin wreckless for NO apparent reason, we just son them. It's pretty entertaining. Mind you, it's 5 of us in there who all run the site, so if somebody starts talkin' shit for no real reason, we just gang up on him. You're not gonna win when it's 5 people against you, in a fight or in an argument. We don't call it 5 Star Hip Hop for nothing, right? Anyway, when comparing e-thuggin' on 5 Star Hip Hop to a Detroit classic I would compare it to "Welcome to Detroit City" by Trick Trick featuring Eminem. It just represents you coming to city and being welcomed in a good way, until you act up and do something stupid, which is also how we treat people in the chatbox on the site. You can disagree with us, cause we all got our own opinions, but talkin' bout dudes moms and personal attacks like that for no apparent reason, you gonna get sonned, then we'll ban you if we feel like it. Wow. I sound like such a internet nerd threatening to ban people. Haha.
BFochs: Like the homie Mike Waxx says, "there's an inter-e-thug in all of us" haha. Good policy on marketing/e-thuggery, think outside the box folks, not too hard to get the word out on something...especially...on the INTERNET haha. Ok, we covered the main stuff so now it's time for some questions that might come off as weird or make you say "is BFochs on drugs?" Hahaha. First off, where do you see the blog game in the year...2050?
Mr. 5 Star: LMAO. I think it will probably be thriving. We probably won't call it blogging anymore, because the thing is, blogging has been around before they called it blogging. All “blogging” means is updating people on news in a certain topic, which has been going on for decades. Think about it, what's so different than websites in 2008 than websites in 2002? The only major difference is design, of course, but they were all updated in the same way. Another small difference is that more people use “blogging” to talk about personal matters, social aspects of life, vent their frustrations, etc. In the end, it's always been the same thing; updating the public with the newest happenings. By the year 2050, the term for updating a website will have changed multiple times. They'll have some new made up term by then. As far as 5 Star Hip Hop in the year 2050, 5STARHIPHOP.COM will have an Alexa ranking of #1, and we will be the modern day Google. By 2050, we gon' have a label, a tv network, a talk show, our own brand of mp3 players, our own format of digital music; The works, World domination.
BFochs: I can dig it, if you're going to go might as well go all the way eh? Question numero dos: You're walking on the college campus and some random artist comes up to you and says "Feature me on your site! I'll pay you a million dollars cash!" The problem with this scenario is, the dude is beyond ass cheeks, and by featuring him you would also have to commit to being the official site for his music. What response would you give him?
Mr. 5 Star: Wow. That's a tough one. A million bucks? I'd have to work something out. I know I'm supposed to say something along the lines of "I would never post a wack artist for money," and while this may be true for some of you, it ain't for me, this is a million dollars we talkin' here. That's like a lifetime of what some people make, just to make a post like, what once a week? I think I'd be dumb not to take it honestly. So my answer would be "Yea...make the check out to Mr. 5 Star" and I'll make a post TODAY!" I guess you can call me a sellout, but making a post once or twice a week with dude's music and be paid a million for it is a smart business decision in my eyes. Shit, I got bills to pay. Haha.
BFochs: That's quite true, turning down a million dollars isn't a sound idea on paper. Next question: you mentioned you post about saucy chicas on the site, if you could make one of those said chicas the official '5 Star Hip Hop' spokeswomen/model who would it be? Who do you think are the most overrated '5 Star' female figures in society today?
Mr. 5 Star: Meagan Good. Hey, Charles Hamilton made a song called "Lacey Duvalle" expressing his infatuation with her videos, and she's in his "Brooklyn Girls" video, so maybe Meagan Good is a BFocher (that sounds like a cuss word) and is checking this out. It could happen. As far as overrated, I honestly can't think of anybody, because in one picture they are dimed out, then you see them on some reality show or a discrete picture, and they are hit up, so I have no idea who really looks like what. So, in that essence, I would probably say EVERY model chick or hollywood chick is overrated because they are usually judged on their makeup, which most of them don't look as good as what we see on a daily basis. But on a side note, I've seen one of those 'Kim Kardashian without makeup' pics that's supposed to make you think a celebrity is ugly, but to be honest, she still looked hot as hell to me. Haha. It's too bad the only way I know her is the whole Ray J thing....I'd holla @ her sister(s) though.
BFochs: That's true, it all depends how the photos are taken. Megan Good is a BFochser indeed, not sure what that word means and it contains my name haha, but we can roll with it. Last question then we can seal the deal on this spheal: The head honcho at GM hits you up and goes "Mr. 5 Star, dig this, we got this plan, where if you loan us your site to market our cars for a year to get our business back in shape we'll make a special line of GM '5StarHipHop' edition automobiles, will you let us borrow your site?" What would the response be sir? Would you trust him?
Mr. 5 Star: I wouldn't loan anybody the site. Nobody. So, I wouldn't give them full creative control. I would try and outline some kinda deal where as collateral for us lacing the site with GM ads and promotions, the stipulation would be the special lines of cars for us. And of course, we all get them for free. But naw, if they wanted full control of the site, hell naw. They can't even stay out debt and they one of the most known car makers in the world, so I wouldn't trust them with the blog for that reason alone. Not only that, I'm not gonna give up something we built and watched grow from the ground up to a downfalling company.
BFochs: Real talk, it ain't easy making a quality site. They dug their own grave! haha. That's all I got man, you got any shout outs, last words or comments before we wrap this thing up?
Mr. 5 Star: Shout out to all my co-bloggers, my e-goons, my e-squad that I mentioned earlier; Exclusive1, Ts Wun, Luminati, and Source that hold it down wit me on a daily basis. They mean just as much to the site as I do. Shout to my moms (she has no idea wtf my site is even about lol), and of course shout to BFochs for makin me do this long ass 2 and a half hour interview. It was fun though, I've never been interviewed. Hopefully we can chop it up again soon, maybe I'll interview you to feature on 5 Star Hip Hop. And we out!
BFochs: Word.com, big ups once again for doing the interview man. I wish you and your movement continued success in anything ya'll do, take it easy!
BBB@BFochs.com
dope interview!!
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