Thursday, February 3
Round Table - “The Hip Hop Touring Era”
Jeremiah "Ice" Younossi, Emmel Comm.

A highly successful new event implemented at the 2005 Concert Industry Consortium was a group of round tables, covering a wide range of topics and facilitated by some of the most highly respected people in their fields. Running the gamut of industry concerns from how to structure a deal to purchasing tour insurance to staying sober on the road, conference guests could stop at one discussion or visit them all for a taste of what’s happening in today’s concert business.

Jeremiah “Ice” Younossi’s popular round table drew a diverse group of people from different backgrounds who addressed the difficulties of the urban touring circuit, often marked by inexperienced promoters, as well as the problems encountered when an inexperienced artist goes into a major venue.

“We had someone from American Express there, we had insurance agents there, we had some major tour promoters there ... we had some college students there,” Younossi told Pollstar. “We talked about a million different things.”

A main topic was touring – what goes on from the artist’s, management’s and agent’s end – and countering some of the stigmas that aren’t true, in terms of hip-hop shows being the most dangerous, he added.

“All the promoters sort of agreed that they had less problems at their hip-hop shows than at some of their rock shows,” Younossi said.

The discussion felt “beneficial to everyone,” he added. “I learned from the questions they were asking how they view the music from a different perspective. But it’s not really about learning or being enlightened, it’s just about discussing the issues that we’re dealing with.”

“It’s not like a rock tradition, where artists come up in the game and they support other acts, and they grind and grind and grind for no money for years and build their fan base that way,” Younossi explained.

Instead, most hip-hop artists hone their craft in the studio, working to hook up with the right producers and get on the right mixtapes.

“The whole live performance element is like, ‘I’m not going to be doing shows until I’m big, until I’m on the radio.’”

The participants discussed ways to harness the enormous potential of live hip-hop to build lasting artists, satisfied fans and a solid industry.

“People are going to be in denial and think that this music is just going to fade away, it’s going to be bullshit,” Younossi said. “But in reality, this music is the new rock ‘n’ roll. It’s the new pop music ... It’s mainstream America.”