I'm a little late to this and I don't know if this is the thread I found it but I fukked with those Chinese Molly and I'd Rather tracks and downloaded them, came up on my google play and it reminded me to reply to this thread cuz I had some ideas for you.
Warning long post
- It's been 2 months since you uploaded a song. Release music constantly, like 2 songs a month. Mixtapes are a bonus. Regardless of the quality of the music, people will get used to checkin for your music and you'll start to build an organic fanbase. Make sure you upload to every relevant site that will allow you to upload without spending money, that means Soundcloud, YouTube, Bandcamp, Datpiff (i don't remember if they let just anyone upload anymore, I know hotnewhiphop stopped), here, other forums, whatever the case may be. I can't tell you how many times I ignored an artist on HNHH for days, weeks, years at a time, but the constant stream of music they had coming in made me check for them. I might've liked their music, I might not, but they caught my attention. Curren$y is a great example of this, his constant work ethic and releases revived his career.
- Find reliable producers that are willing to work with you. When you just starting out you might not have a lot of money to drop on beats but there's a lot of dudes grindin at they mom's crib who'll probably let you get a beat for free if you're willing to make a commitment and grind wit them. Producing is a craft where you get better with time so even if they don't have that top notch production you're used to hearing they might get there eventually. Just keep rappin. A lot of underground artists usually have one reliable producer that they constantly make music with, usually somebody who came up with them. Every hip hop act that's gone on a run has had a main producer that made it all possible. Hot Boyz (Mannie Fresh), Drake (40), NWA (Dr. Dre), so on and so forth, and those guys are household names now but then they were still coming up with those artists.
- Market yourself everywhere. You've already seen this advice so I ain't gonna go too deep into it but the advice still remains. I've been to ATL alot and there's a few places you can get started. I used to frequent a hookah lounge out there where they let anybody play music, they had 2k set up, had hoes there and all that, there was a few aspiring artists there that came up quite a bit from when I met them
- Music videos are the last necessity. Just like how everyone has a producer, everyone has someone to record their videos. Just keep pumpin out music videos and you gonna get somebody attention. Put them all on YouTube, IG, FB, wherever. And trust me they don't gotta be the best videos ever. A guy who has a feel for recording videos and movie making in general will probably carry the way in this department.
paperlovee is a upcomer in ATL and he is best friends with my nieces brother. He said 250 for a feature but I wanna talk him down
Also I know some rappers who are with slaughter gang and PDE They might do it off the love but I dont think they have a fan base either. They just get love cause who they affiliated too but the verse around 200 too
If they willing to give you verses for prices that cheap gon head and do it. If an artist likes your style and vibes with you they might put you on. And if you have them promote you on their social media their fans might become fans of you also. Start building those relationships and get as many verses as you can find along with all the promotion you can get from them. Maybe give them an extra 100 for an IG post if they have a few thousand followers.
Tl;dr: Put out as much content as possible. Find a main producer that's willing to put in time and effort into you and vice versa and come up together. Go anywhere and everywhere to play your music and promote it. Release music videos and keep all social media accounts, especially YouTube and SoundCloud filled with content.
As someone whose just now starting to try to take music seriously (through producing tho) I felt like I wanted to put in my input because I think you can make it, you in a better location than me too so I wanna live vicariously through you breh
Grind and stay locked in breh
