Directed by Chillaa.

SoSeriuz fam’s Chillaa links with Rashad of Soulja Boy’s SODMG for visuals to “Hyperventilating” plus a freestyle over the Gucci choon.

It may not be your cup of tea but you can’t front on the way this kid’s connecting the industry dots and aligning his brand to generate REAL potential for tangible returns. Almost 7000 hits in a week. And those are being made with REAL consumers (just follow the links from the SODMG community and their facebook page along with Rashad’s own tweets).

SIDEBAR:

It’d be interesting to compare the consumer potential of those hits plus his social media followership against the stats for more ‘established’ artists in this city to see who’s grind is backed by a more critical understanding of the market as opposed to being fueled by social network narcissism. The fairytale/industry-over-populated island our local artists seem to want to exist on (using twitter and facebook as ego boosts) is as dangerous as Keanu’s time spent living in the Matrix.

Previously: NEW VIDEO: Chillaa “Looks Like Kobe” (Directed by Chillaa)

Raw social media #s can be very misleading. Sure those #s are potential signs of brand awareness and can be intangible forms of brand capital but c’mon, if success was as simple as getting random people to click ‘follow’, the Toronto urban market would be raking in the dough. The real number that should matter to artists is how much of their followership financially supports their product (via live shows, itunes etc). If you’ve got 500+ twitter followers, 2000+ facebook friends, but can only get 20 paying customers to buy your music or come out to your show (meantime your event is rammed with industry-guest-listers and more media covering the event than actual fans there to see you), then you got a real problem – whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

Also remember that even though it might feel like you have a bigger buzz then this kid, and maybe even better music (which isn’t really the point), a common thread amongst the new crop of artists and entrepreneurs (Chillaa, Shad, HustleGRL, Dante Leon) is that they’re grabbing tangible followers EARLY via their high school/university networks. This means he/she might be wet behind the ears on the workings of the industry but the profit-generating potential of the fan bases they’re bringing out the gate is unf*ckwittable.

Bottom line is: Wake up. Take notes.