AJ Spitz on rap video product placement
New Balances went from something you'd hide to something everyone wears, and that whole arc happened inside a decade. AJ Spitz, whose video credits include Offset, Coi Leray and The Kid LAROI, says watches and cars in rap visuals move the same way fashion brands do. Keith (inneroperator) wanted to know if those specific items get put in front of the camera on purpose. Spitz's answer lands on the record labels.
Transcript (en)
When people see these things in these videos, like, is it purely just because it's cool that it's there? Or is it because there's some reason that some other party, right, has an incentive to put these cars, these watches, these things into those videos? How do you look at that? I think, again, it's both. You know, you can make anything really look cool. you know, like the new balances 10 years ago, we would make fun of people who wore those. Those were the sex offender sevens. Now you wear new balances and they came out with different color combinations and whatnot. And now they're appealing. And that's just a little bit of culture moves. So my assumption is that it didn't start from like the label side, if you will, or like the powers that be, I think the culture pushed that image. And then the labels were like, we're making a lot of money. We want to sign more artists like this. Because remember, their business model has to be centered around consistency and scalability. So if you see that this is the wave right now, that we can sign 15 more artists for the next two, three years, because this is the wave, this gangster rap, individualistic, survival, flashy, you know, culture, we can, you know, plant product placements into these videos and do different partnership deals. And it obviously pushes consumerism to buy different types of designer clothing. And so it totally could be and is perpetuated by them. That's what they're looking for when they look for artists. If you enjoyed this, be sure to hit that like button and follow to stay up to date with what's going on in the world and everything else memes and markets. Peace.
