Thursday, December 23, 2010

Most Tech Savvy Hip Hop Artists

Snoop Dogg

According to Ad.Ly (a URL shortening service) CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh, who recruits celebrities for promotional purposes, Snoop could be making upward of $5,000 per tweet by hawking Toyota's wares over his Twitter account.


50 Cent

Over the past year the rapper's promotional website/fan hub has more than doubled its monthly traffic; analytics site Compete.com says Thisis50.com had close to 700,000 unique visits in October of 2010. The rapper is also notorious for his Twitter activity.

Chamillionaire

"I was one of the first rappers to have his own forum," says Chamillionaire, aka Hakeem Seriki, whose Chamillionaire.com site has had a cult following since his first album's release. "Then 50 cent made 'Thisis50.com,' and everyone made sites just like it."

Kanye West

Since West opened his account, he's garnered over 1.5 million followers. Interestingly enough, he isn't following any of his followers. Narcissus would be proud.

Soulja Boy and Fabolous

The two rap stars battled it out over Twitter in September, trading insults that began with tweets concerning Soulja Boy's alleged drug possession with a groupie in a hotel room. Fabolous started a hashtag topic, #SouljasCokeHabit, that ended up trending.

Ice-T

The star of soundstage and screen (he's been on Law and Order: SVU for close to a decade) is an avid tweeter, using his account not only for self-promotion, but for the occasional bout of self-defense. When singer-songwriter Aimee Mann publicly panned his acting skills in an interview, the rapper posted an expletive-laden tweet letting her know how he felt.

MC Hammer

This hip hop icon has been a staple of the tech industry for the last few years, appearing at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in September, and more recently making an appearance at Web 2.0 Summit in November. In 2008 Hammer launched DanceJam.com, a site where users can upload videos of their dancing skills, techniques and performances to be critiqued by others.

Jay-Z

The 2010 Forbes 400 cover star Jay-Z has taken to his Twitter account to promote the release of his new autobiography,