The Generation That Grew up on Hip Hop Is Now in the Boardrooms

Yesterday I came across this awesome article. Read the first half below, for the other one go to greenlabel.com.

I don’t know exactly when, but at some point it hit me that a generation who grew up listening to the same music I fell in love with as a kid have become decision-makers in mainstream media.

It could have been the moment I saw the hamsters in the Kia commercial rocking out to Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours” or Tide’s use of Digable Planet’s “Rebirth of Slick.” I remember feeling that a shift had occurred, and that companies not usually associated with hip-hop understood how to get my attention.

See, I’d worked in advertising for several years, so I was fully aware of how tone-deaf agencies and executive producers could be trying to fully understand this constantly shifting culture. Anything approaching the style of hip-hop was referenced via The Black Eyed Peas. And—no disrespect to BEP—but they were so hot at one time that advertisers were doing all they could to create bad imitations of their work.