How To Become A Successful Rap Artist

Now, that you’ve downloaded a couple of my beats. I’m sure your asking yourself what do I do next?

Here is a step-by-step guide showing you exactly what to do with the beats you just downloaded and “how to become a successful rap artist” with the music you make with them. If you didn’t buy beats from my site, this article will still give you ideas on how to become a more professional hip hop artist in general.

This guide will also teach you how to get exposure to yourself as a rap artist online.

If you download my free beats, you can still follow this guide but some of the steps require $ investment and if you are going to put money into your tracks, you might as well buy your beats so you can go the full mile with your music.

Steps To Becoming A Successful Rap Artist:

We have created a list of steps to becoming a successful rap artists. Take a look at the steps and read more about each step below by clicking on the links.

1. Create A Radio Quality Song
2. Create A Rap Music Video
3. Create A Promo Video For Your Music Video
4. Purchase A Feature For Your Next Music Video
5. Get Booked For Shows
6. Go On Tour And Get Paid Gigs

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1. The First Step of becoming a successful rap artist is “Create a Radio Quality Rap Song”.

There are a couple of different options on how you can record your own rap songs. Here they are below:

Different ways to record a rap song:

• Record your own raps songs yourself using your computer and home studio recording equipment
• Record your own raps using your I-phone or Ipad
• Record your own raps using a digital recorder
• Get your raps recorded in a professional recording studio

But, what should I do with my rap song after I’ve recorded it?

After you have recorded your song, to get it radio quality, you should spend money to get it professionally mixed and mastered. A&R’s will be able to tell if you’ve recorded your song in a home studio. Getting your song professionally mixed and mastered sets your tracks apart from the crowd.

What do I do after my rap song gets mixed and mastered?

After the mixing and mastering has taken place, your song is now in an acceptable quality for human consumption.

You can choose to start sharing your songs on music sharing sites like Soundclick and Soundcloud or social media sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But, if I were you, I would already start thinking about your music in the long run. People love listening to music but they love watching videos even more.

Not only are you going to want to shoot a rap music video for your song but you are going to want to shoot promo videos for that song.

A great example of someone doing it right, is a rapper named “Futuristic”. Futuristic is an Arizona Rapper that is slowly making a name for his self all across the US. He is doing nationwide tours and meeting famous people left and right. Some of his videos have been shared millions of times and sometimes shared by famous celebrities on Twitter.

He not only creates high quality videos for his songs but most importantly makes promo videos to gain attraction to those songs. One of the promo videos he did for the song called “The Greatest” was one of his biggest victories.

He created a video of himself dressed like a nerd and titled the video “nerd rapping in Compton”. Compton, CA is the home of the well known rap group called the N.W.A. and most people would expect that anyone rapping near or around there better be bringing it or else.

Futuristic leaves you stunned because your expecting a weak rap but he surprises you by spitting out some pretty nice lyrics with some technical delivery which ends up gaining him the respect of the street crowd. You can watch Futuristic’s Promo video here:

You don’t have need the same approach as Futuristic but at least this should get your mind thinking about what way you want to draw in the crowd.

That style worked for Futuristic because it probably came natural for him to act that way. Think of creative ways you can set yourself apart from other rappers and that might end up being your meal ticket. Your next step as a rap artist is to create your first rap music video.

2. The Second Step of becoming a successful rap artist is to “create a rap music video”.

There are a couple of different options on how you can record your own rap videos. Here they are below:

Different ways to record a rap music video:

• Record your rap music video using a digital camera and your home computer
• Record your rap music video using your Iphone or Ipad and downloading apps like Viva Video for Iphone and Android and Picplaypost for Iphone and Android that let you make cool videos that are very popular these days

What to do after I record my rap music video:

After you record your rap music video, now its time to upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube and Facebook.

• Upload Your Video To Facebook
• Upload Your Video To Youtube

3. The Third Step of becoming a successful rap artist is to create a promo video for your rap music video.

This step is similar to Step 2 but, instead of shooting a traditional music video, you are creating a promo video. Which means that, you are doing something different in this video to create an attraction but the video still has your song in it in some way.

Example of Ideas for Promo Videos:

• Create a video of you freestyling your song to elderly people
• Create a video of yourself rapping your song to a baby
• Make a video of yourself rapping your song really fast
• Create a video of you rapping your song backwards
• Create a video that shows each step of your song creation process (quick video)

Think about why people are going to want to share your video. People would want to share a video of someone rapping to an elderly person if the elderly person reacted in some strange way or disliked the rapping.

People would say WTF to a video of someone rapping to a baby and a video of you rapping really fast would be something talented that people already like to share etc…

4. The Fourth Step of becoming a successful rap artist is to get features on your rap music video.

You are going to need a way to gain more fans, more quickly than just uploading videos with no audience, especially in the beginning stages of become a rap artists. Features are a great way to come up quickly in the music game and increase your audience quickly. Do the right feature, with the right person, at the right moment and boom… It can get you seen by a lot of important people really quickly. Futuristic is already getting offers from record labels already just from the couple of videos he has done but is choosing to stay independent for now.

Buying features can get quite costly but some rappers do them for really cheap. A friend of mine got Afroman on his track for $800 dollars. Yeah, it’s costing him upfront but if he can grab some of Afroman’s audience and make them his, then the money was well spent. Plus, features help you get new audiences if you have one already and help grow your audience if you are a brand new artist. All the major artists do features and know the impact of them. Always remember, it takes money to make money.

5. The Fifth Step of becoming a successful rap artist is to get booked for shows.

Doing paid shows and touring is going to be the way you make the majority of your money as a rap artist. This needs to be your main focus after you have already created your songs, made your videos, gotten a couple of features and made a small name for yourself.

You want to set yourself up like a business. Build an artist website that has info, biography’s and contact information to book you as an artist. Be mindful of the type of people you want to book you and do your research to find out the type of people that book artists the most. These are the type of people you want to appeal to.

6. The Sixth Step of becoming a successful rap artist is to go on tour and get paid gigs.

Going on tour is basically getting booked on a major scale. You have to have clubs book you in all of the major cities you want to visit. These clubs will pay you a negotiated amount of money to come to their club to perform. Don’t think you are going to get paid a huge amount right away. I was talking to one of the club owners in Phoenix that told me he only had to pay DMX $15,000 to perform and he is a major artist.

Underground artists can sometimes make up to $500-$3,000 dollars per show depending on the amount of draw the club thinks the artist might be able to bring in. Futuristic has people lined up at the door just to get his autograph and clubs know that he will be able to bring in traffic to their club and that’s the reason they book him. Its not the question of what the club can do for you but what you can do for the club. Can you bring in more than 3 people to watch your show? No, well maybe not yet but follow the steps above and you will build an audience, you will get booked and you will eventually make money on tour performing your music.

Thank you for reading “How To Become A Successful Rap Artist” Stay tuned for more from Efreezee @ MusicBeats.Net. Leave a comment below or ask questions here.