Tracksuit CEO

I was introduced to Chocolate Rain through the links section on one of my favorite blogs, Poshdeluxe. Sarah presented the link with a question in the form of an acronym: WTF? My question precisely, yet I can’t turn away, or stop watching its latest YouTube incarnations.

I’ve wanted to write a piece on the Moby technique for a while now. At least that’s what I call Moby’s creative/business process. He writes, performs, produces and records his own music and then goes on to release it himself. He’s eliminated all of the middle men. And until recently I thought he was the perfect example fo a Web 2.0 businessman.

Then enters Tay Zonday and his YouTube music video entitled “‘Chocolate Rain’ Original Song by Tay Zonday’. With this one idiot-savant performance, Tay has gone where Moby never could, not until now. He has placed himself on the desktops of millions of people, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and he doesn’t even have to pay for his bandwidth.

I think there’s more to the song than just 19 couplets with the same mind numbingly repetitive intro. There’s an underlying meaning there that the creator himself describes as a message about the “process of internalized racism”. And with lyrics like “the Bell Curve blames the baby’s DNA”, I have to agree.

There’s a lesson to take away from this viral video phenomenon. We should never let the lack of a recording contract or even a lack of what we commonly recognize as “talent” hold us back from getting ourselves out there and basically going platinum overnight.