Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT IS RMHH?
RMHH is a continuous discussion about hip hop and hip hop-related topics. Anyone can start a conversation and topics sometimes stray (way) outside of hip hop.

WHO IS RMHH?
RMHH is made up of 3 types of persons:

The lurker - a person who just reads the posts

The poster - someone who posts a message

The regular - a poster who posts messages on a regular basis

RMHH posters are scattered all over the globe, from New York to London, Glasgow to Bangkok, Melbourne to Berlin. There's a range of ages that represents every era from old school to now school. The only significantly under-represented group is females. Knowledgable/funny/cool ladies, RMHH needs YOU!

THE FIRST TIME POSTER'S DILEMMA
What happens to people who post for the first time?

No one responds to their thread

Why?

• Over saturated topic eg. Who is the best in the Wu?
• Topic is inflammatory eg. Nelly fans suck cactus!
• Header is in all Caps eg. WHY I LOVE EMINEM AND TUPAC
• The number one reason - lack of name recognition.

When the regular folks don't recognize your name from previous posts, they don't look for it. It's part of the coping mechanism. There are so many garbage posts (from the Regular reader perspective) that most employ some type of mental filter. They look for people who they know are going to say something interesting.

Ofen newcomers get 'flamed' by the regulars. A classic RMHH flame came from regular named Kari Orr aimed at a thread started by, Fritz the Kat; The header was "My girlfriend is a nigger" ( You can find the whole thread at www.google.com - search the newsgroup for "and you're a racist")

The remedy for the flame war is an e-mail conversation. Many ideological differences are a lot less inflammatory, cause there is not an audience. A lot of these posts are written with the public in mind. When it's just a 'private' conversation, the tone of the argument tends to changes.

Those are usually the main problems. When you are stereotyped, you're only chance is to come with some straight knowledge or a brilliant post, and hope one of the regulars picks it up because it was either referenced, or they decided to check junk8674@aol.com because the title looked interesting.

OVERCOMING OBSCURITY
How do you get your name noticed by the reg's?

The "RE:" thread
It will soon become obvious what the serious threads are after a day. If you want to get your name up, responding to a thread is a good way to get someone's attention. It doesn't take too long for a good writer to shine and get noticed.

The Original Thread
Writing an original thread is composed of 3 parts

• The Header
• The Straightforward Type- "Why Canibus is a better MC than Kurupt"
• The Reference Type - "Business as Usual" - a post about EPMD
• The Inflammatory/Outrageous Type - "LORD SEAR IS THE FINEST MC NEXT TO USHER"

Appearance
The content is the most important part of your post but the appearance could affect how people percieve your words.

Visually, it shouldn't be all uppercase or lower case. Anything that deviates too much from normal text can be distracting and draw attention away from the content. Another thing to be wary of is placing .html or Java in your post. Many newsreaders can't handle it and you end up in the killfile of many readers of RMHH who don't like their newsreader to crash while reading news.

Try to keep all your words on the screen, not all viewers are created equal, and I've read a couple of posts, that were just one continous long line, worse yet, the lines go on for a couple of important words, and i have to continually move the cursor at the bottom of my screen.

Spelling doesn't count for words like prophylactics, onomatopiea(sp?), but it does for simple words like "technique".

Grammar, punctuation, are all nice if you do it all the time, but not necessary.

Proper english isn't required, there is no academic standard, but if you kick your posts in all slang, people have a hard time understanding what you are saying. Spoken English is acceptable.

On purpose mis-spelling, is usually met with a groan. Not a big thing, and certainly not a rule, but just keep it in mind.

Content
The most important element. There are no real rules to the content. But you want to write words that make sense, and also convey something you want to talk about.

The more you develop whatever it is you want to say, the more likely it is someone will have something to say about it.

SAMPLE POSTS
Any thread on rec.music.hip-hop, can become long if you develop the ideas presented.

But what often happens is:

***********************************************************

I just saw Common and O.C. 's videos. What's going on?

The played out party concept!

The weak R&B hook! (Chante Savage was on both!!!!)

Give me some comments, opinons.

-rza

***************************************************************

Okay, this post has potential, you could develop the concept of selling out on OC's part, or the clonablity of the pretty woman on the beach in a video idea, or the respectable hip hop mc's using R&B singers.

But rza, didn't really say a whole lot at all. No description of the video, no support for his idea that it is a played out concept, but he wants you the reader to drop an opinion.

I'm sure someone will respond, with a:

"you know all them rappers is falling off" or "who was that fine chick in the yellow?"

But the thread will die, because it has no real substance even though the commericialism and selling out topics are there; few are going to venture into that territory again with so little to comment on.

So if you want to start a discussion, you need to develop your question, or your topic. When you have some name recognition, the burden of development falls off. Then you can just drop a question raw, but until that happens you should describe what you are going to say so that anyone who doesn't know you and isn't familiar with type of responses you want will reply.

Here is what you want to do:

*********************************************

Here's a statement of KRS-ONE when being asked about his track with Puffy. The interview's taken from "Wordcup", a german Hip-Hop TV Show. It was the first time I heard Kris speaking about this important issue, so I thought I'ma take the time and type that piece for y'all...

KRS-ONE:

"Well, first of all, I've known Puffy for many, many years. I knew Puffy when he was a club promoter, when Heavy D hired him to be his assistant over at Uptown Records. I knew him when he launched Biggie and Mary J. And I also knew him when he had platnium succses and was

*..... snip you get the point

*he goes on to say

Now, I'm not sayin' that Puffy and Co are the cause of the "crises" (it happened way before the Bad Boy era, if at all, cause the independent sh*t is still as tight and hip-hop as ever) but they're definitly a symptom. So I don't really understand how supporting such a symptom, like KRS-ONE did, would do any good to fixing the problem. Okay, he wants to reach a larger audience, but is this the right way?

Anyway, whatcha all think?

sebbo@incubus.franken.de

************************************************

This is a good post that some non-regular head has dropped. What makes it good It is a new angle on an old topic. It's well developed. It has a lot of information.

For anyone who regularly reads rec.music.hip-hop, this is something that you would read once, and want to respond to.

Why this might not get a lot of regular head response: Name recognition is number 1, number 2 is the boring title "Krs One on Puffy"

TYPES OF POSTS
There are 2 main types of posts, objective and subjective.

The objective posts include:

• playlist
• release dates
• artist appearance information (like is so and so on the new movie soundtrack or who is the Last Emperor)
• artist news i.e. Keith Murray got released from jail
• lyrics

There aren't a lot of these in comparison to the subjective threads.

Subjective threads include:

• specific artists and their merits
• top ten lists
• who's the best/worst/most
• rumors - this is my favorite group and let's talk about how great they are

Typical artist centered threads:

• Wu-Tang - they're the best son
• Jay Z - i hate that m.f or dats my m.f.

Impressions of artist's works:

• has anyone heard the new ... what do you think?
• record reviews, live show reviews

General state of hip-hop:

• why hip hop sucks
• why hip hop is making a comeback
• my thoughts on hip hop

Specific topics in hip-hop:

• commercialism
• hip hop singers - so called gangsta rap
• white people in hip hop
• misogyny in hip hop

Specific topics outside of hip hop but related to hip-hop:

• 5% nation ideology
• why is darkness considered negative

Group centered topics:

• who's in here
• how long you been listening etc

Experience topics:

• probably the most universal of all the posts, where you talk about your life, and how hip hop affects or has affected your life. The easiest to get responses to if you pose the question right.

That wraps up the content part.

When a thread becomes a RE:
As a new poster, even if you have gotten the appearance and the content down, and still no one responds to your thread.

Does your thread ask a specific question? Often good threads just kinda sit there, because there aren't any real questions asked.

Comments,Questions, Opinions, - at the end of your post doesn't always generate comments questions and opinions. it's easier to respond to specific questions, or specific ideas.

Also you need to work on your name recognition. Hopefully there is something that you found interesting on RMHH. So you should respond to it. And you should respond to other threads you have found interesting. When someone responds to a post by a regular, and they ask a question, normally they will get a response back.

Another problem with responses, is that you never know what people will take from your post. A lot of threads will develop that have nothing to do with your question.

In short, that's pretty much the guidelines of how to become one of us, the rec.music.hip-hop regulars, and write good posts in general.

written by Kari Orr (updated by mr.tim)