okay, forget the fact that i’m reading articles about marketing to teens for a minute. i know that doesn’t interest people not in advertising. i’m a loser, i know.

now, listen to this statistic i picked out of one such article today at work, from mediaweek magazine, which i’d link if you didn’t have to subscribe to read online anyway. here goes:

one thing teens today share with teens of the past is the fact that they are influenced by their favorite artists. but forget about songs that talk about the hot boy or girl at the next locker. hip-hop is a veritable laundry list of hot products. there have been 1,050 references to about 66 different brands in songs ranked in the top 20 through the beginning of october, according to san francisco-based brand consultancy lucjam…

that’s unbelievable! in roughly one month’s time? i don’t even know what to say in response, i can hardly digest that figure. so i will just tack on one of the next lines in the article which i found funny and awfully brash and sweeping as far as generalizations go:

“hip hop is incredibly materialistic, making it a good place to talk about materialistic things,” says lucien james, president of lucjam…

haha. what an ass.

[now hearing this: some surprisingly non-materialistic yet definitely hip hop tunes from el-p.]