A pair of musical projects that use the microblogging service could help make that happen: Somali-born hip-hopper K'naan Warsame is revising his song “People Like Me" using fans' tweets, and the San Francisco sessions vets in Moonalice are planning a repeat performance of their real-time Twitter concert.
On April Fools' Day, K'naan offered fans an instrumental download of “People Like Me" from his official site, asking them to submit their own lyrics in the form of tweets sent to his Twitter account. All tweets sent to the hashtag “#knaansong" are eligible for inclusion until the promotion winds down May 1, after which K'naan will mash the finest into a final remake of “People Like Me" that will be made available as a free download.
The move is just the latest way K'naan has embraced technology to expose his art across the globe. His official site has links for satellite pages across not just Twitter, but also Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Imeem, YouTube, Rhapsody and more. That kind of plugged-in social and political awareness has turned him from an unknown Canadian rapper into a crossover sensation who collaborated with artists as different as Snoop Dogg and Metallica's Kirk Hammett on his February 2009 release Troubadour, which debuted atop the digital sales chart in the United States and placed third in Canada.
It's all part of establishing integrity, K'naan explained to Wired.com in a June 2008 interview. “I dont think the role of an artist has to do with movements as opposed to credibility. I think that your role as an artist is to make the best songs you can, and if it happens to be something that is inspiring, then thats great. But a bad song, conscientious or not, is a bad song."
While K'naan is busy using Twitter to make good songs out of possibly bad but probably great tweets, Moonalice is using the social networking phenomenon to explode its exposure.
A group of musical all-stars led by ex-Saturday Night Live guitarist G.E. Smith, the San Francisco Bay Area sextet used Twitter to broadcast, so to speak, its self-titled debut's April 3 release concert at Slim's in San Francisco.
After each song, Moonalice's sound team digitized, uploaded and tweeted it before the next tune was finished. The idea was such a hit that Moonalice has decided to do it again, this time on Saturday in Redwood City, California.
While K'naan's crowdsourced mash will mark the first time a major artist has created a song entirely out of tweets, Moonalice's promotional maneuver was the first time a band has broadcast a concert in real-time on the Twitter platform.
The clever move has already attracted attention and acclaim, most notably from Twitter creator Evan Williams.
“We are amazed by all the new ways people are using Twitter, and what Moonalice is doing exemplifies this to the core," Williams said in a Moonalice press release, which explained that the tech-savvy band's debut effort was mixed using the award-winning T-Bone Burnett's CODE DVD-V format.
“Twittering a live show is a new and profoundly cool way for a band to reach its fan base and beyond," Williams said. “We hope to see more of this as bands see the value of connecting to their audience in new ways."
Given the social network's meteoric rise in adoption and innovation, Williams probably won't have to hope for too long.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
