Payola in Dreamgirls
New plan for future pop stars:
0. Sorta win American Idol.
1. Upstage Beyoncé.
Since seeing Dreamgirls, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role that payola plays in both the narrative of the film and the history of popular music. As depicted in the film’s 1950s, an independent label could leverage the widespread payola network to get their tracks into key markets. Within the semi-fictional story, payola provided an entry point for a Black-owned business to compete in (and, ultimately, to dominate) an established confederation of White media outlets.
Yet, in the film’s conclusion, the very payola scheme that launched Rainbow Records provides its Achilles’ Heel. With the help of a White lawyer (a non-character appearing on-screen for just one scene), founding members of the Rainbow crew return from dismissal to sic the FBI on Curtis Taylor (Jaime Foxx).
This story seems to echo the double-edged nature of present-day events. Like the old image of singles ($) clipped to singles (45rpms), the lowest levels of the music business continue to operate in quasi-legal limbo with sideways-glance major label oversight and tacit approval. Of course, like the story of Taylor’s Rainbow records, the top dogs can’t be trusted to share their milkbones. Mixtape DJs get arrested and payola continues.
So a question emerges. Could a present-day Berry Gordy aspirant effect greater success by leaving the established industry altogether? With low-cost / high-quality production tools, online distribution, widespread broadband Internet, and the popularity of portable media players, there is a fertile new field waiting to be seeded.
Something is preventing independent music from fully realizing the potential of the current situation and I still haven’t quite put my finger on what it is. Do you know?
P.S. Jennifer Hudson is teh transmedia bomb even though she’s weird about gay stuff.
