In the social media era, a critical part of finding success in the music industry is learning how to present yourself and appeal to your intended audience or demographic. Social platforms have changed the way that artists and performers interact and share their lives with their audience, forging a much more direct and personal connection with their fans. Rapper 201jah knows the importance of wearing the clothes that your audience makes.

The Importance of Building an Image

Part of learning to present yourself for an audience is establishing an authentic and coherent image of yourself. Hip-hop artists in particular need to align their social media personas with their values and experiences they depict in their content, lest they come to be seen as inauthentic or fake.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media doesn’t have to be a repository for our unfiltered thoughts; instead, a social media presence can be carefully cultivated to build intrigue about an artist or performer’s personal life. In his Instagram posts, you can most often find 201jah showing off the trappings of success, partying with friends, posing for vibrant neon photoshoots, and performing in hyperkinetic, almost surreal clips excerpted from his video collaborations with visionary music video director Llama. These posts are often captioned with musings about hard work, sincerity, relationships, and living the life you want to live.

Playing to the Right Crowd

“One of the obvious challenges that every artist and business owner alike experiences is the struggle to attract the right amount of attention from the right people,” he explains. “What we do to overcome this is we look at our analytics on platforms like YouTube and meet our audience to where they are coming from. This allows us to focus our strategy and showcase our music and videos to the right audience.

“For example, a large percentage of our music audience comes from people ages 18 to 24. We want to share our music with everyone, but this lets us know that we should appeal to people who in that age group because they enjoy our content the most.” Even among fans of the same music genre, there can be major differences among demographics; older hip-hop fans may not like the same style or image that younger fans do. 201jah warns that ignorance of these kinds of differences can cost you engagement, but knowing how to appeal to different audiences can help your following grow exponentially. As he explains, “Meet your audience with where they are at, and they will come to you naturally.” At over 600,000 streams on Soundcloud and 32,000 views on YouTube, Jah certainly knows how to draw a crowd.

201jah is Walking the Walk

Part of meeting the audience where they’re at is knowing what the audience wants to see and hear. 201jah knows what his audience expects, and he is more than happy to deliver. “You’ve got to give the people what they want. There are certain expectations that audiences have of performers in this business. If you’re rapping about grinding and finding success and living the lifestyle, you better show people that you can walk the walk.” 201jah has got this covered. In almost every music video and photoshoot, Jah is rocking expensive clothes, chilling in cool cars, hanging with girls, and handling large stacks of cash. This isn’t just a marketing strategy; 201jah is happy to give audiences a glimpse into the lavish lifestyle that almost anyone could attain if only they put in the work.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/201jah/  

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfqehotiZcT5tHlpBJnP6IQ/about 

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/201jah

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/201jah/1443933745  

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/56KWJk8VGpizGSP4zQwHNA?si=n7ixHPuhTxao4scfWPwgEg&dl_branch=1&nd=1