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‘There are blogs out there causing hatred’ Nang’s Denise Kodia linked up with a journalist called Summit, who runs one of the UK’s biggest music blogging sites, to ask him about journalism on the net For many people the internet has become a way of life. We check our e-mails, look at what’s going on with out friends in the world of Facebook and even find out the weather forecast. According to Summit, who runs blogging site, The Hip Hop Chronicle UK, we can’t live without it. ‘Internet is everything!, he says. ‘If I didn’t have the internet I wouldn’t be here being interviewed by Nang! It’s vitally important. It’s allowed me to create my own buzz. I’ve still got a long way to go but it’s a wonderful platform.’ Summit uses his blog to showcase great hip-hop talent. But he does admit that sometimes blogs can be quite negative. He says: ‘There are haters who class themselves as journalists and write blogs, and I think a lot of people latch onto that. So artists see what these hating blogs do and they shy away from doing interviews and features with bloggers. There are blogs out there just causing a lot of hatred.’ But Summit’s determined not to be swayed by this. ‘With every medium you have to take the good with the bad,’ he says. ‘Just because one person is creating a lot of fuss, it doesn’t mean that the whole of the bloggers sphere should get a bad reputation.’ And Summit’s blog certainly hasn’t been tainted with a bad reputation. He’s managed to avoid any negativity and has attracted many big names to his site. In fact, he’s even interviewed the likes of Estelle (bottom pic), Russell Simmons (middle pic, left, with Summit), Ice Cube (top pic, right), Tinie Tempah and Wiley. He sees the blogger’s role as crucial now, particularly in the hip-hop world. ‘The four pillars that make up hip-hop are MCing, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. And now, since the rise of the blogger generation, I think the bloggers are the new DJs. The DJ used to break the new records and now it’s the online bloggers who are breaking new records – before the DJ and radio.’ We used to get our daily news from newspaper or TV, but we now get real-time breaking news on the internet. So the news is now being accessed as soon as it’s put out there and bloggers have become an integral part of this - some are even featured on some news interviews giving their perspective on things! The whole way of delivering news has changed a lot. Ordinary people are now accessing their mobiles to distribute videos, news and images on the internet, sometimes before the news teams have arrived at the scene. For example, when a plane crashed in Manhattan, New York, in the middle of the Hudson River in January, a guy on a ferry took a picture of the people coming out of the plane and within minutes it was distributed around the world! This shift in how news is spread to the public means that artists are able to hit many more fans directly through people like Summit. Blogs gives the news over to the people in whatever way they want, so we’re not relying on mainstream news channels deciding for us what’s relevant and, with the advancement of technology, this is only going to increase.
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