August 21, 2007
TALIB KWELI AND EVENTFUL LAUNCH COLLEGE DEMAND COMPETITION WITH THE RELEASE OF HIS LATEST ALBUM, EARDRUM
Talib Kweli Empowers Students to Influence Where Brooklyn’s Finest Emcee Performs
SAN DIEGO, CA (August 21, 2007) – Eventful, the leading global events website, and Warner Bros. Music have joined forces to cross promote the release of Talib Kweli’s latest album Eardrum to thousands of college students across the country. Talib Kweli, also known as Brooklyn’s Finest Emcee, will use Eventful’s Demand service to add five university performances to his 2007-2008 tour.
Eventful Demand enables fans to influence where their favorite artists perform by creating grass-roots campaigns to “Demand” the artists to come to their town. Thousands of artists, comedians and even politicians are using Eventful Demand to connect with their fans and empower them to help shape their tour. Eventful Demand is quickly becoming a phenomenon in the music and entertainment industry.
Talib Kweli will be using Eventful Demand to let his fans determine which five colleges get added to his tour. Launched on August 21, the same day he dropped his latest release, Eardrum, the Demand competition for Talib Kweli will continue through October 3, at Eventful. The five winning colleges will be announced on October 4.
"I live on the road - I'm constantly on tour and I really love feeding off the energy of my fans at all my shows. Some of my favorite shows of all time have been at colleges so when Eventful brought this to my attention I immediately became interested, especially since alot of college kids have been hittin' me up about playing at their university - this gives them the opportunity to make it happen for themselves. ”
“We love helping fans connect with Talib Kweli and influence where he performs,” said Eventful’s CEO Jordan Glazier. “We’ve taken ‘user-generated concert tours’ one step further by adding the ability for Demands to take place across colleges, giving students the ability to attract performers to their campus.”
Along with MySpace, YouTube and iTunes, Eventful is quickly becoming an essential part of the online marketing toolkit for performers and artists. Eventful’s Demand service is unique from other online user-generated content services as it empowers users to actually influence real world events. Eventful provides a mechanism for users to band together and influence the appearance schedule of performers, politicians and any other events that users would like to take place. In addition, Eventful offers users the largest selection of events taking place in cities throughout the world, with over 3 million future events to choose from.
Fans can log on to http://www.eventful.com/talibkweli, http://www.myspace.com/talibkweli, and http://www.talibkweli.com to Demand a performance from Talib Kweli at their college campus.
About Eventful, Inc.
San Diego based Eventful, Inc., operates Eventful.com, the leading events website which enables its community of users to discover, promote, share and create events throughout the world. Eventful users select from nearly 4 million events taking place in local markets throughout the world, from concerts and sports to singles events and political rallies. Eventful’s Demand service enables users to influence where their favorite performers appear by creating grass-roots campaigns to “Demand” them in their town.
About Talib Kweli
Ever since emerging as a member of Black Star in the late 1990s, Talib Kweli is one of the few artists making commercially viable music that matters. The Brooklyn bred rapper's hard-hitting music has been able to educate and entertain simultaneously. So it is no wonder that at the peak of their fame, both Jay-Z and 50 Cent named Talib Kweli as one of their favorite rappers.
With Ear Drum, his first album released on his own Blacksmith Music and his sixth album overall, Kweli has delivered his career-defining work, a polished collection showcasing his advanced lyricism and his penchant for picking music that resonates long after the song ends. "The image of the ear and of the drum are powerful enough by themselves, but when you put them together, it's an instrument that's in your body that helps you hear," he explains. "They're also two very simple, yet powerful words. I wanted to focus on finding a sound that makes you move, and that's where the word 'Ear Drum' popped in my head."
Kweli hopes Blacksmith will create a movement with Jean Grae and Strong Arm Steady, much as his own music has. "With Blacksmith, I want it to be a flag that everyone can wave," he says. "I want to be packing shows and I want people to feel like they were up on Jean Grae and Strong Arm Steady before anybody else was."
In the mean time, the lyrically and sonically potent Ear Drum demonstrates that strong, powerful messages can serve as the backbone for music at its best. "The vast majority of my subject matter focuses on black self-love, black self esteem, black self worth," Kweli says. "That translates to other communities because if you're a human being, it doesn't matter what color you're talking about. You've been through some sort of struggle and you can apply it to your own life."
CONTACT
For Eventful:
Tamala Baldwin
(858) 882-0371
tamala@eventful.com
Posted by brian at August 21, 2007 12:19 PM