Surviving the Hustling Hip Hop Music Internship

All his life, Jason Geter has always had to work that you might as well attach adopt drudgery as his middle name. The difference between him and those who worked hard but failed to get their feet up the ground was a sound business model and the determination to pursue those plans.

At 10 or 11, in his hometown boys his age compete to shovel snow off neighbour's front yards for a fee. Instead of waking up earlier than most, he came up with a plan: he offered discount rates to his neighbors way before winter. He ended being the richest kid in their neighborhood.

In only his 12th grade, he applied and was accepted in the internship program of the U.S. record label Arista. Although he wasn't paid a nickel for his efforts, a little detail that has been a major bone of confusion for his friends, but he learned the business first-hand by unintentionally overhearing conversations or read an important memo when ordered to fax a paper. Still unintentional, of course.

He then moved on to gain a hip hop music internship at Patchwerk Studios. DJ Toomp talked about how he always walked in on Jason Geter, his face was always buried on his books. They got to talking and soon DJ Toomp realized the inner drive of his newfound friend. A hustler's instinct, and that description was made in a very complimentary manner.

Nobody may know the name Jason Geter outside of the music industry but he's the manager of hip hop superstar Tip Harris, known by his screen name T.I.

His story illustrates how hard work and maybe a certain amount of luck are material factors that can spell the realization of a dream. Although the road he treaded straightforward, not many people can achieve his level of success without a certain amount of hustle and some solid hip hop music internship.

In hip hop and urban music, recording artists talk of hustle in order to survive the challenges in the streets-such as gangs, drugs, violence-and enable them to get out of the hood and into the life of prosperity they presently enjoy.

Hustle is also attitude. Being a go-getter gives the intern almost the license to bend, definitely not break, the rules in order to get what he or she wants. Remember when Jason Geter gave out discount coupons to his neighbors when he was just a kid? That's the very definition of a go-getter. Today, when old friends bump into him, they are not at all surprised by how far he'd gone.

When edginess and violence seemed to be the norm to earn street cred, the life of one in the hip hop music internship scene is not easy. It's highly unlikely that an intern strikes the same amount of luck as Jason Geter did. But there are independent online music entrepreneurial services that give the dreamers following a rigid hip hop music internship the power to immediately record, design and market a CD or track online. They don't even have to apply, they just need to register.

The keyword here is independence, in the literal and metaphysical sense. Free from the shackles of a major record label, and thus the constriction of the bureaucracy, the small operation proves that hip hop music internship is an opportunity for interns to produce a hip hop album and let their creative juices flow and unleash their inner hustle.