Once again, Ozone Magazine and TJ’s DJ’s pulled off another successful conference and Award show. It all took place August 10-12, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency in beautiful Downtown Miami, Florida.  Thousand s of people including artists, models, dancers, photographers, promoters, labels, magazines, videographers, and more literally flooded the streets. There were promotional posters everywhere you would turn, wrapped vehicles, and what seemed to be an endless amount of independent artists handing out their CD’s. Whether you were from up north, mid west, or the south, it was very clear that the TOA2 conference was the place to be! Our press pass got us in every event and all access to anywhere we would want to go.  The only thing that I wish would have been different is not having the panels overlap. Although it was better organized than the previous year’s panels where there were three and four conferences  at the same time, It still was not possible to take advantage of all the knowledge that was being shared unless you brought your clone along, and mine had stayed n Orlando so I was out of luck. Out of the panels that I got to attend the two that I got the most out of was the producer’s panel and the DJ Panel. In the Producer panel there were power players like Play n Skills, Nitti, Pollow Da Don, Nasty Beatmakers giving priceless advice on how to make it in the business. The main idea that they all shared is that building relationships is the best thing that you can do to be successful. “Money doesn’t mean a thing,” said Pollow, who credits his getting big to Super producer Timbaland, who shopped his stuff.   “A relationship is worth more than anything else, because you can always scratch each other’s back, said Pollow who scored major recognition by signing and producing Rich Boy’s mega hit ‘Throw some D’s.’  Producer Nitti, the one responsible for Yung Joc’s “It’s going down” got started by a girl who gave him rapper 8Ball’s  phone number. He then went on to get signed to So So Def by JD with no advance at all. “You make more money off publishing from ringtones and downloads than royalties,” said Nitti.  When asked what would it take for a new artist to work with you besides “lots of money, cause I’m very expensive,” like Mannie Fresh said, the Nasty Beatmakers said you have to “work your project, and be ready on the spot!”

On the DJ panel there were representatives from Hitmenn DJ’s, Core DJ/s, Bum Squad DJ’s, Heavy Hitters, and the Murder Mami’s.  You could feel the tension in the air and it was very interesting to hear the way that each crew expressed themselves.  Amongst the many topics that were discussed and debated about, they all seem to agree on preferring to get music sent to them as mp3’s and not listening to  any CD’s from artists with sharpie writing on it. “Burn @ at least 192, and 256 is the shit, “  advised Tony Neal, head of The Core DJ’s.  Heavy Hitter Felli Fell spoke about being careful how you treat the DJ’s because “even though we might be on different DJ crews, we are all connected, and will shut you down if we want,” said Felli Fell. When the topic of top websites for building buzz came up these were the ones mentioned: Allhiphop.com, nahright.com, Tjdjs.com,  concreteloops.com, mediatakeouts.com, onsmash.com, ughh.com, rapmullet.com, and a few others.

Overall, it was a great weekend! Very rarely do you get a chance to interact with the stars and for TOA2, not only were  there many stars giving advice, but they were also interacting with the attendees, taking pictures, accepting material and giving out contact information.  Can’t wait until the next one!