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Personalised vehicle wraps are fast becoming a necessary first step of street promotions in the hip-hop industry as artists and record labels turn their high-end rides into roving billboards.
"Having your own wrapped trucks just puts you on a whole other level," said Revenski Manon who runs startup label "Yeah Yeah Man" out of Jackson, Mississippi.
Manon just spent $6 000 to wrap two GMC Expeditions to promote rap newcomers "Trippple A" months before their new disc is released.
Rap artists have been masters of grassroots marketing since the dawn of hip-hop when artists had to hawk demos out of their trunks because local record stores would not give up valuable shelf space.
A dazzling demo tape can now help make a rapper a star, but if the meteoric rise of 50 Cent taught hip-hop anything, it's that brilliant street buzz is crucial to success.
With scores of contenders using the old street corner tactics, promoters need something more than a "pimped out", or custom painted, Hummer or Cadillac to get noticed.
"It's a whole lot easier selling albums out of a wrapped truck," Manon said.
Manon, AKA Ski Ski, came to Memphis for the specialised body wrapping, where industry innovator SignDelivery, Inc (www.vanwraps.com), is dominates grassroots advertising in one of the country's most fertile hip-hop markets.
"We've become a headquarters for street promotions," said SignDelivery's art director Justin Baker, who helped launch the firm with a promotional job for Memphis rap titans, Three 6 Mafia.
Applying a technique born out their window-tinting business, SignDelivery offers an advertising option which five years ago was almost exclusively seen on buses.
Massive rolls of thin, sticky plastic are passed through what looks like an oversized laminating machine which prints photos and graphics onto the sheet. The waxy film backing is slowly peeled away as the sheet is pressed against the sides of the vehicle. Only the windshield and windows are left untouched.
The look is brash enough to stop traffic with stylised photos, logos, websites, and even CD/DVD release dates splashed across the entire body.
"We saw it as a definite way to get people's attention," said Three 6 Mafia's Jordan Houston, AKA Juicy J. "And we were right. People loved the wraps."
Cheaper and more mobile than traditional billboards, SignDelivery offers the advertising to a range of businesses from roofers to real estate agents, but Baker said at least two-thirds of their business is in the entertainment industry including wrapping Hummers and Cadillacs for the likes of Bow Wow, Nelly and Nas.
In pockets around the country, wrapping trends are defining style sometimes as much as the music. In a southern city like Memphis, trucks -the bigger the better - are preferred, but in Baltimore, promoters and hip-hop artists are trending toward wrapping much smaller vehicles, like Mini Coopers and Honda Civics.
Baker's company gets requests from far afield, but the labour-intensive application process restricts the company from just shipping out sheets for eager and unwitting DIY clients.
Clients from Chicago to Houston still usually drive to Memphis for the process, but Baker said he's trying to devise an even less expensive product that people could apply themselves. The innovation would allow anyone, essentially, to make his or her car ghetto fabulous.
Until then, wannabe rap stars in the Midwest will keep driving to SignDelivery.
Baker said: "A lot of guys we deal with, they're nobodies when they roll in here. But they're stars in their neighbourhood when they roll out with their head on a Hummer."
