How an anonymous UK rapper nailed a Top 10 album
A lesson in worldbuilding and superfan engagement
Welcome to Digital Waste, the newsletter that documents what happens when underground music hits the internet š„
This oneās dedicated to a groundbreaking independent rap album that hit the UK top 10 at the end of last year.
Read on for a strategic overview of CASISDEADās debut LP āFamous Last Wordsā and an interview with Amy Becker, the project manager who masterminded its chart success.
The passion in this campaign ā from the music to the marketing ā is palpable. And maybe thatās the key to this thing: a commitment to creativity and having a load of fun while doing it.
Case study and Q+A below. Itās a biggie, so if it cuts off halfway in your email, just hit the link to bounce out to the full web version. Letās go!
In this issue:
ā”ļø How an anonymous UK rapper nailed a Top 10 album
š A lesson in worldbuilding
š Superfan engagement
As well as:
š Inside an XL album campaign
šØ The importance of creative direction
šµāš« A tour of the DEADCORP Recruitment Centre
Enjoy <3
Case Study š
CASISDEAD āFamous Last Wordsā
CASISDEAD, the masked vocalist whoās been moving through the shadows of UK rap and grime since 2005, nailed a top 10 album with āFamous Last Wordsā back in October.
Itās a creative peak for the artist, whose Cocaine Noir storytelling is set to a cold, neon-tinged soundtrack made in collaboration with dark disco savants like Johnny Jewel, and placed against the dystopian backdrop of DEADCORP, an evil corporation thatās manufacturing and selling apathy.
This long-awaited debut LP ran up to number 7 thanks to its unique sonics, immersive concept and bullet-proof creative direction. And it was propelled by a marketing campaign that amplified CASISDEADās vision and galvanised the legion of superfans that have gathered round the anonymous rapper and his mythical anti-hero lore.
Hereās how the campaign ā led by XL Recordingsā Amy Becker ā doubled down on worldbuilding and superfandom to get one of the best UK rap albums of the 2020s the commercial success it deserves.
1. Execute The Vision
CASISDEAD came to XL with the intention of bringing his cinematic rap music and the concept of DEADCORP to life. The artist delivered a blueprint of 80s aesthetics, corporate conspiracies and gangland montages to the label to execute across music, artwork, visuals and marketing. CASā vivid storytelling is at the heart of āFamous Last Wordsā and attention to detail is what makes the album and its campaign so engrossing, from the Blade Runner-esque music videos and genuinely chilling social assets to a network of satirical websites and archival accounts, and a brilliant sci-fi vinyl unboxing. A crystal clear vision and creative direction underpins both the album and its campaign.
2. Worldbuilding
You enter DEADCORP as soon as you start listening to āFamous Last Wordsā. Audio scenes featuring the actors Ed Skrein and Emma Rigby (who directed and starred in the āBoys Will Be Boysā video) give the album a filmic quality and the record itself comes encased in beautiful cyberpunk artwork. The DEADCORP world is further enhanced by a press release that looks like an Orwellian public service announcement and the official DEADCORP website and IG account. CASā live show bathes his audience in the album artās signature neon glow and pre-release listening events immersed fans in the DEADCORP recruitment centre and a murky apocalyptic bunker. This is worldbuilding at its best, running right off the record and into real life, giving fans a web of storylines and plot twists to interact with. This all started two years before the album was even announced and CAS continues to riff on the DEADCORP theme months after the recordās release.
3. Reward Fans / Develop Superfans
CASISDEAD has cultivated an engaged fanbase who chew over his lore on Reddit and get hyped on any move the famously mysterious artist makes. Their passion and dedication have been rewarded with interactive listening events and surprise live shows, culturally significant merch items, spontaneous IG Lives, record and art print signings, re-issues of cult mixtapes and physical Easter eggs. CAS invites fans into the story and interacts with them in real time, causing a feedback loop of excitement that ripples across social, ignites live shows and gets items moving at the merch counter too. The deeper the story goes, the more dedicated the fans get.
4. Perfect The Formats
Amy Becker and XLās commercial team knew the album had been in the works for years and that fans were eager to get a piece of UK rap history. The LP was cut to double gatefold, including a clear vinyl edition, bundled with the vinyl re-issue of āThe Number 23ā and also made it onto cassette, which flew so quickly it caught the label completely by surprise. Becker has brilliant stories of CAS getting fully involved in promotion, spending time with fans and turning the campaign into a team effort to disrupt the top 10 and defeat the DEADCORP of the music industry IRL. The album quickly turned into a souvenir for fans whoād been on the CAS ride for years and their support converted the record into a top 10 success.
Learnings: Have a defined creative direction / Build a world around the music that fans can interact with and explore / Reward fans with cool merch and activations / Make the end product a collectorās item
Inside The Campaign šÆ
Amy Becker - Project Manager, XL Recordings
How did your involvement with CASISDEAD come about?
I DJād at some of his shows as a support act and I've met him a few times in the past and always followed him and been a massive fan. When I joined XL, CAS had been signed to the label for a good few years and they'd been trying to put the pieces together for an album. It was his first time being signed to a label and he was getting used to the structure of things, so I think he was excited to have someone who he actually knew to work with on the project. That's the only way that it works with him; he is an artist in every sense of the word! A great friendship has blossomed over the years from that.
When did you realise that you had a body of work and a product to release?
CAS is a bit of perfectionist shall we say, so there were a lot of times when we thought we were ready to go and then heād want to make changes to the mix, to the master, things that he could hear that he wasn't quite happy with, so the album took many different forms and it changed a lot of times - the album that's on the vinyl is different to the album on DSPs! At one point I thought, āIs this album actually ever going to come out?!āĀ
Can you talk about the concept behind the sound of the record?
CAS has a deep obsession with 80s music and that's how he's built his own lane and his own sound. It actually came full circle with his collaboration with Johnny Jewel because on one of his old mixtapes he had sampled Johnny's music, and obviously he had Neil Tenant and Desire and Kyle Dixon of Stranger Things, so it really was a dream come true for him to work with these producers. It's that obsession with 80s music that birthed the record and a lot of people were surprised; I don't think anyone's making music that sounds like that.
How did he and the team choose which editors and designers etc to work with?
It's always CAS directing or co-directing and it's always him extremely involved in the visual side of things. There's not many artists that I work with that are so hands-on and so involved ā at points we had to force him to be in the videos himself because he just wants to be behind the camera the whole time. It's his collaboration with Ed Skrein which really makes the videos and they're a great team. Ed's introduced him to a lot of different production companies and editors itās grown from there.
Obviously 'world building' is a bit of a buzz phrase for digital marketing; in terms of this project, was that world already in CASā head?Ā
He definitely had the vision for the DEADCORP world way before the album came out, it was all part of the whole narrative of the album itself. That was really what held everything together, because we always had to think back to: does this fit in with the storyline? Does it break the fourth wall? Is it within the world of DEADCORP? We made jokes that I was disassociating and I was actually living in the DEADCORP world because I was so into it!Ā
How did fans react to the DEADCORP world and the narrative that was being delivered?
What's made it so great is that fans really get on board with it and they love that we've done all these immersive events over the last few years. They know if they're coming to a CAS show that there's this DEADCORP element to it and it's quite immersive. They really get on board with the DEADCORP CARES ABOUT YOU slogans and I look at the Reddit and they're all talking about all the theories behind different parts of the story and how it ties in with CAS' story and how he's just built this whole character, which I don't think anyone else is doing, and he's done it in a way which isnāt corny.
CAS is a semi-anonymous artist. Was there any difficulties in marketing the record from that point of view?Ā
His first interview for The Face was quite a big moment. People don't know much about him and he is anonymous and does wear a mask, so in a campaign an interview would normally be quite mundane, but in this case it was such a big thing that it blew up on Twitter and people were so excited to read it. That was a challenge in terms of how we could generate hype and let people know more about CAS without him revealing too much. So that interview worked really well. There are conventional things in a campaign that he will not do and I think that's great and it should remain that way because it keeps it interesting, that it isn't too accessible, he isn't on every radio show. It makes the campaign more exciting.Ā
It would be great to hear about the activations that you did.Ā
When we first started putting music out on XL, we had āPark Assistā and āBoys Will Be Boysā and we followed up the summer after with āTraction Controlā and around that single we wanted the first activation to bring DEADCORP to life. We had this show booked at Southbank in the middle of summer and we called it the DEADCORP Recruitment Centre. We had actors dressed up as scientists and DEADCORP security waving torches in people's faces and pushing them around, and fans had to watch a brainwashing video which CAS put together himself. They were just staring at the screen and it genuinely looked like they were being brainwashed, it worked so well. When they left they were handed a DEADCORP security pass which was a little lanyard with a unique ID number that they could enter on the DEADCORP site with their unique ID and get early access to stuff. CAS performed at the end of the night and fans responded so well. It was just so interesting to go to an event for a rapper that had all these immersive elements to it.Ā
But it got to a point where journalists and fans stopped believing that the album actually existed. So I really wanted to do a listening event that was like no other. We decided to do something in a dystopian, apocalyptic bunker and keep the location secret. We told people they had to be at Greenwich tube station at a certain time and we had DEADCORP coaches pick everyone up. CAS made the soundscapes that would be playing on the bus, which were like these really ominous warnings about what was going to happen to them when they eventually arrived at the facility. Everyone was given IDs and lanyards and when we arrived at the venue I walked past someone and overheard them saying āit smells like death, itās so realistic.ā But that was because it was literally underground and gross! People stood and listened to the album in its entirety and, hearing it there, I was just like, yeah, this is actually happening. CAS performed at the end, which was a really nice surprise for people, and then we sent them back on the buses never to be spoken about again.Ā
Was there a plan to chart the record?
We'd realised that the fans buy anything that CAS releases, and it was his first album, the first time he'd pressed a record to vinyl, and we sat round and worked out we actually could go for a shot at the top 10. CAS really stepped out of his comfort zone and did things he'd never normally do: meeting fans, signing records, pop-ups, everything. I kept saying to him, maybe don't make it clear that we're potentially in the running for a top 10 but he wanted to, because he knew that the fans would get behind. And I'm glad that he did, because it was like an achievement for them as well.Ā
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