Half Time Online has a nice feature this month covering the role of the hip hop publicist. A few of the best publicists in the business are interviewed:

“People who used to be successful at an independent level could sell 30,000 records without doing any press. Now you have to bust your ass. You can be on Conan O’Brien and Letterman and still sell only 25,000 copies. You have to do everything you can to stay in the game. That’s why everyone tends to put their publicity money up first because if you can blow someone up in press it can really work and help and in the end be more cost effective than advertising. If we get an artist a feature in The Source that’s great because chances are they wouldn’t be able to afford a full page ad in the Source, Spin or Rolling Stone. Kathryn Frazier, head of Biz3″

Need more music-business advice? Then maybe you should try asking a random rapper via an interesting service provided by HalfTime: Ill Advize.