Rap Music Ditches Dollars for the Cash App Mobile Payment System | Hacker News Reader

Rap Music Ditches Dollars for the Cash App Mobile Payment System

wsj.com

36 pointsbenryon24 comments

Sweet, hopefully people are realizing that Cash is the better app. Venmo has that weird public feed that no one wants — Cash is almost flawless.

Venmo are cunts, they banned me for life and refused to explain and basically treated me like a terrorist. All I did was send money to various people once in awhile to be nice to them. That was it. I hadn’t even used Venmo for 3 months when they banned me out of the blue with a menacing email about how my activity set off red flags. Like they really went out of their way to be dicks for no reason, it was astonishing. If anyone from Venmo is reading this, go fuck yourselves.

Well they are owned by PayPal so no surprise there. Nothing like trying to buy something on eBay and getting the transaction blocked for potential fraud, calling support and literally being told that there is nothing they can do about it and there is no way to complete the transaction. Thank god there are other payment processors that aren’t complete trash

Why would you send money to people just to be nice?

Theres a setting that will default all your transactions to private in Venmo.

Because no one wants it

Cash is still lacking a calculator feature, and I've had some problems sending money to people where it just errors out with no explanation. I wouldn't call it flawless. You can mostly ignore Venmo's public feed if you want to.

This piece sounds like an advertorial, and these artists are almost definitely being paid to mention Cash App.

Seems to be a bit of a non-issue. They're marketing their material to a younger audience so it is why Snapchat, Instagram, etc. get mentions because that is what the audience is into. What would probably make it a more interesting case is if the rappers mentioning Cash App are backers of it (or receive some kind of incentive from the company) I guess.

Jay-Z (and I would imagine others) has been doing this kind of thing for years: giving a hat tip to whatever ventures they're somehow involved in so that the rap advertises (advertisements that people actually go for) some other revenue stream for them.

Smart moves, really.

Rappers (particularly Jay-Z) are famous for getting involved in Alcohol brands. Make a song/music video featuring the brand heavily and watch sales skyrocket.

https://theboombox.com/15-rappers-that-dominated-alcohol-ind...

I do a lot of hardware sales online and often exchanging identities is a way to increase trust amongst buyer and seller.

This article holds up to my observation that black people use cash app and white people use venmo.

On the one hand I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. On the other hand I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make. If it's just casual racial stereotyping then I guess that accounts for the downvotes. But I thought you may have a broader point about the meaning of trust in ethnic/racial communities in there somewhere, it's unclear.

It was meant to seed the latter discussion you mention. I am not privy to square or venmo marketing practices, but clearly that or some oddity about specific terms each app has results in such a measurable divide.

EDIT: for example this divide doesn't exist afaik for uber/lyft

Why is it racial stereotyping that different communities would use different apps? As an external observer, it sometimes seems to me that one can't mention race in the US without inviting the allusion of racism.

I'm black and have the same observation, I currently live in Portland and everyone here seems to use Venmo, but when I was home during the fourth of July weekend back in Brooklyn everyone used Cash.

This article made my morning the other day for these lovely excerpts:

> “I just wanna know your name and your Cash App / It ain’t trick-trick-trickin’, you can have that,” Mr. Bentley soliloquizes on his track, referring to a more efficient way to tip an exotic dancer for her services.

and

> Rapper Brandon [...] called it out in a recent mixtape. The name of the song mentioning Cash App, “Shake It Move It,” can be printed in The Wall Street Journal. The lyrics cannot.

We used to call these kinds of artists "sell-outs."

RUN DMC - one of the forefathers of rap was rapping about “My Adidas” in the early 80s.

Nelly was rapping about his “Air Force Ones” in the 90s and how he “needs two pair”.

For the record, DMC were not sponsored or incentivized by adidas until well after the song was produced and distributed. Basically adidas jumped on an existing trend.

Let’s go with another example “freek a leek” a popular southern rap club song that never crossed over. He even admitted it. “Now I got to give a shout out to Seagrams Gin, cause I'm drinkin' it and they payin' me for it.”

This has been going on forever in hip hop.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jul/11/mondaymediasec...

Run-DMC were definitely not sellouts, they sang about Adidas because they genuinely loved them and grew up wearing them. They weren't paid until Adidas took the opportunity to promote them even further. They did reject Calvin Klein ("no friend of mine, don't want nobody's name on my behind")

Additionally, Run-DMC had tons of positive, supportive, pensive and wise lyrics about education ("I go to St. John's University / and since kindergarden I acquired the knowledge / and after 12th grade I went straight to college"), economics ("All day I have to work at my peak / because I need that dollar every day of the week"), hard work ("He gets better cause he knows he hasta / in 84 he'll be a little faster / cause only practice makes a real Jam Master"), and just being a good person ("here's another point in life you should not miss / do not be a fool who's prejudiced")

IMHO Run-DMC was easily the most inspirational and positive rap group of all time. And the best damn rappers period. RIP JMJ.

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