Fakin’ the Funk
Scammers have infested hip-hop by impersonating rappers, music executives, journalists and others while lining their pockets with ill-gotten gains.
Words: Luke Fox
Editor’s Note: This story appears in the Summer 2024 issue of XXL Magazine, on stands now.
“I don’t need no fraud/I don’t need no drama when you call/I don’t need no fake/Soon as I wake up, keep an eye out for the snakes, yeah” —Nicki Minaj, “No Frauds”
Mykel Hawk spotted a blue checkmark and thought he was safe. It was 2022, and the rap upstart artist from Albuquerque, N.M., was exchanging direct messages over Instagram with an account he believed belonged to Benny The Butcher. @GetBenny was soliciting aspiring MCs like Hawk to hop on a new mixtape in which Benny The Butcher would present independent artists to the world. All they had to do was send their hardest track to @GetBenny on Instagram with a payment of $500. Because his Spidey senses told him it wasn’t legit, Hawk saved some dignity and 500 bones, and skipped the opportunity. It was a good call on his part because it wasn’t really Benny The Butcher looking for new artists, but rather an online scammer operating under a digital cloak trying to line his pockets off his prey’s hopes.
“There is a whole economy for scamming indie artists successfully, primarily because we allow our egos to be stroked so easily,” Mykel Hawk explains. “We want to believe we’re so close to our big break and about to be discovered at any time, and most don’t have even the most basic understanding of the business. So, we are prime targets and ready to believe what we’re being told.”
Because wishful rappers want so desperately to land a featured verse, or media coverage, or sponsorship or a slot on Spotify’s RapCaviar playlist, they become easy marks—targets for volume-shooting con artists, who hit them up pretending to be established rappers, music journalists, music execs or media outlets.
The fraud affects more than just rap newbies. Established talent have found themselves part of a scam, often impersonated. Most scams go down on Instagram, but they can be found all over the web. Fraud is nothing new in business, but it is prevalent in today’s hip-hop climate because it affects major acts, un-signed hopefuls, folks behind the scenes and the various platforms used to promote music. The advent of social media has simultaneously opened more prospects and more pitfalls for rappers trying to make it big. And for established acts to have their identity stolen in the name of some shyster’s scheme.
Cardi B put a perpetrator on blast for impersonating her in a fake donation autism email scam in 2019. This year, Kid Cudi had to inform his followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, that someone was impersonating him and asking fans to send their credit card information to fund the fraudulent person’s “pursuit of happiness.” K Camp posted on Instagram that promotions for events he wasn’t involved in were happening and shared his legit contacts for anyone with questions. Juvenile had to alert fans via IG that a fake performance manager looking for opening acts for an upcoming show was a fake. These are just some examples that established artists and hip-hop heavyweights are dealing with.
Rising rapper BigXthaPlug has built his profile to over 750,000 followers on Instagram. Yet, before he had established a name for himself, scammers were zeroing in on him. “I was getting so many DMs from so many fake accounts that I was thinking were real labels and whatnot,” says the Dallas artist, who even uncovered a scammer taking over the rhymer’s website to try to sell back to him. “They were trying to get me to sign some type of deal, and they weren’t even the label they saying they is. They just thinking I’m going to look at it and say, ‘Oh, I know this label name,’ and just sign whatever. I was a lot smarter than that.”
Unfortunately, the constant attempts to commit fraud against him made BigXthaPlug even more wary about communicating with people on social media. “I had just stopped looking at all the DMs from labels because I thought they was all fake,” he admits. “If they want me, they gonna pull up at my doorstep or something.”
And it’s not just artists at risk. Executives have been victims, too. “It’s happened to me,” explains BigXthaPlug’s manager Brandon Farmer, partner at Solid Foundation Management. “I’ve had people pretend to be me, collect money for engagements… shows, promos, trade contracts. Put my name on it; now I’m viable. I don’t even think you can avoid it. You can’t avoid it. It’s just gonna happen. People just gotta do their due diligence and do their research.”
A victim of fraud himself, Bun B empathizes with aspiring artists who don’t yet understand how the industry operates. The rap icon has dealt with crooks and swindlers his whole career. He sees scam culture as adjacent to the hip-hop business. “We move in spaces where people accept it a little bit more,” says Bun B, who notes that bootlegging and fake merchandise has been around forever and touches all genres of music.
In addition to having UGK songs bootlegged or uploaded to Napster back in the 1990s without compensation, Bun recalls phony concert promoters advertising Pimp C shows when the late UGK rapper was still behind bars. UGK has also had to shut down “entrepreneurs” who were creating unauthorized merch of the group, selling T-shirts with their likeness, or co-opting Bun’s “Trill” trademark for their profit.
In August of 2023, Bun B had to warn his hungry fans of a copycat Uber Eats operation pretending to sell his Trill Burgers. “That was a weird one because of the idea of a fake Uber Eats account,” Bun conveys. “You would assume that there would be a higher level of verification to allow these companies to exist on one of the most prominent applications in the world. That was very shocking to me. Now, they got on it and shut it down very quickly. But just the fact that a company that large is susceptible to fraud should worry most people.”
Bun explained that he could find and shut down the counterfeit account because one of his business partners had a direct line of communication with Uber Eats. He understands that the average mom-and-pop shop would get caught up in a frustrating cycle of red tape and waiting for replies and action.
It’s the same for social media sites, on which it’s easier to set up a bogus profile than get one removed. Instagram, for example, welcomes reports from the user who is being impersonated. The onus falls on the victim, not the scammer, to file a complaint and upload proof that they are the original person, including a photo of a government-issued ID. “It’s not the fraud account that has to prove who they are,” Bun explains. “It’s you, the real person, who has to prove who you are, which is kind of crazy.”
XXL reached out to X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook multiple times to get them to weigh in on this fraud issue and explain how they help combat it since it predominantly happens through their platforms, but no one responded. Most artists and industry folk reached out to for this story did not want to comment either. That might be what helps the scamming continue—the fact that very few people even want to speak on the issue.
With the aid of technology, it’s relatively easy for an invisible scammer to pop up with a new fake profile, pretending to be, say, a journalist representing this very brand or many others. XXL has dealt with fraud for over a decade and has been proactive in combating it. Scammers have regularly posed as past or present XXL editors, offering coverage in exchange for payment. Scammers often target individuals on Instagram, using stolen photos from current or ex-employee’s accounts. They also rely on generic Gmail addresses, a clear sign of a potential scam. Genuine communications from XXL and other reputable media outlets usually come from a company-owned email address or the brand’s official social account.
XXLMag.com, for instance, provides a list of current staff members and their email addresses, enabling artists to verify claims made by potential scammers. The website also offers fraud alerts and emphasizes that any request for payment in exchange for coverage is not legitimate, as reputable media brands do not accept money for write-ups. XXL has also published articles and posted warnings about this problem on its social accounts. Rolling Stone, Billboard and many other music outlets have fought fraud using similar methods. XXL encourages staff members, past and present, to claim fraudulent accounts, but the brand usually encounters the same obstacles as most people when making claims: little to no response or action.
Former XXL staffer Emmanuel “Manny” Maduakolam, who’s now Lead, Men’s Brand Creative Narrative NA at Nike, has been impersonated many times on social media. He finds the scam “tiring.” Since 2022, Instagram and X ditched verification, and Maduakolam has been bombarded with DMs from aspiring rappers contacted by a phony Manny asking for $100 or more to get coverage on XXL’s website. “I didn’t know how big of a scam this was until I started to get hit up by artists every week,” Maduakolam shares. “I have, in my inbox on Instagram, maybe over 100 artists hit me up and say, ‘Hey, my name is such-and-such. Is this you?’ I got one today.”
Maduakolam has messaged his imposters, asking them to stop. He raised the problem with direct connections at Instagram and got nothing beyond an automated response. He posted his warning of imposters on his IG account, as did XXL on the main account. Maduakolam believes that the prevalence of scammers makes it more difficult for music journalists to do their work. Worse, it has skewed perceptions of how media outlets cover artists. “Now people think that because this [artist] is posted on this site, they probably paid for it, which is why it’s so wrong in every way. It just makes things muddled. People think this is how music goes, which is sad. They think, ‘Oh, if I can get a leg up, I can be on the site, and then I can show people that I’m on the site.’ It’s crazy because no respected magazine or music site will post your music because you paid them.”
In August of 2023, Stereogum Senior Editor Tom Breihan confronted one of his impersonators, who was charging indie artists $100 for “coverage,” in a series of direct messages and published an article about the conversation. Ultimately, the scammer’s final response was: “I’m making cool money off your name.”
Matt Fulton is an attorney with Manhattan’s Romano Law, representing a roster of musicians, including hip-hop acts, which he declined to name. He lays out how artists are legally protected when others commit fraud by using their names and likenesses. “Artists are protected by intellectual property rights,” Fulton says. “These are most commonly thought of as copyright and trademark law. But there’s also other rights, like the right of publicity, that allow artists to control how their names, images are associated with products or used in any sort of commercial purpose. If an artist feels that their publicity has been infringed, then they can pursue legal action to seek compensation for damages.”
Bun B advises established rappers to have robust profiles across all platforms. This will make it more difficult for a scammer to use their likeness to commit fraud. “It’s really about informing them about every potential revenue stream that’s available to them as an artist,” Bun B relays. “Then they can get ahead of the ball. Before someone even gets a chance to misrepresent them, they’re already representing themselves. It’s harder for people to take advantage of you if you’re already active in those spaces.”
Fulton positions the artist’s relationship with social media as a double-edged sword. “It’s important for artists to kind of control and leverage their social media presence so that it’s obvious what account is real,” he says. “You know, if an artist doesn’t maintain their Instagram page, and there’s only 5,000 or 6,000 followers, it might be difficult to discern which one is the real one. Whereas if you have an artist that really takes helm of their social media and has hundreds of thousands of followers and a verification mark, it’s pretty obvious to see which one is real.”
Fulton insists artists can regain some of their power by protecting one of their most significant assets. “At the end of the day, artists can’t control what goes on in the world, but what they can do is they can protect their brand and make sure that it’s strong and discernible,” he adds.
Unsigned rap acts with ambition already live online. Instagram, YouTube, X, formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok are their antennae for first-time listeners, fresh platforms, and their next break. They’re already searching for validation and opportunity. When a worm slides into their DMs, they get hooked.
Josh Ocampo, a.k.a. The Jackal, is one of many aspiring artists contacted through Instagram by a scammer perpetrating an XXL employee. The phony journalist asked Jackal for money in exchange for getting featured in the magazine, again, a practice no reputable publication would allow. The experience left Ocampo frustrated and skeptical.
“When you’re an independent artist, self-promotion is arguably the most important part of your job,” explains the San Francisco rhymer. “Social media has provided a platform for artists like myself to get people looking at our music, which is great. However, it opens the opportunity for malicious douchebags to try and exploit artists eager for more exposure by pretending to be writers, artists, producers, etcetera.”
These scammers appeal to their targets’ self-worth, telling the little-heard artists how their music is fire and inquiring about their next drop. “When they asked about an article, my first thought wasn’t: I’m gonna prove that you’re a scammer. My first thought was: Finally, someone stumbled upon me, and they saw my potential and talent. So, it’s disheartening, to say the least,” The Jackal says.
The second a stranger online requests money, an antenna should be raised, not blind faith. “I think about what it must have been like for Eminem, having just returned home, feeling defeated after losing the battle at Scribble Jam, to get that phone call from Dr. Dre and being told he’s heard your music and wants to fly you to Los Angeles to meet with you,” Mykel Hawk says, wistfully. “That’s how it would be done in my mind.”
Less shady business is done that way.
Read the stories on the ongoing scamming and fraud plaguing hip-hop‘s interview in the Freshman issue, on newsstands now. In addition to interviews with the 2024 Freshman Class and producer Southside, there are also conversations with Sexyy Red, Mustard, Ski Mask The Slump God, Rubi Rose, Ken Carson, Ghostface Killah, Lola Brooke and more, plus, a look back at what the 2023 XXL Freshman Class has been doing. Also, there are stories on the ongoing scamming and fraud plaguing hip-hop and how podcasters and streamers are playing a major role in rap beef. The issue is on sale here, along with some exclusive Freshman merch.
