NEWS: Smokefree Announce TwitSpit Twitter Competition

Smokefree have announced a New Zealand Twitter rap competition.

twitter.com/notourfuture

Hip Hop and Twitter are coming together like never before. Smoking Not Our Future brings you TwitSpit, the first Twitter rap competition in Aotearoa – and they’re after the best tweet about why being smokefree/auahi kore earns respect.

Hip Hop culture is strong in New Zealand, establishing itself in the early eighties in the urban centres with the likes of the Upper Hutt Posse who produced a new, uniquely Aotearoa sound.  Smoking Not Our Future recognises the depth of Hip Hop talent that exists within New Zealand today which is why so many of the finest MC’s like Ladi6, Scribe and Young Sid were asked to share their views about smoking for the campaign.

Twitter, like the Hip Hop culture, has evolved to infiltrate the mainstream, connecting people and allowing freedom of instant expression to its 190 million plus monthly worldwide users. The co-founder of Twitter Evan Williams describes why Twitter is important when he says “the open exchange of information has a positive impact on the world”.

The one-of-a-kind TwitSpit gives people another way to express their smokefree attitude, have their voices heard and show their skills – in only 140 characters.  To check out the talent being generated all you have to do is get on Twitter, click on #twitspit in people’s tweets, and you’ll see a list of people who have created their own TwitSpits. If none of the people you follow are playing along, just type #twitspit into the search bar to see what’s going on.

The competition launches on 16th August and is open to the youth of New Zealand. In true Twitter style, each entry must include #twitspit and the team at Smoking Not Our Future will be retweeting their favourites to their followers. The best TwitSpit will score the ultimate winner an Apple iPhone, so both Twitter and music can be at the winner’s fingertips all day, everyday. There are also packages of NZ hip hop artists’ CDs and amplifier.co.nz vouchers up for grabs which are sure to inspire and twenty 2GB flash drives for storing important stuff.

The top, iPhone-winning TwitSpit will be decided by Wellington’s MC Juse1 and announced in late September. MC Juse1 is a founding member of the Welli Deep hip hop collective and has worked with the likes of Ladi6 and 50 Cent.  His graff skills were put to use creating the TwipSpit logo with the action captured in a series of timelapse photographs for the TwitSpit video which can be viewed at notourfuture.co.nz.

The competition is being run via twitter.com/notourfuture in conjunction with facebook/notourfuture.com, where you can join more than 30,000 others and share your views in as many words as you like.