Fansite
For what it's worth I'm going to tell you something that i was involved with back in 97-2000.
A friend and I started a Bone Thugs n Harmony Fan Site called Thugland. I'm not sure if any of you are hip hop heads but Bone thugs are grammy award winners among other great accomplishments in the industry.
Anyways, we received more hits than Ruthless/Relativity/Sony did on their site, so for a few years we became the #1 Bone Thugs source for info and news, etc. I worked for Relativity/ Sony as a street rep at the time so, the labels knew it, bone thugs knew it, but they didn't bother in trying to take us down or take the name,(note:bone thugs was at the top of the game at the time) all they said was keep up the good work. Now I know this is a little different in your case but this leads me to my next venture while running thugland, I had come into contact with Bizzy, one of the members. His manager asked if we could do his website for Bizzy-bone.com I said yeah if I can gain control of that domain, but it wasn't possible. They went through alot of bullshit to get that domain since it was already printed on his album art, but nope... they said someone already owns that. The record label couldn't do anything. Till this day the domain name is on the album Heavenz Movie but they never got to use it.
Now that was 9 years ago...maybe things have changed but I would really doubt universal would go through the trouble to gain ownership of the domain you have. For an artist who really hasn't broken all the way through yet. They could always make a variation of it (hence the hyphen in Bizzy-bone.com), kinda like how movie websites sometimes have the word "movie" at the end of the url. Now maybe it would be different if your homie was like making or breaking the label, then they might consider but rare chance.
This is what I would do, Make a dope ass website with your URL, like someone said earlier, a Flash website like modeling it after the industry standards of websites. I've been out of touch with the industry in the past year or so but I know Flash based websites were hot for music and still are for movies. If need be, make a blog off to the side using wordpress or blogger. Write some reviews of your homies music on article sites link back to your sites, do some colabs with as many heads in the hip hop communities on the net as you can,and get backlinks on other high traffic fansites in relation to your site. Keep it moving if you want to blow your homie up. But always keep this in your mind, Universal will have a team of designers, promoters, A & R, etc. to promote his album too. It's their investment that matters. Link to whatever official site is decided on, then try to get a link back which leads me to the next paragraph.
What I would do, (similar to how I got started with Bone) is ask your homie for a favor and ask him to submit your resume to the label, maybe get you on as an intern for A & R, soundscan, or Street Team. Sooner or later you just may have a nice partnership or something you can work with if you know what you are doing. Shit you can easily be the Unofficial Source which in my case people like better than the official site , becuz the record labels hardly update the sites.
Now as far as monetizing it, you may wanna think about that one. Ask your homie, what does the contract include as the labels ownership. If you are making money off his name there may be a fine line that you may not wanna cross. Blog and adsense the shit, it may be ringtone clicks which aren't shit but I'm sure you can get creative with it. If his music is on itunes, affiliate with that. Do the screensaver thing using Zango (it's controversial but heard it works), Shit I would get his underground CD's if they are under a different name and use that as leverage to get some money. There is so much you should be able to do it's crazy. Oh yeah if he does blow up make sure to always put up a message board. You need those contacts.
Somebody mentioned before something about sell his gear. That's an idea, if it doesn't cross over into the contract. Just cover your ass in all aspects becuz next thing you know you could get a cease and desist letter from universal.
Sorry for such a long message but I hope it helps. PM if you want, I can show you the flash site we did for Bone back in 2003 or sumthin.
Peace