>10. Rap mixtapes are ruining rap albums.
>
>Occasionally, artists can use a mixtape as a springboard to
>major label stardom perfectly, establishing an aesthetic and
>persona that they're able to follow through and expand upon
>with proper albums. Think of the way Jeezy's Trap Or Die or
>Drake's So Far Gone became an instant calling card without
>overshadowing the albums that came later. But increasingly, it
>feels like the only artists whose albums aren't bested by
>their mixtapes are the small number of superstars who don't
>make mixtapes.
>
>Maybach Music Group in particular has been afflicted with that
>pattern of late, with Meek Mill's debut album losing some of
>the luster of his DatPiff blockbuster Dreamchasers mixtapes,
>and Rick Ross's Rich Forever tape feeling like more of an
>event than its major label companion, God Forgives, I Don't.
>For artists who are already signed but still have to throw a
>mixtape out there before the album, it sometimes serves as an
>advertisement that's better than the product they're hoping to
>sell.

I think this phenomenon is predicated by the fact that, with mixtapes, there is little to no label involvement. Hence, the artist is able to put out whatever he or she chooses. Now, I saw that Meek "kind of" tried to replicate that with his first album (or maybe it really was just a mixtape labeled as an album), but it didn't work, although he did get some pretty good singles off of it.

As a sidenote, would I be wrong in saying that Jadakiss' The Champ Is Here was one of the first mixtapes to outshine the adjoining album? If not, I can say that I do remember that being the consensus of that release around the time of it's drop.

>08. It's better that Detox never come out.
>
>Deep down, we all know it. Every few years, Punxsutawney Dre
>pokes his head out of the studio, thinks about finally letting
>the world hear what he's been working on all this time, sees
>his shadow, and thinks better of it. Last time that happened,
>we got closer than ever to an honest release date, with two
>Top 40 singles. But "Kush" was a rehash of past glories,
>complete with a fake Nate Dogg hook, and "I Need A Doctor" was
>a depressing pop crossover with a Skylar Gray hook and Eminem
>all but taking over the record to beg Dre to put out the
>album.
>
>The album Dr. Dre would've released in 2011 would've been a
>crushing, Chinese Democracy-level disappointment. And while
>you can tell yourself that Kendrick wrote some incredible
>verses for it, we're better off just getting those on
>Kendrick's next album. Let Detox live on in our imaginations.

I don't know if this is true. I haven't heard a great producer album in YEARS and Detox would be a great swan song for Dre. But, as we all can agree in, he can't just go through the motions, as he did with Kush, and he can't give us a sound we're not expecting with hopes of chart dominance (I Need A Doctor was REALLY bad).

Now that the "don'ts" are out of the way:

1. He DOES need to introduce us to a new rapper to feign over, like he did with Snoop on the Chronic and Hitman on Chronic 2001. Detox would have been a great platform to introduce the world at large to Knedrick's skill and THEN have followed it up with GKMC, just like he did with The Chronic and Doggystyle. If that was the strategy, Kendrick would AT LEAST be double plat by now.

2. He DOES need to once again redefine the sonic footprint of the commercial rap album once again like he did with Chronic 2001.. I really think Detox would have been a great time to either do a SACD or Surround Sound version of his sound, just to once again set a precedent for all other so called super producers to strive to. If not that, at least a 24/96 version just to show how much more space it gives the mix.

3. He DOES need to give us the hottest beats we've heard in FOREVER. Just because hip hop production has become stagnant with the dominance of trap.

>07. Atlanta hasn't produced a true new crossover rap star in
>years.
>
>From the late '90s to the mid-2000's, being a rapper in
>Atlanta was a little like being a rock band in late '60s
>London: if you were the hottest thing in the city, you were
>probably also about to take over the world. Year after year,
>from Outkast to Ludacris to Lil Jon to T.I. to Young Jeezy,
>whoever ran the A soon enjoyed massive mainstream success. But
>ever since Gucci Mane fell short of extending his reign over
>ATL to the rest of the country, the disconnect between
>popularity in Atlanta and popularity throughout America has
>continued to widen.
>
>2 Chainz has gotten further than anybody lately, but he's from
>the previous generation, actually older than T.I. or Jeezy.
>And his peak moment of mainstream exposure, when he could show
>up on 2 Broke Girls and the "Gangnam Style" remix, seems to
>have already passed by. Of the next generation, Future has
>been the most ubiquitous on urban radio, but he's still got a
>ways to go to make it up to the A-list.

Well, Future ain't got enough feed to keep that one trick pony going for the next year. What Atlanta needs Is a true spitter in the vein of Outkast and T.I. to come forth and take the reins. The jesters have had their reign and now it's time for the real entertainment to start.

>06. You don't need to release every single song you record.
>And you probably shouldn't.
>
>As 2Pac's vaults were lucratively emptied out in the decade
>following his death, rappers gradually abandoned the practice
>that made those recordings possible. Many MCs kept tracking
>multiple verses every day, sometimes with even greater speed
>than Pac ever did, but in the Lil Wayne model of spilling them
>out the public as quickly as they were recorded, on mixtapes,
>features, and even unsanctioned studio leaks. These days, only
>a few rappers seem to acknowledge any capacity to edit their
>output, or hold onto a song for a while—Jay-Z's admission that
>parts of Magna Carta Holy Grail were a couple years old was
>met with shock and confusion in some corners, that a song that
>would've sounded perfectly good in 2011 was kept under wraps
>until 2013. But there's something to be said about knowing
>when to let a song sit for a while for reconsideration and
>revision, and not just the diss tracks you lost your nerve
>about pulling the trigger on.

First let me say, the fact that some of the garbage on MCHG sat for years probably shows it wasn't worthy in the first place and its eventual release shouldn't be lauded as good business practice. Garbage is garbage, whether it's from 2011 or yesterday.

Now, on to business...

The reason why rappers want to release every cot damn thing (one of OKP's biggest darlings, Blu, is one of the guiltiest parties) is because they've all adopted Wayne's World's technique for building and maintaining a fan base. ALSO, if you're lucky to package some of this output up as a mixtape and possibly generate a hit from one of them (like Wale did with Bad Girl and Jeezy did with R.I.P.) you can get REAL tour and ITunes sales money based off of that alone. The business model most rappers are adopting today is to use their music solely as a vehicle to get tour money, which is why mixtapes are like full blown albums these days.


>04. White rappers totally run iTunes.
>
>The shift from brick-and-mortar CD stores, the ones that made
>gangsta rap a major commercial force in the dawn of the
>SoundScan era two decades ago, to digital sales has had a lot
>of indirect effects on the music industry. One of those is
>that certain listeners are more likely than others to get
>their music on the iTunes store. And whether it's simply those
>demographic differences, or the fact that they haven't given
>away most of their music on free mixtapes, there's been a
>definite shift towards not just the always popular Eminem but
>also Mac Miller and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (to say nothing of
>the white R&B singers who've run the charts this year, Justin
>Timberlake and Robin Thicke). After all the hoopla about
>French Montana returning Bad Boy to rap glory, Machine Gun
>Kelly ended up with the label's best-selling hip-hop release
>of the last couple years.


Hate to say it, but it's because:
A. Their music by default is made to embrace a wider palette of the music listening populace, due to their being white and naturally making music to appeal to their hometeam and also having to make music to draw the urban population who's music they've co-opted. They HAVE to learn to straddle that line better than a well trained high wire walker. Leaning too much to the white side leaves you without a clue of where to go, a la Asher Roth (whom I'm a BIG fan of), and leaning too much to the black side makes you a caricature, like Riff Raff.

Now, the problem most black artists have is making music that can't reach that white audience who's going to buy that single on ITunes. As great as artists like Meek are, their music is TOO hood to get that buy. And, I'm not saying they should go and make a FULL ON radio track like J-Cole did with that TLC collabo, but, something like Meek's Amen was a step in the right direction.

I could extrapolate further, but, I'll leave that for another day.


>03. Only four new rappers have gone platinum since 2006:
>Drake, Nicki, Kendrick, and Macklemore.
>
>In 2005, a lot of rap artists released their first
>million-selling albums: Young Jeezy, The Game, and practically
>the entire city of Houston. But by then, album sales had
>already started to crater, with rap getting hit harder than
>most genres. And for the next few years it would only be
>long-running established artists moving those kinds of units:
>Jay-Z, Kanye, 50, T.I., Eminem, the usual suspects. Even
>2006's biggest new artists, who have since gotten bigger, Rick
>Ross and Lupe Fiasco, have never moved a million copies of any
>one album. It's pretty clear: gold is the new platinum.
>
>Drake ended the drought in 2010. But since then, only three
>rappers have followed in his footsteps. And when you consider
>that Nicki's second album actually missed the million mark,
>that means Drake, Macklemore, and Kendrick are the only
>leaders of the new school currently coming off of platinum
>albums.

Not much to add to this than to say that it seems that Nicki's time is coming to an abrupt end if she don't drop the shenanigans and start making good music, period, and, after this new album by Drake, he's on a short leash too. But, as much as some folks LOVED Take Care, it was a step down from So Far Gone and the first album (Headlines was a HORRIBLE single) and this new one is a further step. You can just tell his head and his heart just aren't into it. And, unlike all these other rappers that would love to just transition into acting, Drake can ACTUALLY do that because he has the background, so, maybe that's where his head is at. Honestly, Drake is the only one of the modern rappers that has a chance of catching Will...

I have to wait and see what Kendrick and Macklemore's second ones sound like first before coming to a verdict.

>02. Artists should turn down collaborations more often.
>
>Once upon a time, you didn't have to be a superstar to get
>away with releasing a solo single. Now, not only does every
>other song feature another artist, but it's usually one of the
>same handful of artists every time. Not that long ago, the
>game was ruled by stingy collaborators like 50 Cent and
>Eminem, who worked primarily with their inner circle of
>labelmates and only occasionally with outside associates.
>
>But that all changed in the Lil Wayne era, when pretty much
>every major label artist could get a Lil Wayne verse on pretty
>much any single, and nearly all of them did (or a T-Pain hook,
>or more recently, a Chris Brown or Nicki Minaj feature). Not
>only has this one-size-fits-all A&R approach made radio more
>homogenous, it's also flattened out the differences between
>artists, reducing most breaking and mid-level MCs to whatever
>qualities would work best on a song with Drake.

YES!! When did hip hop become this fraternity where everyone has to pretend like they like everyone else just to get sales? And, the sad part is that, some folks have extended it beyond just their peers in the hip hop game, with cats falling over themselves just to get their name mentioned in the same sentence as Miley's (that video IS NOT gonna help the dismal sales you're about to endure, Big Sean; time to step them bars up).

I think this very saddening trend is just a product of the waning sales market for hip hop releases. Cats will try anything to get that extra sales boost, even if it means courting a 16 from another artist that they personally can't stand. Everyone is hoping that getting that Wayne feature will bring some of his fanbase to their camp, but, it hasn't worked. And, to me, that was the biggest thing I took away from Kendrick's laying down of the gauntlet: fuck trying to pander to mofos with hopes to get their audience; instead, I'll rip them lyrically and musically and take them the ole fashioned way, which is how it should be. I ain't never see Aerosmith featuring the Rolling Stones on any of their songs...

>01. Not every artist can—or should—go independent.
>
>Major labels aren't the ironclad barrier of entry to a
>successful rap career that they once were, with cult heroes
>like Tech N9ne making millions and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
>ruling pop radio on an independent label budget. But those
>were long-building coups, with the artists finding their
>audience without the help of the RIAA. Drake and Wiz Khalifa
>built up huge fanbases before signing to their current labels,
>with many at the time claiming they were making a mistake by
>not staying independent.
>
>Given the kind of success they wanted, though, they made the
>right decision. It's hard to imagine Drake having the same
>chokehold on the rap game without the Cash Money machine
>helping him corner the radio market. If Wiz had stuck with
>just Rostrum without an Atlantic Records co-venture like Mac
>Miller, he'd probably have a respectable career, but probably
>not a #1 single or a gold album.

This I disagree with. To me, the only thing that separates the haves and have nots when it comes to the independent route is the drive. I think that Drake could have done close to the same numbers because he appears to have that drive. Wiz, who's career, to me, is over (after this last horrible album and his reluctance to actually work at his craft), definitely wouldn't have. He obviously doesn't have that verve and willpower to get up EVERY DAY trying to promote himself and his releases.

My most prescient example of a group not seizing the independent route when it was most viable and profitable to them was Mobb Deep. After their remarkable Free Agents album made it to number one on the Billboard Independents chart, I figured they might give indie a go. Instead, they decided to do that tripe of an album called Blood Money (still had a few bangers, though) and then we're eventually FORCED to go independent. Now, had they taken their fanbase with them before dropping that horrible G-Unit album, they might have still maintained some modicum of success. Now, one of the biggest ironies with Mobb Deep is that, on their last major label release, not counting the Sony RED release, P was still on that "I don't even have to rhyme anymore" tip. Now that he's completely independent and has to rape Alchemist for whatever throwaways he has, he's Dr. Suessing his ass all over thr place.

I still don't get how people think that making it to the top is the perfect time to get lazy.

But, the thing about being independent is that certain things that can be left to others when on a major have to be milled over like whether or not to press the red button for them nukes. Great example: With the first single off of Quik's Book of David, Luv of My Life, Quik a very cheaply done video where he obviously needed a stylist because he was dressed like a teenager from 1997 (and not a stylish one, either). Now, I think that may have been a severe blow to the sales of the album. EVERYTHING COUNTS! By the time of the Nobody video, it looks like he figured it out that you need more than a dirty strip club and your street clothes to shoot a vid. But, those mistakes can cost you a fortune when it comes to sales of an independent album.