and thought the potential for disappointment is/was there, would still like to hear Detox

>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.
>
>
>09. Codeine is treated like weed, but in reality it's much
>much more dangerous.
>
>Rappers can walk around in public with Styrofoam cups and not
>attract the kind of police attention that a lit joint will
>get. But just because it's not as much of a legal taboo
>doesn't mean there's not risk involved. What's shocking about
>how many of Texas's hip-hop legends have died under
>circumstances where syrup addiction was a known factor is how
>young they all were. Pimp C and Big Moe died at the age of 33,
>and DJ Screw was even younger.
>
>But because it's easily acquired, and is consumed much more
>easily, and more pleasantly, than a needle in the arm or even
>smoke in your lungs, it's become frighteningly uncontroversial
>in the hip-hop community. We still don't know how much sizzurp
>had to do with Lil Wayne's recent health scares, but hopefully
>it won't take something really serious happening to a star of
>his magnitude for hip-hop to get a wake up call.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>05. Freestyling is overrated.
>
>The furor a couple years ago over Drake rapping live on Hot 97
>while reading lyrics off of his Blackberry exposed a lot of
>freestyle purists. But more than that, it exposed their
>naivete. Listen to some of those classic "freestyles" that
>Biggie or Jay spit at Hot 97 and try to tell yourself those
>amazing lines came right off the dome. Hell, some of those
>lyrics ended up on album tracks mere months later, with little
>or no variation. The truth is, freestyling is its own
>discipline that only a small percentage of rap's greatest
>writers excel at. If most great MCs were forced to go
>completely off the dome, without using any recently composed
>and memorized bars, they'd probably sound a lot like Lil B,
>except they wouldn't be spitting "based" freestyles on
>purpose.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>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.
>
>
>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.


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