Ask tho, why in 2019 is there no
>black version of Adele who's loved by all those races as Adele
>is?

There is no black version of Adele because Adele lucked the fuck out. When her first album dropped she was probably seen at the same level as say Lianna La Havas... Talented... Mercury Awards level acclaim but not the monster she became.

With Amy passing there was this huge void and her essentially jumping back out on 21 as the White Aretha (Thank err Rick Rubin) filled that void.

At the time she blew on Columbia Rick Rubin was co chair and Rob Stringer (british exec) was the other co chair.

So you have one of the "best" record producers/reducers over the past 20 years and someone intent on blowing up british talent and a talented artist that can fill the nostalgia void Amy left and bong.

now...

After her success, there was another British Artist that COULD have scaled like that. Emile Sande. She tore through the UK sold millions and was very much the next big export. They tried to break her in US and at the time she was already over 2million sold in UK.

She comes here and its crickets... Not the same reception Adele had (and later Sam Smith would have). Think she topped out at 200k

Now back to the question why...

There IS a fundamental industry/radio issue that has always existed. If you have 2 artists that have the same exact song 1 white & 1 black the white artist is automatically going to pop radio vs the black artist that will start at urban and then scale or "crossover". (Streaming has helped make this a non-factor though) but in Adele's time that wasnt yet the case.

So if what can happen is a song like lets say John Legend "All Of Me" will start at Urban A/C... THEN has to go to Urban R&B/Hip Hop THEN Pop radio.

w/o the gravitas and budget it is SUPER hard for a new artist to scale that wall.. which is why streaming has become so important BUT where streaming fails you is your dope piano power ballad is now playlisted with a ton of other piano ballads... so it doesn't stand out (as it would on radio) it purposely fits in.

So in order to get a black artist like Adele to scale you have to first... get black people to support an artist that isn't turnt up in any way at streaming and/or shows then at radio THEN hope the budget (or personnel) is still there to take it to younger demo at pop radio.

In contrast

Lizzo sat around with slow growth for years. Then got a couple of Licensing Syncs in 2018/19 and the label was able to follow up with radio and marketing to finally connect the dots.. this all happened to occur in a time where women in rap is finally a thing and BONG.

Double 0
DJ/Producer/Artist
Producer in Kidz In The Hall
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