the historical implications of lil wayne's current popularity

i said that, but funnier

Also, on the recent Wayne tour it was evident that Nicki and Drake were still def opening for HIM.

for drake he sort of did. i'm pretty sure that minaj was pretty much an unknown when she appeared on drought 3

for scandinavian goth-metal band HIM

nicki & drake opened for HIM?

fuck!

there was buzz around Drake & Minaj before Wayne was on board

http://www.seeklogo.com/images/H/Heart-o-Gram-logo-C99B5A177B-seeklogo.com.gif did it on em

Also, on the recent Wayne tour it was evident that Nicki and Drake were still def opening for HIM.

― delmar dillinger (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, September 2, 2011 5:00 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

anyway i wouldn't dispute this at all. but wayne was able to stave off what could've been a dead period for him by collaborating and even associating w/ the two of them

i agree w/ that post, just disagree that this shows any kind of special talent hunter insight on his part

i mean its also like, how much of their stardom is reflecting his

anyway i'm not trying to say that wayne saw minaj or drake freestyling on some street corner and then led them to superstardom, but he was a very early adopter of minaj, and while he did get w/ drake after he had been in the "industry" drake did spur offers w/ every other label to sign w/ YM out of loyalty to wayne (or at least that's what he said)

i don't think drake has ever been on some street corner

maybe on a set

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/6/62196/1323766-800px_de_grassi_street_sign_super.jpg

i think ur giving too much credit to wayne for minaj & drake. he jumped on when they were already ascendant

― D-40, Friday, September 2, 2011 4:58 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

ehhh this is pretty sketchy. nicki had a decent nyc buzz (which is to say the kind of buzz that tends to go nowhere commercially these days) before wayne picked her up and drake was not famous as a rapper at all before young money, maybe could've had a diggy simmons-type trajectory without wayne but i don't think either of them would be anywhere near where they are without wayne.

yah i think thats true, i guess im just hesitant to credit wayne w/ talent-scouting so much

"when it waynes it pours"

i remember circa Carter III/Drought III when he started half-heartedly pushing Young Money artists just thinking "none of these jokers are going anywhere, Wayne doesn't even seem very confident that any of them will release albums through his label"

I feel like whiney has mentioned tech 9 in like every thread this month

the album has some moments

tech n9ne's career has been pretty amazing

plus, whiney is a juggalo evangelist now

a testament to tech n9ne's work ethic is i can remember multiple times, sitting around a table at my college newspaper going, "didn't we do a preview for a tech n9ne show... last semester?"

Not hating btw

Though honestly you know who you guys hate on but was doing the same thing as tech n9ne since forever (touring and work ethic wise)?atmosphere & rhyme sayers

eh id say i hate on both of them equally -- ive owned the same no of tech n9ne and atmosphere cds lol

(2)

one of the tech n9nes was gifted though

this is a really obvious point, maybe someone already made it above, but at this point record sales are only an measure of popularity among people who still pay for music, not really a great measure of general popularity.

A lot you downloaders are heaven sent
But general popularity don't pay the fuckin rent

i'd barely even heard of tech nninene before he was doing crazy numbers for an independent, what little i've heard is i guess real aggro speed rap shit? i can respect that

Also I don't really buy that. I bet the most stolen/downloaded music is the same stuff that's at the top of itunes and the billboard charts. So far the spotify top charts are all popular pop tunes

nah im with n/a on this, i think theres a relationship between whats popular & what sells but hardly an a+b=c situation

it's not directly representational but it's not like there's some hugely overlooked shadow music industry anymore. everyone knows about mixtapes now and most of the top downloads on datpiff are like chris brown and drake and a bunch of mid-level major label rappers, with a handful of rappers here and there that genuinely don't have a mainstream profile.

you're downplaying that like its not meaningful?

like isnt 'a handful of rappers here and there that genuinely dont have a mainstream profile' qualify? i'm sure its not exclusive to rap, either

it's meaningful sure but you always seem to have this fantasy that if every person in the country had arbitron people meters monitoring everything everyone listened to 24/7 we'd suddenly realize that yo gotti is more popular than drake and i just don't see it

it's meaningful sure but you always seem to have this fantasy that if every person in the country had arbitron people meters monitoring everything everyone listened to 24/7 we'd suddenly realize that yo gotti is more popular than drake and i just don't see it

― some dude, Friday, September 2, 2011 7:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i dont think yo gotti is more popular than drake but i dont think that their relative sales are proportionate!

we've argued about this before & you did the same thing where you accused me of saying that the less popular artists were secretly the most popular which isnt what i'm saying. i'm talking about how im sure some genres & styles of artists are hit more heavily by downloading than others, have their numbers more significantly impacted. i think thats a pretty sizeable amount, considering what a massive percentage drop in sales there have been across the board.

sure, i'm exaggerating, but that's just because we agree that the sales are disproportionate but you seem to think it's like some huge gap where i get the feeling it's not quite so dramatic.

well, neither of us can prove this either way, but i remember distinctly an era where random no name no limit rappers went platinum, & i feel like yo gotti is bigger than some of those dudes

well sure, but that was in the day when tons of rappers went platinum, the bar for platinum's really high now but in the late '90s/early 2000's it was almost kind of too low

Suggest Ban Permalink

well sure, but that was in the day when tons of rappers went platinum, the bar for platinum's really high now but in the late '90s/early 2000's it was almost kind of too low

― some dude, Friday, September 2, 2011 7:37 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah but some rappers still sell. i think drake is more likely to sell to a buys-cds fanbase than yo gotti. certainly jay-z as well

i have to say it is kind of amazing that Wayne came out of 2010 relatively unscathed, Rebirth actually moving units and Cash Money timing singles/features well enough that there was really never any point when he wasn't on the radio the whole 10 months he was locked up. i really thought that was going to be the point where the world kind of moved on from him and Drake and/or Nicki started to be a much bigger star.

i think the fact is ppl respect drake as a rapper more than they respect either drake or nicki.

argh i mean respect wayne obv

yeah but that didn't stop Kanye from becoming in some ways bigger than Jay

yah but i think theres an ideological consideration there ... jay couldnt be an anti-50 cent the way kanye could

whereas i dont see the same kind of need for a drake or minaj ... maybe a minaj, idk, but we'll see how much further she runs from rapping

i don't know what "need" means here. i mean millions of people feel the need to hear their songs on the radio five times an hour, that's the only need that matters, right.

thats pop appeal, obv i think wayne's got to have more or taio cruz would be selling wayne numbers