the historical implications of lil wayne's current popularity

tha carter IV is projected to sell 900k in its first week. it will eventually become wayne's third platinum album (i'm using the old, fungible def of "platinum" for 'i'm not a human being') since the release of tha carter III. tha carter III doing one million in its opening week is still one of the biggest events of the past five or so years in rap music. along with those album sales, he's been ubiquitous on the pop charts for going on four years now, which from what i can tell is extremely unusual, and possibly historic, for a rapper. and of course, all of this is happening during the most depressed sales economy in the history of the modern music business.

so, the topic of discussion: where does lil wayne's career from, say, "lollipop" to the present rank in the history of the genre in terms of the most popular that a single rapper has ever been at one time? maybe there is a definitive, fact based answer to this, idk. the last few cases that come to my mind are 50 cent at the peak of his popularity (tho he ended up burning out rather quickly, all things told) and eminem circa the trl era (altho i guess current eminem could give both the old eminem AND current lil wayne a run for their money).

hermeneutically?

jesus christ 900k?

I bought it on iTunes #sheeple

so far I'm loving "Abortion" best

it's a terrible album

I'd say the low point is the song "It's Good" #irony

I don't know if I would go so far as to call this "terrible". Definitely not very good and without a doubt the worst of his "proper" solo albums, but there are a few decent verses scattered throughout.

let's take discussions of this terrible album to the carter IV thread!

I mean eminem like 1999 - now? Just because critics shit on Relapse doesnt mean it didnt sell like crazy. Dude in suburban record store where I grew up sold more copies of whatever THE RE UP was than anything that year because it had the word eminem on the cover

yeah, i mean could you make an argument that eminem is the most famous rapper ever? you probably could. i isolated eminem in two different time frames (during the trl era & now) bcuz he did have a relative dead period there for a bit in the middle of the 2000s

but i think wayne's current run is potentially up there w/ both of those periods of em

i'm wondering if wayne 08-11 has been more famous & popular than jay is/was at any four year point in his career

i wouldnt have thought so but apparently i have vastly underrated lil wayne's popularity in 2009-2011

i'm bringing a lot of this up both because i think it's fun to talk about and also bcuz while i can just look up numbers and compare them, i think there is something to be said for having lived thru a certain artist's peak popularity, and i couldn't make a certain assertion of, say, how jay was viewed in the pop landscape circa vol 2

i mean this maybe speaks as much to my own distance from pop/rap media outlets but my initial thought for 'most popular rapper 2008-2011' would probably have been kanye but having looked his sales #s are way lower than both eminem and lil wayne

i do think the 'famous' part of the equation is a lot harder to argue, as someone who obv isnt paying a huge amount of attn to rap id argue that lil wayne is probably less famous relative to his sales figures than a # of other rappers...

kanye is an interesting case because he gained so much notoriety from things only tangentially related to music (katrina telethon, taylor swift thing) but his numbers aren't mindblowing or anything

i mean outselling 'curtis' isn't a huge deal at all in retrospect, minaj's album that came out on the same day as MBDTF is way more popular both sales wise & in terms of singles

yeah nicki minaj ~feels~ more popular atm than lil wayne but then i feel like shes one of the only ppl other than kayne whos really trying to operate w/in that pop/rap sweet spot where an artist can get legit ~huge~

those two wayne songs have been all over the radio this summer. its funny how much better lollipop is of a 'for the ladies' joint & obv what an 'a milli' knockoff 6 foot 7 is

It is interesting to think about, especially because I've always found a disconnect between people I interact with online and those irl. So its kind of like the people I talk most about music with have kinda been over Wayne for awhile, but I keep running into him more and more out in the "real" world and I'm always kinda surprised how popular he still is. When I bought my copy of IV at Best Buy about three days after initial release, I'd say 75% people I waited in line with also had a copy. I'm astounded that he's doing 900k though.

Tangentially related, my wife has sucked me into watching America's Got Talent with her and the other night they had a live performance that started out with David Guetta and Flo-Rida doing their song and the crowd was pretty subdued. Then Nicki came out on stage and the crowd seemed to go batshit, which was really cool to see. I'm glad she is finally hitting these levels, because, imho, she is way more interesting as a pop star than Katy Perry.

blowin my mind rn that lil wayne is doing these numbers

^^^yeah me too. who gives a shit about this guy still?

he has two huge hit singles -- not totally surprised hes sellin well -- but yeah 900k is insane

when ppl talk about how big jay-z is, or kanye its like

these guys are nothing in rap right now -- just totally dwarfed by wayne. i think theres a large portion of the rap audience that does not give 2 shits about jay-z

Serious question, why do you guys think its Wayne doing these numbers and not Jay or Kanye?

I mean, apparently overexposure hasn't hurt him in the least.

cuz he's such a cute lil gremlin...?

I have no idea

Is it because so much of his stuff has been on, relatively, "breezy" pop stuff? Whereas some of the stuff Kanye and Jay have been doing is seen as more "difficult" by the Top 40 listening public?

I mean, Wayne is no longer the pet project of the internet media machine, but that doesn't mean he's not still beloved by the people who aren't controling that narrative [read: non-white, teenaged, etc].

Like Twitter trending topics all day are just ppl posting about Wayne and YMCMB and Nicki and Drake.

kanye & jay are crossover artists w/ a rock crowd & id argue have lost a hold on a large portion of the rap & pop audiences

yeah, i mean, for real, the last Kanye POP HIT was fucking "Heartless" in 2008.

I mean, dont judge popularity based on a narrative created by bearded white men who cried along to Elvis Costello records in college imo

rap stations are playing otis but it hasnt been burning up the charts all summer like '6'7'

Even when Wayne's not on top of his game he's still got a Berry Gordy-level ear for the hit single. He picks He's all over TV and radio and he's been touring all year. Why is this so hard to understand? That his flow has slackened considerably doesn't make much difference commercially - all most workaday listeners ask is that it sounds good, or at least catchy.

it's ok whiney i never trusted you anyway ;)

idk i think selling 900k in this environment is an amazing feat period

True - I was just on a chart website called UKMix that discusses album sales, Soundscan, etc. There's a thread on the top selling Hip-hop albums in the U.S. year by year, and 2011 YTD is dismal:

JAY-Z & KANYE WEST - Watch The Throne : 612,911
WIZ KHALIFA - Rolling Papers : 549,258
BAD MEETS EVIL - Hell: The Sequel EP : 463,012
LUPE FIASCO - Lasers : 457,560
BEASTIE BOYS - Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 : 308,520
BIG SEAN - Finally Famous : 189,740
PITBULL - Planet Pit : 174,150
LONELY ISLAND - Turtleneck & Chain : 167,517
MAYBACH MUSIC GROUP - Self Made Vol. 1 - 150,668
TECH N9NE - All 6's & 7's : 130,063

Only 2 of these albums have even sold enough copies to go gold. First week really is make-or-break for major label albums these days, and Wayne's shifting nearly a million copies despite a leak, mixed-to-bad reviews, a horrid economy, etc. Pretty impressive, even if the album itself isn't.

P fucking sad that the best albums on that list are the Beastie Boys and Tech N9ne

the beastie boys record is zzz but that list does make tech n9ne look p damn good

i would listen to wiz, maybach, maybe even big sean before tech n9ne

argh before beastie boys i mean

Tech N9ne number is the most interesting imo. Lil B can't break 5k but Tech N9ne can hit 100k? Where is that coming from? Are there similar undie rappers hitting say 50k?

fyi not listened to TN in what seems over 10 years, forgot he existed.

"Where is that coming from?"

Juggalos?

tn came up in an underground that still bought records and still (to some extent) does. lil b is a creature of the internet in every way. his lack of sales is just "web phenom who gives shit away for free by the assload cant turn publicity into actual sales" part whatthefuckever.

Love this thread title.

tech n9ne has been selling mad records for a while now

tech n9ne also tours places that no rapper would ever dream of stepping foot in. like helena, montana

he basically tours constantly, and does it in flyover country

I work in an environment in which I'm constantly exposed to top 40 radio against my will (student common areas, rec centers, pep rallies, etc), and Adele, Wayne, LMFAO, and Katy Perry are played non stop along with recurrents like "Empire State of Mind" and the two big 2010 Eminem singles. The rub is no one is passionate about any of them except Adele and Katy Perry. Last year I couldn't find a single student who admitted to liking the Em singles even a little bit yet there they were -- huge and ubiquitous, like A/C units in South Florida. For most people, depending on where they're exposed, music really is boutique ambience (i.e. gyms are loud, therefore "Love The Way You Lie" is perfect).

with the exception of the shitty santi white 2008 ca$h-in, the Beasties album is basically a fucking Rammellzzee album for old, weird heads dude. You're like 18 so I'll give you a pass tho

Today the student on staff who most likes hip-hop -- a Colombian whose favorite current artists are J. Cole and Lupe and who's cutting his own album lol -- loves "She Will"; thinks it's Wayne's best since the mid nineties mix tape days. On the other hand he despises "How to Love," "A Milli," and "Lollipop." I guess I'm asking -- who's buying this stuff if no one's passionate about it?

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

like wayne is 'legit good rapper' + pop appeal, kanye was "thinking man's pop star rapper" which made up for the fact that he wasnt actually thinking rlly, but he wasnt a gangster like 50 ... there was a need for all the ppl for bourgeoise / 'conflicted' rapper contrast to 50 cent

imo

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.

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, September 2, 2011 7:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i don't think this is necessarily true for someone like lil wayne who moved an exorbitant amount of albums in week one -- i'm sure that there are a lot of ppl for whom carter IV is the only album they'll buy this year, maybe even out of brand loyalty. moving 900k in a week in 2011 is a REALLY great measure of popularity imo

once again tho its a measure of 'an artist we are likely to spend money on when we almost never spend money on music' which is v different than the way things used to be

maybe even out of brand loyalty

i'm going to bed now and this isn't really an argument but i just want to pick up on this and lob the whole 2011 stan culture angle into all of this cuz i think it's relevant

Drake had a huge fanbase already when he was signed.

didn't he officially sign after "best i ever had" was already in the top 5

once again tho its a measure of 'an artist we are likely to spend money on when we almost never spend money on music' which is v different than the way things used to be

― D-40, Friday, September 2, 2011 9:30 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not sure what your point is? that wayne's number is less impressive? cuz i think it's more. or maybe you're sorta arguing w/ shipley even tho i'm not really making his point

no i think thats totally impressive -- not arguing w you per se

ok

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201111/lil-wayne-gq-music-issue#ixzz1bKdbd3Xd?currentPage=all

the historical implications of lil wayne skateboarding til sun-up in ur town

yeah, idk about this guy

the skateboarding thing is only less embarrassing than the guitar playing cuz it doesn't infiltrate his music, but i guess it's kind of cool that wayne is showing up at random skate parks across the country and hanging out w/ teenagers

I'm still like a kid, because unfortunately my childhood was raped away from me because I became a star

huh

why you rape away lil wayne's childhood like that

birdman did what?

Like, people watch commercials, and they're like, "Who's gonna buy that?" I'm the person they make the commercials for. I watch them, and I'm like, "Oh God, that's awesome."

I'm not a star, somebody raped

http://fashionably-early.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/lil-wayne-face-tattoo.jpg

ever since you got them titties you
talkin bout you thinkin bout some ass shots
takin all these snapshots different backdrops

dedication 6 sounds good

I'm pretty far from a hip hop expert but he is my favorite rapper I've ever heard. Da Drought 3 being his pinnacle.

So is this album, possibly, really good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWsL43lj5QM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft4UN-Dd8_s