the historical implications of lil wayne's current popularity

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

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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.