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Hip-Hop Changing Its Direction In Shrinking Market


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The New York Times takes a look at the changing face of hip-hop, in light of poor record sales:

"Sales are down all over, but hip-hop has been hit particularly hard. Rap sales fell 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and that trend seems to be continuing. It’s the inevitable aftermath, perhaps, of the genre’s vertiginous rise in the 1990s, during which a series of breakout stars — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G. — figured out that they could sell millions without shaving off their rough edges. By 1997 the ubiquity of Puff Daddy helped cement hip-hop’s new image: the rapper as tycoon. Like all pop-music trends, like all economic booms, this one couldn’t last.

This was a bad year for hip-hop sales, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad year for the genre. The scrappy New York independent Koch flourished, releasing a couple of great CDs by major-label refugees: “Return of the Mac,” by Prodigy from Mobb Deep, and “Walkin’ Bank Roll,” by Project Pat. (Koch also released “We the Best,” a sanctioned mixtape by DJ Khaled that produced a couple of hip-hop hits, and “The Brick: Bodega Chronicles,” the well-received debut album from Joell Ortiz.)

Read more at The New York Times

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If they want to return to the 90's, then they need to learn to settle for what it was in the 90's. Lots of independent labels selling a solid 1 million, not one large label selling 15 million.

I was a bay area fan in the mid 90's, and for the most part heard very few of the songs that I listened to make it anywhere even approaching main stream.

Of course, at the time, if you weren't LL Cool J, MTV didn't play you. Now MTV doesn't have anything to do with music at all.

Who'da thunk it.

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Last year Aesop Rock and Pharoah Monch had good releases. Kanye's album was strong, Blue Scholars are worth checking out.

My new habit has been buying off of this: I haven't heard of them, it doesn't sound like; Dirty South, Gangsta, Club.

Dalek and Jay-Z had some interesting cuts, too

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