I just went to Spotify to see how many listens he got, and "king kunta" has over 84,000,000 streams. That is far from bad to me. I can't see how many the whole album got, but judging from this forum, "king kunta" was a flop!
I think people are confusing pop music that is generic, hot for the moment, but forgettable, with music that doesn't hit everyone right away, but overtime people see how good it really is. I remember when people shytted on "it was written", and said nas fell off because he sold out. Meanwhile the album sold well, and as the years went by, people loved it. It's like people forget how much hate that album got when it came out. People are just used to a certain vibe when it comes to whats popular, and some people just don't like music that ventures off from this path. If it ain't about love, partying, or buying stuff, a lot of people won't listen to the music. It's even worse if the beat sounds different.
Speaking of beats, I can safely say trap, and other electronic sounding hip hop is about to die, and fast. After seeing pizza hut, and h&r block, try to do the style of current rap to promote their stuff, I am 100% the rap game is about to get away from the current sound. Maybe I'm wrong, but from my experience, every time a corporation tries to do what is hot in black music, the next year the music changes drastically. I remember in 1996 when sprite started doing the boom bap rap style, and by 1997 that style was over for the new up and coming rappers, and a new style came out which eventually led to the keyboard style being the shyt in 1998. Kendrick actually did right by changing his sound, because anyone who has the trap sound, but no backing like Drake does, their career is about to be done. All it takes is someone to push the new sound, and people ready to accept it.
