So the indie left field experimental **** won ?

[ChemicalBk]

Kendrick #1 selling rapper this year

The Weeknd 100,000 first week

Frank 180k+ first week

Music wise they been holding it down doing their thing with no real attempts at mainstream cop outs while niccas like Usher and Chris Brown doing techno been flopping..

 

[AgentGrey]

They all had mainstream cosigns to get them poppin tho

 

[Rominati]

They all had mainstream cosigns to get them poppin tho

 

[Greenstrings]

They all had mainstream cosigns to get them poppin tho

That's not the issue. Superstars like Usher and Brown don't need cosigns.

The point is you don't have to compromise your art to reach a wider audience.

 

[Capitol]

It's a good thing that people who try to ride the wave flop. It's spitting in the face of your fans when you try to go out of your way to hop on some other shyt when thats not what the fans want from you. at everybody adding that nut ass dubstep shyt to random parts of songs now

 

[AgentGrey]

That's not the issue. Superstars like Usher and Brown don't need cosigns.

The point is you don't have to compromise your art to reach a wider audience.

The point I was making is that you wouldn't know who these nikkas are without the cosign.. That cosign was given by people who "compromised their art"

So is it safe to say that these nikkas would be another datpiff mixtape you furiously scroll past if not for the mainstream cosign?

We'll never know the answer, but be reality breh. You think the Weeknd would've came up that much without Drake?
K.Dot. without Dre?
Frank Ocean without all them OFWGLKadjsb nikkas?

 

[Greenstrings]

The point I was making is that you wouldn't know who these nikkas are without the cosign.. That cosign was given by people who "compromised their art"

So is it safe to say that these nikkas would be another datpiff mixtape you furiously scroll past if not for the mainstream cosign?

We'll never know the answer, but be reality breh. You think the Weeknd would've came up that much without Drake?
K.Dot. without Dre?
Frank Ocean without all them OFWGLKadjsb nikkas?

This inevitably turns into a chicken or the egg argument.

"The cosigns woudn't have come if there wasn't alreadybuzz surrounding the high quality music."
vs
"The quality of the music wouldn't have mattered without the cosigns."

The first is most definitely true. People were making noise about Frank Ocean and The Weeknd long before any popular artist gave their 2 cents worth and artists like to attach themselves to what is seen to be popular and trendy.

They were attracting millions of youtube views within a few months of the release of their first mixtapes without any kind of promotion, both were tumblr releases. How many datpiff struggle artists can you say that about?

What I'm saying is the talent and the buzz nearly always comes first in these situations.

Dre wouldn't have put so much effort into Kendrick if he hadn't been blowing people away with his mixtapes.

Its easy to see how much Drake's own sound has been influenced by The Weeknd's.

And you could easily argue that Frank Ocean has done a lot more for OF than they've done for him. He was in no way new to the industry and his hype carried theirs as it was dying out and helped them branch out into the black/female demographic in a way that they simply couldn't do before.

 

[Harry B]

Kids are just tired of all the fake and phony industry fukkbirds lacking innovation, a non-manufactured character etc.. That's the effect of the internet. The Weeknd didn't even show his face and all that in the beginning, he just dropped the illest music. Same with Kendrick, same with Drake, same with Cole, Frank Ocean might've slipped with obscure homo story but he still dropped a unique dope ass album.

Then you look at the average cats (legends but average today) like Ne-yo and Usher , embarrassing after listening to Weeknd and Frank Ocean. Or the rappers copying each other or whoever is hottest.. It's only right that these dudes are winning.