It's a damn shame that hip-hop and R&B are on their way down and fans just have to accept this shyt. Because the artists capable of doing big numbers have to space out their albums.
Meanwhile, that corny One Direction group did 500k first week no problem.
Taylor Swift did 1.2 mil first week like Em back in the day, no problem.
Mumford & Sons, a rock band, just did 600k+ first week, no problem.
Jason Aldean, a country artist did 400k+ first week, no problem.
While the biggest sales week for rappers is Kendrick Lamar with 220k. And he had all the buzz and hype of a new artist. When it used to be good/popular rap artists were doing 200k+ first week regularly just 2 or 3 years ago.
The market has changed.
True. More on that space albums out part:
Its not just because Hip-Hop fans are not buying albums and downloading on free sites, there's just less and less outlets selling Hip-Hop albums period. So even if people wanted to go out and support, they can't. The labels are making people go to i-tunes.
Mom and Pop stores specializing in Hip-Hop and black music are gone, Tower Records and Sam Goody are gone. All you got left in the US is like Best Buy and like Target and Walmart and you know their CD section is shrinking or are focusing on selling pop and commercial black music because they're gonna stock the likely bestsellers.
Consider this: Nicki Minaj said on the Breakfast Club this week her re-package album wasn't even in Walmart and Target and that Best Buy were putting out limited units. That's a lot of limited distribution for an artist that big.
But also someone like Saigon said last week, he cant find his album available anywhere because who's even stocking Indie Hip-Hop?
Even a dude like Nas who's on Def Jam had limited distribution compared to his previous joints. Remember when Life is Good was released and people were saying they couldnt find the album after the first couple of days here? That's cause the limited amount that Def Jam shipped sold more than expected. They had the dude doing a 100k first week and he did 149k. He even got on twitter and asked people to message him their local outlets so he could let Def Jam know.
Some people said even then they couldnt see the album anywhere after the first week.
So its not even like dudes are flopping cause the audience only downloads shyt or they dont wanna hear them period. Labels are just more cautious about wasting money pressing CDs.
Of course the pop dudes you mentioned are gonna have more units shipped cause they know kids will go out and buy the CD as well as download and cop all the mechandise etc. It aint really like that with Hip-Hop no more. And its crazy cause I think the genre is more culturally relevant than ever before just off youtube views, conversations in mainstream pop culture and the fact people are going to rap shows more than ever.
Looking at the numbers this week everyone across all genres did less than they would maybe even a year ago apart from them One Direction kids
Multiply them numbers by 3
