Lot of stuff that simply isn't true in here.
It does and I'm not even a Wayne hater. I gave him his flowers for his skill set and mixtape catalog.
Wayne's mixtapes weren't normal mixtapes so the barrier between "loyal mixtape fans" and "casual retail release fans" wasn't as drastic as you claim. There were huge 50 Cent or Lupe fans who hadn't heard most of his mixtape shyt, whereas at the time Wayne's mixtape shyt was nearly as prevalent as his album shyt. Mixtape tracks were being played on the radio, college parties, clubs, etc. You can find an average white Wayne fan today who can recite Swag Surf as effortlessly as a big single.
I totally see where you're coming from but I'm using "casual" to refer to White fans who aren't really in tune with the culture. And what you said does apply to 50 Cent and many other rappers too. Many casual Eminem fans aren't even aware that Infinite was his 1st album. Wayne's mixtapes meant a lot to rap fans or people in tune with the culture. But, outside of Da Drought 3 and No Ceilings, Wayne's mixtapes were not getting bumped by casuals like that. White casuals liked Wayne for his hits like Lollipop, How To Love, Love Me, 6 Foot 7 Foot, etc. as well as his features on other people's songs more than his tapes. It was hip hop fans and the streets who f*cked with Wayne's mixtapes the most, not the suburbs.
Nor do I buy the idea that Wayne's success came at a perfect time due to an Eminem hiatus or other big rappers being on hold. Carter 3 came out in 2008 and he put up prime Eminem numbers. If you want to say Em hadn't dropped since 2004, fine, whatever. But Em dropped the following year and did less first week than Carter 3 did, by quite a bit in fact. Carter 3 did a million first week, Relapse did a bit over 600k. And let's not forget No Ceilings came out the same year as Relapse. I was in college at the time and that shyt was everywhere.
It was more than Eminem though. The late 2000's in general was a weird transitional point in hip hop and Wayne just so happened to stand out in a time where Kanye went Pop, Jay was still finding his place back post-retirement, Nas alienated people with his concept albums, 50 Cent officially lost relevance after the sales battle, Eminem was on hiatus, and ringtone/snap rap was at an all time high. There were a lot of factors that played in Wayne's favor back then. C3 wouldn't have done those same numbers or been as hyped in the early 2000's where the competition and quality was much higher. Indeed Wayne was really popular with the masses during that time frame. No one can deny that. But my point was that his mainstream success wasnt sustainable because Wayne was a bars and mixtape oriented rapper at heart and a lot of his mainstream focused hits were products of their time and aged like milk. Even on Spotify, C4 and C3 have pretty underwhelming streams despite how popular they were at the time.
You skipped to IANAHB2 like Carter IV didn't exist. You know, the album that did over 960k first week in 2011. The previous year, Em's album (Recovery) did 740k first week. In terms of IANAHM2 in the hindsight of knowing Wayne's label problems I'm baffled how you can blame that on an alleged lack of popularity. Dude was fighting for advances and arguing over bad contracts he signed while high. Beyond that album, by 2018 Wayne was still putting up big numbers. Carter V did 480k first week lol. Today Wayne has 31mil monthly spotify listeners.
C4 rode off the wave of C3 and people bought it to see if Wayne could repeat the feeling that they felt with C3. Also, C4 had that corny pop song "How To Love" which appealed to tons of people outside Wayne's core base. IANAHB2 wasn't able to ride the Carter wave and it didn't have a blatant pop song in it so it wasn't able to generate anywhere near as much hype. Wayne was supposed to drop it in 2012 but kept postponing it numerous times. If it weren't for that Drake/Future he added to it, it likely wouldn't have even dropped just like how IANAHB1 wouldn't have dropped if Drake didn't save it with "Right Above It." Hell, even the original C5 was bricking like crazy outside of "Believe Me"(which once again features Drake). All the other OG C5 singles flopped like a fish out of water and, lowkey, the Birdman fiasco that caused the album to get delayed until 2018 saved it from flopping because it lead to more hype in an ironic way.
I'm not a Wayne fan but witnessed the dominance. Let's not rewrite history. I'd argue Wayne's alleged tour struggles have more to do with management than anything else. Why launch a tour without an album and mini press run.
I don't think anyone can deny how huge Wayne was at his peak. Hell, I was the main person arguing that Wayne would beat 50 in a Verzuz battle on another thread.
My main point was that Wayne's mainstream and casual audience started to dwindle big time after C4 and that's affecting his touring ability as well as the hype for C6. Wayne was able to do arena shows at one point in the 08-11 era but now he's not able to. It happens to a lot of rappers. Wayne doesn't really draw in casuals as much as he used to and he'll probably need Drake or some other cheat code to bounce him back.
. Nothing clever witty about that bar especially knowing the details how he was tortured. The fact nobody in that session checked this nikka on that shyt is
