Insensitive
Superstar
It's harsh truth. The vast majority of rap listeners and consumers are white, period- not just a large segment, but the clear majority of the audience. When labels, which are mostly run by white people, put out hip-hop albums, they want those albums to be catered to the majority to guarantee sales. That's just how business in general works. That means they want it to be catered to white people, first and foremost.
You think white people don't love "street singles?" One of the big reasons white people listen to rap is because it's like fantasy to them- they get to vicariously experience a ridiculous fantasy of stereotypical Black street life, which is also why gangsta rap got more and more outlandish in the first place. It's like a minstrel show. When I was at the end of high school, all the white boys I knew loved second-rate Dipset affiliates like Purple City, along with stuff like J. Hood, Murda Mook, and other artists with solely "street" appeal. Or take to the other end of the spectrum and look at 5 percent or Afrocentric rappers. If Brand Nubian or Poor Righteous Teachers did a show next week, most of the audience would be white boys. No matter what kind of hip-hop, most of its consumers are white. The commercial/regular distinction is irrelevant to that. Anyway, "regular" rap is commercial, and the other stuff is an outlier, because whatever most people are listening to IS what is regular, and most Black people are listening to the same commercial rappers that white people are and don't know all that many underground or obscure artists.
You have a point but I think certain acts like "The New Boyz" or "Chief Keef"
were entirely locally cats who made Hip Hop for a young black audience.
These were the people who consumed the music first and foremost before it got
big enough to start a movement of sorts.
The same thing that's happening with Drill music now is what
happened with jerk music.
That is that it was music primarily made for (young) black people
and eventually caught on with (young) white people.
Which is what I think original poster was getting at.