http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653639,00.html
The article is large, but here are some highlights:
Today that same market is telling rappers to please shut up. While music-industry sales have plummeted, no genre has fallen harder than rap. According to the music trade publication Billboard, rap sales have dropped 44% since 2000 and declined from 13% of all music sales to 10%. Artists who were once the tent poles at rap labels are posting disappointing numbers. Jay-Z's return album, Kingdom Come, for instance, sold a gaudy 680,000 units in its first week, according to Billboard. But by the second week, its sales had declined some 80%. This year rap sales are down 33% so far.I have always really hated gangsta rap and it's refreshing to see that perhaps the consumer is getting tired of hearing the same beat that has had maybe one or two notes rearranged in Fruity Loops laid down to lyrics inspired by 10 minutes of listening to a police scanner.[...]
Gangsta rappers reveled in their outlaw mystique, crafting ultra-violent tales of drive-bys and stick-ups designed to shock and enthrall their primary audience--white suburban teenagers. "Hip-hop seemed dangerous; it seemed angry," says Richard Nickels, who manages the hip-hop band the Roots. "Kurt Cobain killed himself, and rock seemed weak. But then you had these black guys who came out and had guns. It was exciting to white kids."
Hip-hop now faces a generation that takes gangsta rap as just another mundane marker in the cultural scenery. "It's collapsing because they can no longer fool the white kids," says Nickels. "There's only so much redundancy anyone can take."
Artists who never jumped on the gangsta bandwagon point the finger at the boardroom. They accuse major labels of strip-mining the music, playing up its sensationalist aspects for easy sales. "In rock you have metal, alternative, emo, soft rock, pop-rock, you have all these different strains," says Q-Tip, front man for the defunct A Tribe Called Quest. "And there are different strains of hip-hop, but record companies aren't set up to sell these different strains. They aren't set up to do anything more of a mature sort of hip-hop."
[...]
Chris Lighty, CEO of Violator Entertainment, whose clients include 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes, is looking at ways that record companies can work with artists in one area where rappers have been innovative: endorsement and branding. Whether it's 50 Cent owning a stake in Vitamin Water or Jay-Z doing a commercial for HP, most of these deals have been brokered by the artists' own camp. But Lighty sees in hip-hop a chance for record labels to generate more sponsorship and endorsements. "Record companies are going to have to make even better records and participate in brand extension. It's the only way they can survive," says Lighty. "We need to change the format, and this is the only way. 50 Cent is a brand. Jay-Z is a brand."
I question whether gangsta rap's target audience was white suburban teenagers on the grounds that I'm pretty certain singing songs about violence towards black people at white people has been on the "do not do" list for quite some time. Certainly many suburban white teenagers have embraced this music but I'm curious if this is a side effect or intentional.
My favorite part, and the biggest confirmation that rap is dead, comes at the end, when a label executive points out that the reason the records aren't selling is Jay-Z and 50-cent aren't doing enough Mountain Dew commercials. Everyone knows that if you are hardcore enough to do a video for the Ford Freestar then you'll be swimming in platinum records like Scrooge McDuck with more girls in the coop than the Colonel has chickens.
Maybe R&B/Hip-Hop will make a comeback and we'll have some actual music again.
