Sales of Rap Albums Take Stunning Nosedive

Foxnews.com ^ | March 1, 2007 | Foxnews.com

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

NEW YORK — Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.

The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society.

[Publius6961]

The crackheads died off, the Gangstas all killed each other, and everyone else grew up.

Well...
Not everyone.

Some, specially in advertising, haven't come out of their coke-induced haze long enough to realize the crap is obnoxious.
I have never used the mute buttons on my remotes as much as I have in the last couple of years.

Any commercial that has that irritating loud noise is instantly muted, or the channel changed.

There is at least one watchable "new" (recycled) series which I would enjoy watching regularly, were it not for the obnoxious, badly mixed noise mixed into the program. I may stop watching it altogether soon.

How can the idiots that do that be so clueless?
No I will not mention names. I will not give them that satisfaction. They must know who they are!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

All of the "Founding Fathers" of rap are either dead or in prison, aren't they? Not the best Business Plan if you ask me, LOL!

[Rastus]

daily I am assaulted by boom box cars going by my house with white kids, hats on crooked, blasting this

Reminds me of a line from Billy Joel's "Close to the Borderline":

I get attacked by a kid with stereo sound
I don't want to hear it but he won't turn it down

I have some idiot in the neighborhood who likes to drive by at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning with enough bass to rattle my windows.

[CAPTAINSUPERMARVELMAN]

May it continue to do so...at a much faster rate.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Here's one guys take on this;

"Rap is more like song. Spoken word is more like poetry."
http://www.msu.edu/~miazgama/spokenword.htm

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[onedoug]

"Jungle Friend?..."

[HIDEK6]

Yeah, but Ding-Dong-Daddy didn't bus' a cap in anybody's azz, did he?

Maybe not, but his woman had a "whumpus kitty."

[HIDEK6]

"Rap is more like song. Spoken word is more like poetry."

That comment is so inane, it had to have been made by a professor.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Rap today is what country music was 30 years ago. Instead of losing a horse, a divorce, and driving your pickup truck, it's killing cops, yakkin' 'bout your ho, and bling-bling.

[Mark]

Rap is to music as etch-a-sketch is to fine art.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Acts like The Beastie Boys and Run DMC, and others at that time, just made the genre more mainstream, popularized in the early 1980's by the launch of MTV and Yo! MTV Raps. Rap music for the most part before then was underground.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Rap was around in the 20s.

That was called an "influence". Every artist in every genre has them.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Well...the Beastie Boys are going 20yrs. strong and Outkast is heading in the same direction, Ice Cube has been around since the late eighties as well. Like every other genre of popular music there are quality artists as well as manufactured hacks.

Artists who can't adapt won't survive. Artists packaged and marketed by the powers that be at record companies and MTV are all just flash in the pan.

[BigSkyFreeper]

I think it has been at least that long since MTV had a music video.

I think the last time they really showed videos on MTV is when they axed Headbanger's Ball. Around about that time, The Real World premiered.

[BigSkyFreeper]

And Will Smith isn't even thought of as a rapper anymore.

As a rapper he was known as The Fresh Prince, as an actor he's known as Will Smith.

[BigSkyFreeper]

The only thing the Beastie Boys did was to revive Aerosmith's career.

That was Run DMC, "Walk This Way".

[BigSkyFreeper]

I thought it was Blondie who introduced Rap to mainstream America.

Blondie wasn't even an rap act. Blondie is categorized as a new wave act.

[Calvin Locke]

Thanks. I came across that site a month or so ago.