In just 6 months, the hottest act in hip-hop is free falling into obscurity, when’s the last time we seen some s*** come and go by this fast? It feels like he blew up an eternity ago but it was only in the first half of the year

In December he drops date @ 8 and skyrockets in popularity, then in January he’s in the middle of a major label bidding war with him eventually signing with gamma. By February, he’s getting co-signs from A-listers like SZA and Timbo, f***ing Drake and Kanye (in the middle of his Vultures rollout mind you) are damn near having a full-fledged arms race over who can take this nigga under their wing first. There’s literally a video of Ye called this dude the hottest up and coming artist around that time

At his peak he had 16m monthly listeners in April and is now down to 5.5m in December, that’s over an 8% loss in listeners per month since dropping his album that has a Kanye feature. Not only this but he still has had several huge features back to back like Usher and Lil Baby that did virtually nothing to slow down his decline

Almost feels like we got a raw look at how the industry chews people up and spits them out. Obviously, he didn’t blow because he was uniquely talented, he just had a crazy amount of buzz that others leeched off of but now that that’s the gone he’s of no use to anybody. Like what even happened with that OVO deal? Was it just a one-song deal so Drake could take a disable chunk of the royalties from date at 8 in exchange for more exposure? Did it blow up bc he put Ye on the tape? Idk

Bizarre isn’t even the word to describe how weird his situation is

the hype was completely manufactured and no one was listening to this dude in real life

That’s not even the part that’s strange to me cuz I didn’t think he was good either

The weird part is how the industry flocked to this dude and just left him in the dirt in only a couple months

Meme artist who makes meme music no longer means anything
How shocking

actual answer:

him and ian have the same manager (Bu)

dude used his industry connections to get 4batz a drake & ye feature, both flopped, and he moved on to ian as that's resonating with people more

And soon someone will make the exact same thread about him

I’m aware of this plus what he’s doing with Sailorr right now but I still find it uncanny that he can get so much attention and mostly lose it all so rapidly

Also I doubt Bu was able to network his way into Kanye feeling the way he felt about him

Yoo I forgot about him

Tf?

not only is bu also ian’s manager he’s kanye’s manager and akon’s brother

Woah

This I did not know wtf

yeah bu is industry as hell he was running konvict music when akon started it and now he’s at columbia someone i know there says he’s good to work with so he’s probably built a lot of good will over the years and might be one of the secrets to akon’s great ear

That nigga Bu running an assembly line churning out these fly-by-night artists

This year alone we got:
4Batz
Ian
Sailorr (who’s hot as hell rn)

They all blow rapidly but none have been able to be stick really

Regardless of the music quality his marketing is A1 cuz this is crazy

Reminds me of the SOD hype

sometimes you just gotta make a bunch of moves you don’t wanna miss out on anyone so you put a battery behind someone for 6 months at a time or something. like back in 2016-2018 we had lucian grainge son handling 10k projects signing a bunch of people and a few got big, we had a bunch of colored haired guys making songs over ronny j type beats, it’s just how it is

nigga tried dropping in the middle of peak Drake vs Kendrick, it was all over 💔

hottest act in hip hop?

Thank God that dream is over

His hype was “shiesty wearing hood nigga with the heavily engineered voice of an angel haha what that’s a crazy combo” gimmick so it’s not surprising it got old fast with the repetitive music.

It was RMR all over again

The music wasn't that good, had no hunger + manufactured hype

Trust me I’m a day one denier of this guy I knew he was a pack of ass

I’m more so surprised at how quick the industry itself moved on from him than the fans

Take for instance a guy like Teezo who sucks to a lot of people but he’s still hanging in there

I think with Teezo, although not my kinda artist either, has way more potential to spice up a track than someone like 4Batz. Can’t stand him but even his little parts on something like FATD sounded amazing to me.

Batz was pretty much just all eggs in the basket of ‘social media viral’ with 0 plans of actual artistic growth or at least some kind of change. That’s what managers were counting on and it just immediately sunk I guess.

Emphasis on the repetitive part

His album sounds like one extended song