biggie and pac

i stand corrected

Imma be really real about this: If anything, we value sales as a whole wwaaaaaayyy less than we did during, say…the peak years of sales. It was regular, accepted, and widely justified amongst artists and audiences alike that sales is a defining trait of value with a musician. It isn’t until currents times that we actually have these regular discussions about overvaluing sales and people being shunned for doing so. Back then the sentiment was “sales = quality, no sales = lame” and it wasn’t questioned

I’d even say the decline in sales has allowed us to look at the implications of sales figures with more nuance. Cause when everyone was selling hotcakes ofc great sales were the norm, and mainstream flops were seen as legitimate failures in talent on display

I think the newfound awareness and discussion around overvaluing sales is being conflated with actually overvaluing sales. Just my opinion tho

Some people really just like the community around the artist and part of that is arguing online, streaming parties etc.

Sales definitely matter for the consumer a lot more than people realize. Sales effect budgets and when and how much an artist can drop.

2 chainz for example flopped back to back sith solo abums with stacked feats and now he is sitting on a deluxe album with a Justin Bieber feature as well as Collegrove 2 and another collab album.

Kim petras i heard basically got shelved till she got the #1 hit.

Idk but it's crazy to me people brag about and use sales as an argument when we know about stream machines

Mostly drake stans

Scape 🐐

This as well

(It isn’t)

Critical and commercial success is synonymous with success in entertainment. Simple as that

Internet. How else could you access or find other people accessing this stuff?

kendrick thread literally has best selling tour in title and another had that old white person award bffr yall was bragging about kendrick album outselling drake mixtape for years 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I stg this thread is made at least 3 times a year

Always

Sales have always been incredibly important within the sphere of mainstream recognition and pop music discourse. Like even dudes like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were talking about sales

Pac then 50 but it feels more apt to blame Drake because he has no subject matter other than success and specifically that early to mid 2010s I’m leaps and bounds ahead of you niggas energy lol

It’s like rapping about rapping that everyone used to do turned into that

Isnt drake known for stuff like marvins room and jungle?

Always has been. Jay Z went as far as faking beyonce tidal streams just to brag none existent sales.

Wow extremely well said lmao

it's the only objective thing you can say in favor of your fav music artist which isn't just your opinion

This is a very /r/hiphopheads take to say he has no subject matter other than success lmao

Because art is subjective, so the only real objective way to compare music is through sales

he has bars here and there about other things but mostly it’s about how much ahead of other niggas he is when you really just sit and listen

im not necessarily saying this is bad but it’s true lol

this is terrible logic

so many things go into an album selling or not especially now that streaming murkied everything up lol