By Les Seaforth
Right around the middle of first semester this school year, a big heap o’hip hop was lining the shelves of your friendly neighbourhood music store. Included in this heap were sophomore releases from Black Sheep, Fu-Schnickens, Lords of the Underground and Digable Planets. In awe of these “hard hitters” showing up for round two, I did whatever I could to get copies: which translated into dubbing them off collector friends. “Great!” I thought, “Now I can brag to everybody I know that I have these releases and they don’t!”
Until I found out nobody cared.
What’s going on? I listen to these songs in my Walkman every day and I like them. Not to mention the fact that when each artist released their first album, they became incredibly popular. Some of these guys even achieved gold status; they should’ve been able to sell their second releases based on reputation alone.
But alas, it was not to be. Black Sheep was replaced by Black Moon, Fu-Schnickens abandoned for Wu-Tang Clan, and Digable Planets chucked in favour of The Roots. In short, their novelty wore off.
Why is that? between videoplay, touring and single releases, surely a good rap artist could hold onto the attention of fans for more than 12 months? Apparently not.
The problem is twofold: neither the industry, nor the fans, seem to give a rat’s ass for yesterday’s heroes. After only one release, Jive/Zomba artist Casual was dropped from the label, even though his album Fear Itself nearly achieved gold status. Extra Prolific and PMD also fell victim to their companies’ axe. In addition to being dropped, PMD lost his independent label PMD Records—a double whammy of misfortune. So will these rappers ever get back on their feet?
Probably not.
The truth of the matter is, fans like it this way. The hip hop music industry has rappers coming out of its ears, and is dedicated to keeping the aritst-file currenty (not all the slang of ’94 is being used in ’95). As a result, fans can afford to be fickle; if an artist’s style and musical concept haven’t changed, they know more interesting fare can be found further down the rack. Eventually, Black Moon, Wu-Tang Clan and The Roots will be replaced. Something new and more appealing will come along; it always does. My beef is that it happens so fast. Crappy TV sitcoms seem to last for ages, so why not a good rapper’s career?
The Lords lie six feet Underground, but Full House still stands.
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