Thursday, December 23, 2004
Loyal To The Game Debuts At #1 On Billboard
From Billboard:
So how does a terrible album with no promotion, no single and no video before its release date join such an illustrious list? Being the sharp analytical thinker that I am, I will attempt to make sense of it.
Crap Still Sells
The primary reason this news should be hard for rational people to believe is that the album sucks. But I for one have been around long enough to notice that crappy albums still get ate up like an Old Country Buffet hosting Big Pun. For example, 800,000 tards bought Encore in a span of like two days. We all know one; I even happen to live with one.
The sad truth is that we live in an era where Stillmatic sells about as much as a single featuring a duet of Nelly and Tim McGraw.
Motivated fan bases go a long way.
This can be semi related to the Crap Still Sells reason. Throw an artist's name on an album and that artist's motivated fan base doesn't care about promotion or singles: the fan base will buy it.
There's no question that Pac's name is still one of the most preeminent names in rap, if only because rappers constantly mention him on tracks, put pictures of him in videos (Got Yourself A Gun), use his verses on mixtapes (DJ Green Lantern), use Pac's name or beats or lyrics in beefs (Ja/50), or because there's seemingly a new album out every year. This last fact has become such a staple of the industry over the past 8 years that it's practically become a joke. If Sir Charles brings it up on TNT Inside the NBA, you know it's hit mainstream.
Pac's mother and everyone else who wants to use Pac as a mealticket has realized this since September 13, 1996. Afeni has literally been paying off her drug habit for years on the strength of her son's name. The worst sales a posthumous Pac album got were Better Dayz' 1.6 or so million. 95% of the game would kill for that.
So if you wanted to maximize profits, what would you do? Cut corners, go with cheap production and put out crap. After this week, it's become clear to me that a diehard fan base would buy a studio recording of their favorite artists taking a dump. In fact, 800,000 literally did just that in a few days by buying Encore.
I'm about as happy as a person can be for a dead guy, and at least the money is going to his family. Let the 330,000 drones waste their money. The The Free Tupac Movement sums up why I wasn't 330,001, and why a whole load of others weren't taking the bait.
Late rapper Tupac Shakur grabs his third posthumous Billboard 200 chart-topper as "Loyal to the Game" (Amaru/Interscope) enters the chart at No. 1. The set, which sold 330,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, becomes the late rapper's fifth No. 1 on the tally.The 5 albums that Pac has debuted at #1 with are All Eyez On Me, Me Against The World (which made Pac the first artist to debut at #1 while incarcerated), Makaveli (which came out less than 2 months after his death), Until the End of Time and this dreg. That list includes 3 hiphop classics and a disc that had 2 decent singles for promotion.
So how does a terrible album with no promotion, no single and no video before its release date join such an illustrious list? Being the sharp analytical thinker that I am, I will attempt to make sense of it.
Crap Still Sells
The primary reason this news should be hard for rational people to believe is that the album sucks. But I for one have been around long enough to notice that crappy albums still get ate up like an Old Country Buffet hosting Big Pun. For example, 800,000 tards bought Encore in a span of like two days. We all know one; I even happen to live with one.
The sad truth is that we live in an era where Stillmatic sells about as much as a single featuring a duet of Nelly and Tim McGraw.
Motivated fan bases go a long way.
This can be semi related to the Crap Still Sells reason. Throw an artist's name on an album and that artist's motivated fan base doesn't care about promotion or singles: the fan base will buy it.
There's no question that Pac's name is still one of the most preeminent names in rap, if only because rappers constantly mention him on tracks, put pictures of him in videos (Got Yourself A Gun), use his verses on mixtapes (DJ Green Lantern), use Pac's name or beats or lyrics in beefs (Ja/50), or because there's seemingly a new album out every year. This last fact has become such a staple of the industry over the past 8 years that it's practically become a joke. If Sir Charles brings it up on TNT Inside the NBA, you know it's hit mainstream.
Pac's mother and everyone else who wants to use Pac as a mealticket has realized this since September 13, 1996. Afeni has literally been paying off her drug habit for years on the strength of her son's name. The worst sales a posthumous Pac album got were Better Dayz' 1.6 or so million. 95% of the game would kill for that.
So if you wanted to maximize profits, what would you do? Cut corners, go with cheap production and put out crap. After this week, it's become clear to me that a diehard fan base would buy a studio recording of their favorite artists taking a dump. In fact, 800,000 literally did just that in a few days by buying Encore.
I'm about as happy as a person can be for a dead guy, and at least the money is going to his family. Let the 330,000 drones waste their money. The The Free Tupac Movement sums up why I wasn't 330,001, and why a whole load of others weren't taking the bait.
It seems everybody involved wants to be loyal to the game, but no one wants to be loyal to Tupac.
We are not against the remixing of songs, we understand that beats need to be updated as often they were not finished or original samples were not cleared. What we are against is the manipulation of Tupac's voice, his message and his legacy by greedy individuals. We are not against Afeni Shakur or Tupac's family, we understand that Afeni loves her son, but we are against people being put in charge of Tupac's work who do not have his best interest at heart.
# posted by Jay Dub @ 1:16 AM 
