Nelly, the St. Louis rap vet, raised just a few eyebrows when a clip with him from SpringHill’s The Store circulated on social media yesterday. Within the clip, the diamond-selling celebrity claimed that it was a lot tougher to promote data as a rapper again when he was first popping out than at every other time within the style’s historical past.
“My period of music was the hardest period of hip-hop, ever. Ever,” he says on the episode that drops March 7. “Once I put out songs, I needed to go towards DMX, JAY-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Luda. All of us are combating for one spot!”
Each artist believes their technology has it the hardest. Drake, for instance, on his first Rock Ross collab “Lord Is aware of,” laments having to take care of a local weather during which a star’s non-public life is incessantly mined for content material by publications and other people on social media, alike. Going so far as to marvel if the greats he’s in comparison with would “ever survive on this period. In a time the place it’s recreation to drag all of your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations.” Who is aware of how rappers from the 90s would fare in the event that they needed to cope with X, Instagram, and TikTok.
However Nelly’s largely proper. It’s powerful to consider that it was tougher to be a top-selling rapper within the early 2000s than it was within the, say, late 80s, nevertheless it’s not onerous to consider that it’s a bit simpler right this moment.
Actual fast, some numbers to contemplate.
When Nelly dropped his debut album, Nation Grammar, in June of 2000, he managed to promote 235,000 copies the primary week. Not unhealthy for a child most individuals had not heard of who was driving the success of a single everybody discovered tremendous catchy if a bit puerile. The album debuted at quantity three on the Billboard 200. The highest spot was taken by Eminem who, a month earlier launched his extremely anticipated sophomore effort, The Marshall Mathers LP. Sure, you learn that proper.
TMMLP bought 1.78 million copies its first week. The second week it bought 800,000. Third week? One other 600,000. After which the fourth week it bought a comical 520,000 copies. That’s greater than double Nelly’s first week. And, for these preserving a working tally, that’s 3.7 million copies in a single month. Nelly would finally declare the highest spot and he and Em would duke it out for the remainder of the summer time earlier than each albums would go diamond.
Up to now in 2024, no rap album has even gone gold in its first week. And, positive, numbers aren’t all the pieces. Nowadays there are extra rappers than ever who’re making an important residing. Relying on their deal a rapper doesn’t should promote one million data or have a high 10 album with a purpose to stay properly. Artists right this moment have discovered new and novel monetization strategies that simply weren’t accessible when Nelly was first popping out. That’s all superb and properly. Nevertheless, it’s undebatable that we’ve much less rap stars than earlier than.
The period Nelly is referring to is one during which DMX dropped two multiplatinum albums in a single 12 months, each of which went primary on the Billboard 200. It’s the period when Outkast capped off an unimaginable five-album run by going diamond. It’s the period when Ludacris was nonetheless a rapper. It’s when JAY-Z dropped an album each fourth quarter that topped the charts and went multiplatinum. In case you needed to be a rap star, you needed to do battle with all of them and extra.
Ask a rap fan why no albums have managed to promote loopy thus far this 12 months they usually’ll possible level out the truth that Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole—the venerable “Huge 3”—haven’t dropped something. Even should you add Future, Nicki Minaj and Ye, to that group, it nonetheless wouldn’t match as much as the sheer variety of heavy hitters who had been shifting items again then.
It was, because the saying goes, simply totally different.
