While I agree with the spirit of your point, I guess its making increasingly less sense when those artists with the billboards and the interviews, and the “push” that you undoubtedly get from being on a Major doesn’t translate to actual numbers when it comes to sales and streams. YG put out an album on Def Jam in 2022 that, one would think, comes with all of those bells and whistles, and it sold 13k first week. Glorilla put out an album on Interscope the same year that sold 28K. Freddie Gibbs major label debut sold 21K. Meanwhile Nas outsold all of them with Kings Disease 3 on his own label. And if you say “Nas is a legend, his fanbase will always support him” then ok, fair. But where’s the artist development that would help Freddie, Benny, Glo, YG, etc get to that level? Where’s the upward progression? Where’s the guarantee that these artists careers actually MEAN something?
I just don’t see what all the hoopla is about when these artists on majors are struggling to move units. Kendrick Lamar is who he is because TDE had a GREAT strategy for him and by the time he got to Interscope he was about as much of a sure thing as it got. Drake is who he is because even when labels didn’t believe in him and he and his writers were trying to get on, Lil Wayne saw the potential. Roc Nation did one of the smartest things with J.Cole that could have been done with a newer artist at the time, put him on tour for two years straight years so that he could build his fanbase up, now he’s got the most loyal fanbase in hip hop. It just seems like all of the actual success stories we’d had in the last decade have come in SPITE of major labels and not because of them. People scream “Plant!” For damn near everyone nowadays but besides perhaps Jack Harlow, the labels are doing a TERRIBLE job at “planting” artists to success
