Hammer in his prime was fukking crazy
Snoop was the biggest thing in music in 92/93. He sold more than 800.000 records in his first week, more than any other debut artist before him. Right now, he is basically George Foremann selling grills status. He is nowhere near his fame in the early 90's.
PAC didn’t reach that level till after he died if we being honest. He was a superstar but 92-94 Snoop was bigger than Pac ever was alive
His biggest hit came out in the 2000s
Hammer in the late '80s - early '90s.
Dude was the only rapper who was Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Janet Jackson level famous
I think most got it covered in here. Nobody was bigger than Hammer in prime besides MJ, NOBODY. And i say this as the biggest Pac stan.
Why do Pac stans make him out to be bigger than he actually was?
Mainly because most of his fans came after he died, which is when his popularity surged. I myself was just a little kid when Pac was alive and poppin so i didn't listen to his music until way after he died. So Pac fans, who didn't start listening to him after his death, need to prop him up as this larger than life icon that was that huge through his whole career. They'll even claim they listened to him back in his Digital Underground days. Anything to take the smear off being a bandwagon fan who only became a fan after he died. I mean the East coast West coast beef was huge in the hiphop world. But it wasn't until Pac got killed that it became a real mainstream thing and all the national news and media would talk about his death. Add to that his Makaveli persona switch and all the 7 day theory stuff and his most popular album being released right after he died and there you go.
So yea that's really it, a lot of Pac fans need for him to be as big as he was in life as he became after death so they don't look like the late joiner fans they are. Knowing damn well they didn't start listening to him until after other rappers starting treating him like a God in the game, and his Makaveli legend grew, and a bunch of documentaries came out about him. Plus when Eminem made that movie doc about him back in 03' you know it brought A LOT of new young white fans who also needed to pretend like they always listened to Pac. So the bigger you make Pac look as a fan, the more believable it is that u always listened to him.
This is all just my theory of course, i could be wrong.
Why do Pac stans make him out to be bigger than he actually was?
Mainly because most of his fans came after he died, which is when his popularity surged. I myself was just a little kid when Pac was alive and poppin so i didn't listen to his music until way after he died. So Pac fans, who didn't start listening to him after his death, need to prop him up as this larger than life icon that was that huge through his whole career. They'll even claim they listened to him back in his Digital Underground days. Anything to take the smear off being a bandwagon fan who only became a fan after he died. I mean the East coast West coast beef was huge in the hiphop world. But it wasn't until Pac got killed that it became a real mainstream thing and all the national news and media would talk about his death. Add to that his Makaveli persona switch and all the 7 day theory stuff and his most popular album being released right after he died and there you go.
So yea that's really it, a lot of Pac fans need for him to be as big as he was in life as he became after death so they don't look like the late joiner fans they are. Knowing damn well they didn't start listening to him until after other rappers starting treating him like a God in the game, and his Makaveli legend grew, and a bunch of documentaries came out about him. Plus when Eminem made that movie doc about him back in 03' you know it brought A LOT of new young white fans who also needed to pretend like they always listened to Pac. So the bigger you make Pac look as a fan, the more believable it is that u always listened to him.
This is all just my theory of course, i could be wrong.
In 1996 Alanis Morissette was easily 5x more popular than Pac alive.
Her album ''Jagged Little Pill'' who came out in 1995, hit 16x plat (16 millions albums sold) in the summer of 1998. Just 2 years and half later.
''All Eyes on Me'' hit diamond status in the 2000s.
People really overrate hip-hop popularity/revelance in the 1990s. During the vast majority of the decade =1990 to 1996, no hip hop album was the highest selling of the year and no rapper was the most popular or high-profile artist in any year, even if rap singles were the top 10 hits on the Billboard hot 100, because rap was confined to minorities and most cacs were still fukking with rock music, Nirvana and Pearl Jam hit their peak then. Just because cacs liked in 1992 ''I like big butts and I cannot lie'' didnt mean they fukked with rap heavy like that.
Shania Twain, Kurt Cobain, Bon Jovi, Eddie Vedder, Micheal Jackson, MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Whitney Houston were much more bigger than Pac or any rapper in the 90s. straight facts.
Only in 1997-98-99 rap started to challenge rock as the biggest musical genre and it took the death of 2 legends(Biggie and Pac) Puff/Maze/Bad Boy/ Jay-z corporate machine going overdrive, being everwhere on TV/RADIO/PRESS and sampling familiar cac songs(The Police, ''every breath you take'' and ''Annie'') and the Elvis of rap aka Em being promoted heavily on TRL on the same level as Backstreet boys
I also think what Hammer did is being underestimated because we live in the Internet age.
He had that kind of reach in general life, you’d see him on television, at the store, on billboards, etc.
He was the equivalent of the biggest music celebrity at that time not named Michael Jackson, and you wouldn’t even have to have heard his songs to know who was.