Steve Stoute: "The older generation didn't care about lyrics. That's why Illmatic took 5 years to go Gold. G Rap never got rewarded for lyrics"

[African Peasant]

For cat talking about the labels should have pushed your favorite lyricist...

Let's look at Illmatic

It's not like Columbia didn't try.

Illmatic has 4 singles - more than half the album if you include Half Time - which was also a single.

1) It ain't hard to tell - It had a damn Michael Jackson sample and a video


And it had dope a remix....that nobody played.

2) Life's a Beach - no video

But I've got the 12".

Most West Coastalicious thing on the record - zero airtime.

3) The World Is Yours



Even the remix had a video



4) One Love



And Columbia had 5 mics in the source.

So let's look at Columbia promoting a lyricist, because he was a lyricist

• Damn near 5 singles
• 4 Videos
• Instant Classic from The Source

What more could they have done?

How else could they have pushed it?

No one was buying lyrics for lyrics sake.

Meanwhile, Biggie a lyricist, had to take the Radio approach with Mtume's Juicy Fruit (an already uber popular song reworked into Juicy, much like Sugar Hill Gang reworked Chic's Good Times)

And he goes platinum in 2 months.

As much as this board likes to talk about "industry plants" and "manufacturing hits and artists", and all that type of stuff - the labels can't MAKE anything.

Believe me. I've been privy to those meetings. Been on the phone with reps, in person with A&R's, talked to hella artists.

You know they put 2 Million Dollars into Lil Zane



Stole Pac's flow
Got the industry writers and producers.



2 MILLION DOLLARS

Your whole argument is built on a confusion.

Lyrical albums selling less than commercial does not mean people did not care about lyrics.

A being more like than B does not mean that B is not liked.

And also, who can claim that a rapper like BIG wasn't lyrical?

 

[WIA20XX]

Your whole argument is built on a confusion.

Lyrical albums selling less than commercial does not mean people did not care about lyrics.

People didn't care enough to spend their hard earned money.

They'll put a cat in a top 100 list, and never buy an album.

A being more like than B does not mean that B is not liked.

And also, who can claim that a rapper like BIG wasn't lyrical?

Nobody claimed Big wasn't lyrical - he just didn't sell off of his lyrics.

He needed R&B flavored radio friendly stuff for people to rock with him.
So much of the East Coast had to sell out to compete with radio friendly West Coast and the South.

Steve's argument is quite simple.

The vast majority of people that buy albums, don't buy albums because of their lyrics.
Lyricists don't sell now, because they never sold THEN.
Lyricists don't sell.

The upshot is, if a rapper actually puts some time and energy into the rap - it's just for him, because the people that buy albums, go to concerts, cop t-shirts - etc - most of them don't care about lyrics.

You might find a bunch of loud people on the internet, but those cats never mattered.

It's a shame so many of them are in the hip hop media, because that "Stretch and Bobbito" mindset distorts the whole genre.

 

[NZA]

liquid swords went gold within one year. that album is arguably far more niche and 'hoe-scaring' than illmatic

 

[Harry B]

I love when old heads troll their own generation

People say women are emotional haven’t seen internet brehs from the 90s

 

[O.Red]

With Ice Spice and Mac Miller in the background, He basically proves Steve Stoute's point in like a dozen ways.

Sad that his rhetorical skills are weak, but this was a lost cause to begin with.

Mac Miller was a great lyricist, and Ice Spice is on minute 14 of her career

 

[African Peasant]

People didn't care enough to spend their hard earned money.

They did.

ONce again, selling less does not mean not selling. If they weren't buying, Illmatic would've never went gold.

Same confusion and lack of nuance.

 

[African Peasant]

People didn't care enough to spend their hard earned money.

They'll put a cat in a top 100 list, and never buy an album.



Nobody claimed Big wasn't lyrical - he just didn't sell off of his lyrics.

He needed R&B flavored radio friendly stuff for people to rock with him.
So much of the East Coast had to sell out to compete with radio friendly West Coast and the South.

Steve's argument is quite simple.

The vast majority of people that buy albums, don't buy albums because of their lyrics.
Lyricists don't sell now, because they never sold THEN.
Lyricists don't sell.

The upshot is, if a rapper actually puts some time and energy into the rap - it's just for him, because the people that buy albums, go to concerts, cop t-shirts - etc - most of them don't care about lyrics.

You might find a bunch of loud people on the internet, but those cats never mattered.

It's a shame so many of them are in the hip hop media, because that "Stretch and Bobbito" mindset distorts the whole genre.

This is not the same as saying that people did not care about lyrics.

The Hip-Hop crowd did. The general public cared less.

Stoute's statement is too broad to be meaningful. This is what happens when someone is less interested in explaining the truth than pushing an agenda.

 

[Woodrow]

He's not wrong.

yes he is wrong. the older generation did care. but the audience segment that cared didn't pay for music (bootlegs, dubs, etc etc) to the same degree as other demographics. it was the difference between going gold, and going multi-platinum. which is why hip hop began catering to the portions of the demo that bought MORE albums: women, the clubs, shock hip-hop, etc.

but even then, the difference between one-hit wonders (skeelo, for example) and artists that stuck around (LL) was often tied to authenticity, and lyrical ability.

illmatic's biggest problem was the same as i am.. it got bootlegged to death in advance of an official release.

 

[Knicksman20]

Stoute is a dumbass for this statement.

He's always been such an unlikable nikka over the years too. Side note & I know his wife........real well lol. She's from Long Island too

 

[FunkDoc1112]

Is something wrong in Stoute's head, like 4real? I know dude in the music business but dude
literally only sees $$. Dude been mentally fukked in the industry.

Even Lyor got more love for the hip-hop culture than this dude.

I actually work with two girls that used to work at his ad agency and they both said he's a dikkhead

 

[KillKenny]

Yeah he's right, thanks god for GenZ being so lyrical they went back and praised Nas. I guess that's why he was successful later on.

Lyrical was never more praised than that era

 

[TripleAgent]

The consumate sellout nikka. Ol' Scarf Hands. Word to Combat Jack (RIP)

 

[surv2syn]

Stoute makes some wild claims in the fact that they can be seen as both true and false depending on how you look at things. I think he says stuff like this to create controversy. Mainstream definitely does not care about lyrics. Somehow he managed to intertwine Mainsteam heads with old heads and I dont really get that correlation. Old heads like me, if it aint about lyrics I dont want to hear the shyt. PERIOD. Now what is lyrics? Lyrics to me is a person who can flat out rhyme, use words, patterns, entendres, etc...but I loved Too Short from the moment I heard him. He isnt the same type of lyricist as G Rap but he caught my ear with his simplistic, vivid, and sometimes humorous lyrics. Lyrics dont have to be COMPLEX although I prefer them to be. Illmatic still a largely underground record that had major label success. The purists and the Nas fans bought it...point blank.

Like I said, Stoute does this. Like when he said AZ didnt have enough talent....I can say that to be true and false to different degrees. He absolutely had the talent vocally but songmaking/direction/A&R/creativitity he needed some help in that area. Its just not cut and dry to say he didnt have enough talent. It was more like he was imbalanced.

 

[JustCKing]

My go to example is Aaliyah's third album. We Need a Resolution dropped in April and that album (released in July) was performing badly before her the "Rock the Boat" video shoot and her death a month later.

People run with the narrative thatbit performed badly, but never consider this:

Aaliyah sold 189K in her first week with "We Need A Resolution" peaking at #59. Comparatively, Usher's 8701 did 210K with a #1 single around the same time. Aaliyah was gold before she died. She died less than a month into the album cycle. I'm sure what kind of numbers her label was expecting her to do, but an artist going gold in less than a month without a run away hit in 2001 was nothing to scoff at. Especially an artist who hadn't had an album in 5 years. This is hardly the same as Illmatic.

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

People run with the narrative thatbit performed badly, but never consider this:

Aaliyah sold 189K in her first week with "We Need A Resolution" peaking at #59. Comparatively, Usher's 8701 did 210K with a #1 single around the same time. Aaliyah was gold before she died. She died less than a month into the album cycle. I'm sure what kind of numbers her label was expecting her to do, but an artist going gold in less than a month without a run away hit in 2001 was nothing to scoff at. Especially an artist who hadn't had an album in 5 years. This is hardly the same as Illmatic.

And coming off “One In a Million” that was a disappointment. Don’t care how much time was in between. Aaliyah was an established artist by that third album. Her core audience pushed that album to gold. Her label got radio to thank for pushing it gold cause the people demanded to hear “Rock the Boat”