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"

[FunkDoc1112]

Another one from that era

Yeah...the intro to the second video captures it well. The reason why bootlegging is so prominent in NYC in particular is because the city is not only the media capital of the world, but the immigrant capital. Hustle culture + converging point of all the media pipelines = selling bootlegs as an easy lick for people trying to get their feet off the ground in the city.

shyt, I walk down Canal street to work...streets lined up with African nikkas selling every damn thing.

 

[WIA20XX]

Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt are like building your house out of bricks instead of hay. Bricks take longer but have a stronger foundation. Would Nas be Nas without Illmatic in his catalogue?

If he put out It Was Written and never put out Illmatic, he might be a bigger artist than he is today.
He wouldn't keep trying to remake an album that never sold, and focus on making records that people want to hear.

Without Illmatic...he could have also been Mic Geronimo or Royal Flush or Roc Marciano.....

 

[O.Red]

Cats didn't buy Big L.
They didn't buy Lord Finesse.
They didn't buy Lord Tariq
They didn't buy Jay until he went pop.
They didn't buy Nas until he went pop.
They didn't buy anything with Black Thought.
They didn't buy Hiero, Alkaholiks, Ras Kass, Freestyle Fellowship, Chino XL.
They didn't buy Kurupt.
They didn't buy K-Rino.
They didn't buy Common Sense.

They didn't buy Joe Buddens, lol.

They stopped buying Kane.
They stopped buying Rakim.
They stopped buying KRS.

Chuck D? Kool Keith? LOL

If Pun didn't do the remix of I'm not a Player with Joe - they would not have bought him either.

They didn't buy KMD and sure as hell as not buying MF Doom.

TBH, that's okay.

Hip Hop is a party music, made for partying.

Sitting back and listening to an album, trying to understand what the artist is saying on a deeper level, the artist even trying to make some "art" - is how folks deal with rock music, and anything else that's album oriented.

Steve is in the business of selling the culture - and he's telling you what sells now and what sold then.
Yet cats don't want to a listen to a guy that got rich on selling hip hop, about selling hip hop....

True but the only exception I offer here is Doom. Doom actually became very popular in the 2010s. He just became popular in an unorthodox way, which is fitting given who he is

People really underestimate how much Adult Swim exposure did for Doom's career, not to mention the fact that he's one of the purest examples of "your favorite rappers favorite rapper" and people started to realize it

Doom gets love from people of all walks of life, especially if you spent your formative years with Adult Swim on your TV at night from 2006-2012

 

[shopthatwrecks]

NYC was the bootlegging capital

but why nas didnt move elsewhere

if he could spit nikka elsewhere was gone listen regardless...

 

[WIA20XX]

BIG AND SNOOP WERE LYRICAL

NAS AND RAS KASS DIDN'T
HAVE THE PRODUCTION THAT
CONNECTED TO THE MASSES.





​

Nas figured it out with album #2 - but if you need Puffy on the beat and Lauryn Hill on a chorus to sell a record - were folks buying it because of your lyrics?

Ras Kass got Dr Dre, arguably IN HIS PRIME - and that still failed, horribly.

 

[CHICAGO]

Clown shyt. He’s acting like taking his shyt off that one newsstand is going to make a difference.

Acting brand new too like he wasn’t buying bootlegs or taping shyt off the radio like every kid into hip hop at that time.

SO IF YOU CREATED SOMETHING
AND YOU WERE FACE TO FACE
WITH A PERSON STEALING YOUR shyt
YOU WOULD DO NOTHING?







​

 

[FunkDoc1112]

If he put out It Was Written and never put out Illmatic, he might be a bigger artist than he is today.
He wouldn't keep trying to remake an album that never sold, and focus on making records that people want to hear.

Without Illmatic...he could have also been Mic Geronimo or Royal Flush or Roc Marciano.....

Ehh, Nas himself never tried to remake Illmatic, the closest he got was referencing it with the Stillmatic title. He always tried to reinvent himself...to varying degrees of success. It was the fan expectations from Illmatic that fukked up his reception.

Of course, you still arrive at the same point - only it's running away from Illmatic's shadow that hurt him creatively.

 

[FunkDoc1112]

SO IF YOU CREATED SOMETHING
AND YOU WERE FACE TO FACE
WITH A PERSON STEALING YOUR shyt
YOU WOULD DO NOTHING?







​

The way I see it, the lyrics are the seasoning and the production is the steak. Lyrics alone weren't going to get people to buy your shyt, but they were what gave your shyt staying power if you had the catchy beat and hook.

 

[Ziploc]

It's a broad stroke statement and also subjectively framed. The proposition that the absence of lyrical content made the music more popular is false,the premise itself is way more complex and the fukked up part is that he knows this but wants to come off as edgy with a hilarious hot take. You have to have a clear definition of what you're talking about when you use words like lyrical in this context. Go look at the hip hop acts that dominated the genre in the 90s and even early 2k...Dude is just running his mouth and he actually knows better.

 

[NO-BadAzz]

but why nas didnt move elsewhere

if he could spit nikka elsewhere was gone listen regardless...

Buddy couldn't sell outside of the Tri-state area.

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

Fun fact: Ready to Die and Illmatic had the same first week sales...it's just that Ready to Die had Big Poppa and Illmatic didn't lol.

Back then, unless you were an established artist or had a hit single out the gate, your album sales were a slow burn. Word of mouth, college/underground radio, touring, singles and MTV were the ways to build your sales.

That and albums were allowed to bubble for a couple of months if the label was invested in the artists and not discarded as a tax write off after week two of the album release.

 

[shopthatwrecks]

redman n craig mack didnt have no problem

 

[CHICAGO]

Nas figured it out with album #2 - but if you need Puffy on the beat and Lauryn Hill on a chorus to sell a record - were folks buying it because of your lyrics?

Ras Kass got Dr Dre, arguably IN HIS PRIME - and that still failed, horribly.

MUSIC ISNT JUST ABOUT BEING
A LYRICAL MIRACLE nikka.

YOU GOTTA HAVE SOME BALANCE.

MOST PPL AINT TRYING TO HEAR
nikkaS PERFORM OVER ELEVATOR MUSIC
AND THE LACK OF HOOKS DIDN'T HELP EITHER.

THE HOOK IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE SONG.

NAS LEARNED HE CANT GET AWAY WITH
LAZY shyt LIKE REPEATING "ITS HALFTIME"
OR REPEATING "REPRESENT" OR REPEATING "IT AINT HARD TO TELL"

NO MATTER HOW MUCH PPL
WANT TO PRAISE ILLMATIC
AS THE HOLY GRAIL IT WAS A FLAWED
ALBUM FROM A MUSICAL
AND SONG CRAFTING STAND POINT
DATING ALL THE WAY BACK TO MOTOWN.







​

 

[WIA20XX]

True but the only exception I offer here is Doom. Doom actually became very popular in the 2010s. He just became popular in an unorthodox way, which is fitting given who he is

People really underestimate how much Adult Swim exposure did for Doom's career, not to mention the fact that he's one of the purest examples of "your favorite rappers favorite rapper" and people started to realize it

Doom gets love from people of all walks of life, especially if you spent your formative years with Adult Swim on your TV at night from 2006-2012

Did he sell records though?
Do people know his stuff?
Does the average 25 year old black dude in NYC/ATL know his stuff?
What about a black 25 year old anywhere else in the states?
What about a white one?

Can you play any of his "hits" at a typical hip hop club anywhere in the country like you can play 30 year old songs like Hail Mary/Juicy?

I love DOOM. I love underground hip hop.

But DOOM sells to the same people buying Griselda and The Clipse/Pusha T (which is me!)

If cats want to talk about

• He can make a living
• He can tour
• He's got a loyal base
• Big following online

They are purposefully avoiding what Steve is saying.

The fact that KMD had no appeal and their 2nd lp got shelved coupled with the death of his brother - gave us DOOM.

It's because he was everything Steve Stoute says doesn't sell - we got an artist you buy for his lyrics.

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

but why nas didnt move elsewhere

if he could spit nikka elsewhere was gone listen regardless...

Bruh, I'll continue to say, you had to really care about that type of music coming out of NYC at the time if you weren't from like the Tri-state area. Illmatic dropped a week before Southernplayalistic and nobody I hung with or knew gave a shyt about Nas at that time. I only knew of him cause I copped the maxi single of the "World is Yours" that had the Pete Rock remix on it. You know what folks were standing in line outside of Sam Goody, Camelot, & Tape World for in the south? OutKast.