2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

yeah, i def feel u re: ratios of selling. I'm just not buying this "whole generation that doesn't buy music." Considering a) Some kids are clearly buying Taylor Swift, b) Some kids are clearly buying Arcade Fire and c) Some kids are clearly buying gangsta rap. Like the kids who would be buying C-Murder tapes aren't just saying "oh well" and downloading Tum Tum or whatever, there's a whole bunch of SOMEBODY buying Teflon Don and Flockaveli and 8Ball/MJG and Boosie Bad Ass. I think the real disconnect is that there's less physical copies of rap records (meaning less artists being promoted by labels) than during it's 90s boom years

And whoever said the Korn thing is right. I don't think there's any reason to think rap has a bigger "download-to-purchase" ratio than any other youth-focused genre...

ok, now i disagree

1) there really is a whole lot of people who dont buy music now, incl regular '12 cd people' tim was talking about above,

2) how do you know the age of ppl buying arcade fire -- arent they, like, NPR artists? my dad told me recently hes heard a lot of good music from brooklyn. i know we imagine some fantasyland hipster listening to stuff like that, but its really middle-america friendly and those are the people buying CDs.

3) gangster rap is still selling, dont get me wrong, im arguing that its been disporportionately hit (i mean, why do you think it is that there are fewer physical copies of rap records?? fewer people are buying them). I mean, why is it that jay-z, kanye and drake sell more records? because theyve crossed over to a yuppy late 20s - early 30s & even presidential demographic! i mean, obama saying he listens to jay-z isnt him being down with 'the kids,' its him being a middle-aged yuppie who isnt scared of rap but certainly isnt bumping 'money cash hoes'

4) flockaveli and boosie and 8ball and mjg (esp 8ball and mjg! how many copies do you think they sold this year??) are popular but their sales arent in line with their level of popularity regardless. yes, lots of people are saying "oh well" and downloading tum tum ... and flockaveli. its a tribute to how popular waka is that hes able to move any copies at all in this kind of an industry.

if you think 'the masses' havent figured out how to google .zips of the latest records u are tripping

(the masses of teenagers)

2) how do you know the age of ppl buying arcade fire -- arent they, like, NPR artists? my dad told me recently hes heard a lot of good music from brooklyn. i know we imagine some fantasyland hipster listening to stuff like that, but its really middle-america friendly and those are the people buying CDs.

^^^i should also mention, even the 'young people' who do buy arcade fire, arent those extremely likely to be rockist-ish 'i prefer albums to be concrete statements of art'-types anyway? and therefore dont those fans have a distorting effect on the charts? its not like flockaveli fans have some obsequiousness to the album as a preferred format

The Offspring or The Red Hot Chili Peps or Metallica or the Doors...timeless cool things.

"And whoever said the Korn thing is right. I don't think there's any reason to think rap has a bigger "download-to-purchase" ratio than any other youth-focused genre..."

um, 1st off, i never said it did, i was (jesus can u read my posts dude?) as i said, using rap as an example because its the genre im most familiar with

2nd, i dont get how korn is a 'youth focused genre' at this point -- arent they more in the eminem vein anyway?

The Offspring or The Red Hot Chili Peps or Metallica or the Doors...timeless cool things.

― The Reverend, Tuesday, December 28, 2010 1:54 AM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i see what he means by this. this i kinda agree w/ -- eminem has joined RHCP as middlebrow middleamerican canonical whitebread alt-rock, descendents of led zeppelin & pink floyd & midwestern cornfield pot-smoking album-art populist 'classics,' to end up on classic rock stations in another decade

1. Yeah, I agree with this 100%. But you were making it sound like anyone J0rdan's age and under would look at a CD like it was a spider and throw it to the ground.

2. I mean fine, but then I'll just point to all the Bamboozle metalcore/emocore/scenecore bands that sell just under Arcade Fire numbers because they have high school/college-aged kids but NOT the NPR dads on their side. Like Underoath and shit debuts top 10 with like every record.

3. I mean, cheap/affordable mixtapes existed in the 90s too don't forget. I had kids buying Jam Pony Express DJ tapes from me at the record store all day long (I worked there from like 1996 to 1998). But I mean, the ppl buying Eightball/e-40/Mia X/pre-success Mystikal were not KIDS but these more grownup dudes. I mean, kids (if we're talking 14 to 18 here) generally fuck with pop music. When we were in high school, Bone Thugs and Puffy and Snoop and Goodie Mob was pop music. Now rap-centric pop music is Drake and BoB and Wiz Kaliflower and whatever. It's not that gangsta rap took a beating in sales, it's that gangsta rap isnt as popular as it was in the 90s among the young people demo that major labels target the most aggressively.

but i dont feel like that contradicted by point about 30 year old stans buying his albums xp

xxp yeah, pretty much, but that still made my head spin

i don't know what T-shirts you wore in 9th grade rev

It's not that gangsta rap took a beating in sales, it's that gangsta rap isnt as popular as it was in the 90s among the young people demo that major labels target the most aggressively.

― nog it out with (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 1:57 AM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah, im saying i dont agree that this is true

The Reverend stunting in his Marnie Stern T-shirt before she broke while everyone else was buying their first Nirvana and Metallica shirts

"But I mean, the ppl buying Eightball/e-40/Mia X/pre-success Mystikal were not KIDS but these more grownup dudes."

my high school exp says otherwise (& before u say anything this isnt a statement about the race of the ppl i went to h.s. with)

rap fans were buying these cds, gajillions of midwest 16 year olds were the ones putting master p in platinum tank chains

i didn't wear band tees or listen to alt-rock so

xpost, Then why is Wiz Khalifa playing Bamboozle Festival and not Lloyd Banks?

if i had a band tee in 9th grade it probably would have been like dilated peoples or something

black and white

master p was definitely popular in suburban seattle circa late 90s

i think a lot of ppl that buy arcade fire are like those political writers in the sense that they have much greater interests than music and want to really get into about 5-10 records a year & arcade fire are super critically acclaimed & visible on the indie rock scene -- it's not exactly chemically engineering

xpost, Then why is Wiz Khalifa playing Bamboozle Festival and not Lloyd Banks?

― nog it out with (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:01 AM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um, lil wayne is

im not denying that wiz khalifa is popular (although asking why a stoner rapper is popular with white kids, for real?? cypress hill??)

yeah, master p was huge where i lived too! He was on MTV! Like Gucci Mane! Who sells lots of records! What;s your point?

no one outside of new york has cared about lloyd banks in about 5 years?

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=77477

^^^i bet you the dudes in this thread had every 504 boyz cd single

(esp 8ball and mjg! how many copies do you think they sold this year??)

i wish someone had told me there was a new ball and g this year : /

and wiz has the most popular rap song in the country right now

Who sells lots of records! What;s your point?

― nog it out with (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:03 AM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

im really confused by your point, frankly.

gucci still sells some records, but i think his sales have been hit harder by the current state of the industry than other artists that have older-skewing demos.

you're the one who started taking issue w/ what i was saying dude, not the other way around. Whats YOUR point

yeah what is whiney's point

many xposts

Like we def have ppl filling those Master P/Juvenile roles of MTV-gangstas, no doubt: Gucci, Wayne, Waka

I just don't think the kids in 2010 are as interested in who the new C-Murder is, and are busy checking out a lot of dudes in skinny jeans who talk about space weed instead of our delmar-rap tropes that were popular 15 years ago

ok, but i think you could have picked a better example than fiddy's snow shoveler whose peak of popularity was 5 years ago

Whiney's point is that gangsta rap isn't being hit "disproportionately" in sales as deej says. It's decline in ubiquity has more to do with changing cultural trends than a nation of teenagers worshipping Dat Piff

fiddy's snow shoveler

golf clap

Whiney's point is that gangsta rap isn't being hit "disproportionately" in sales as deej says. It's decline in ubiquity has more to do with changing cultural trends than a nation of teenagers worshipping Dat Piff

― nog it out with (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:09 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and you're basing this on ...

idk i think there are elements of gangster rap that lend it to there being a downtick in sales

but i also agree that ppl for some reason seem to care more about singing sweater models like kid cudi & drake than gangster rappers -- i'm not sure why that is tho

i guess you could argue that we don't have ground level rappers as good as cash money/no limit days, but i'm not sure i necessarily agree w/ that

i really think this is nonsense. cash money & no limit got as much shit from clueless critics than as gucci & waka do now if not moreso

Whiney's point is that gangsta rap isn't being hit "disproportionately" in sales as deej says. It's decline in ubiquity has more to do with changing cultural trends than a nation of teenagers worshipping Dat Piff

― nog it out with (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:09 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

like, why do you think this, other than you want to?

so... any new albums of the year lists we can talk about?

i think its fairly self-evident that gangster rap has been hard hit by downloading. there is no indie rock dat piff. dat piff is logging hundreds of thousands of downloads. this is wayyy way bigger than your street corner bootlegger

so... any new albums of the year lists we can talk about?

― Shakey Moe Szyslak (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:16 AM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this conversation is probably more interesting than whatever list is posted next

i mean whiney, gangster rap always had a weird relationship w/ crossover. but like ... master p never got to rap verses with mariah carey. neither did bun b. gucci hit that point by being hugely popular. soulja boy isnt selling a lot of albums but i bet you he has more mentions on world star hip hop than BoB does.

the crowds that these rappers you argue are 'more popular' are crossing over to are coldplay fans. people who still buy records. BoB, Lupe, Drake, Jay-z ... these guys are marketing to your average middle american pop fan

& i mean pop like, U2 audiences. not like, club going fans of 'big pimpin' who got that song up top 40

No, anything is more interesting than what you're talking about endlessly

and you're basing this on ...

and you're basing it on?

And you know, every time in the 90s someone like Trick Daddy or Mystikal became FAMOUS FAMOUS, it was after years of organic slow-grind. Which, yes, happens faster because of the internet, but still happens. And note the breakthrough internet-to-fame artists are like Drake, BoB, Wiz, Cudi, Nicki, etc. Gucci and Waka are in there too, but like gangsta exceptions that prove the soft-serve rule.

If anything the new No Limit/Cash Money hole of "popular gangsta ish that actually has sales" is all in grinding-in-their-own-world dudes like Tech N9ne and Joe Budden, who still crack iTunes charts all the live long day

there is no indie rock dat piff

http://www.daytrotter.com/ ???

deej is right but it's really the nature of the form right? there's no datpiff of indie rock, but there's also no need for it, because indie rock doesn't operate on the mixtape model the way that rap does

likewise, there aren't indie labels in rap anymore -- there's no no limit or cash money that is monetizing the distribution of a high volume of non-high level releases like there used to be? like, now everyone just floods the net. anything that is put up for sale has to go thru the 8 million hoops that is the major label system. there's no XL or beggars banquet or w/e that puts out cds for the love of it & is willing to operate w/ a thin profit margin

rappers are expected to do all that by themselves, pretty much -- then they get plucked by a major

If anything the new No Limit/Cash Money hole of "popular gangsta ish that actually has sales" is all in grinding-in-their-own-world dudes like Tech N9ne and Joe Budden, who still crack iTunes charts all the live long day

LOL @ the idea that joe budden is anywhere near as popular as tech n9ne.

dude, you really are disconnected here

I mean, I'll agree with J0rdan. deej and I are really just arguing over chicken vs egg

"and you're basing it on?"

the exact same argument ive repeated in this thread already?

"I'M BASING IT ON MY OWN ARGUMENT... WHAT?!"