Why is it sales are such a relevant part of discussions within hip hop music? If you think of Hip hop as a counter culture, validating an artists existence within that culture by the metrics of popular reach is essentially oxymoronic. To really unpack why this is counterproductive in Hip hop We kind of need to unpack who's actually buying and streaming the music. So the vast majority of popular music, hip hop included is consumed by one particular demographic… which is suburban white teenagers in middle America. Now I'm a big believer that music should be enjoyed by whoever it resonates with and crosses boundaries of color, class, creed, religion, race, gender. I also believe that those at the core of the culture should be the ones who are dictating and pushing it forward. To give you an example of what I mean, in the early nineties M C Hammer and Vanilla ice outsold the vast majority of Hip hop artists popular at the time. This never equated to them being held up within the culture itself as being the most important artists at the time. So if we fast forward to 2022 where those lines are blurred and we are comparing artists like Jack Harlow and Freddie Gibbs, Jack's obviously a higher selling artist than Freddie But The difference in those numbers is not made up of those closest to the core of the culture. So we're establishing the large majority of those furthest away from the culture are what makeup those numbers. We’re essentially trying to win arguments on an artists importance by using the least relevant demographic to their cultural standing, which is of course completely ridiculous. Please, stop doing it

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