Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

Rap Sales And Globalization :: Hip-Hop Verses The World?

When I was doing work on my piece for Foreign Policy–and for those of you in China still hoping to get at this, please hang on, I’m working on it–these past several months, I kept on trying to work one intriguing storyline that I could not quite pull together fully for the piece: the idea that U.S. rap is in decline because it hasn’t globalized as fast as other genres.

Now I realize that this is completely counterintuitive to the argument of the piece (nor does it explain country music’s continued rise, among other trends) and this is why I left that particular storyline hanging. But some of the buzz I was getting from industry sources was intriguing.

Here are two things that came up…:

+ One top-selling label finds its overseas sales now outstrips its domestic sales but hasn’t been able yet to capitalize on it fast enough because of its U.S. focus and its rap-dominated roster.

+ U.S. rappers are now more likely to guest-appear on overseas artists albums than they are to appear on those rappers’ albums. It’s not because of North American arrogance, but because those rap artists desperately need to build demand overseas.

Trust that there’s a lot more where that came from, and I might develop it into a future piece.

In any case, the excellent music industry reporter Jeff Leeds has a great story in today’s NY Times on Martin Kierszenbaum, an Interscope music exec who is charged with bringing U.S. music to the world (and to a lesser extent these days, to bring the world’s music–forget that antiquated term “world music”–to the U.S.).

It’s a good read and perhaps another reason that the music industry is fast becoming the Mike Gravel of the global media/entertainment complex.

OK, that’s not fair. Most of what Gravel says and does makes sense.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 8:31 am | 3 Comments

3 Responses to “Rap Sales And Globalization :: Hip-Hop Verses The World?”

easportski says:

December 5, 2007 at 3:13 pm

“One top-selling label finds its overseas sales now outstrips its domestic sales but hasn’t been able yet to capitalize on it fast enough because of its U.S. focus and its rap-dominated roster.”

interesting… but is this indicative of a larger trend?

also, you say:

“U.S. rappers are now more likely to guest-appear on overseas artists albums than they are to appear on those rappers’ albums.”

hmm, okay. by “they,” you mean overseas artists, right? this would seem to parallel the late 90s, when midwestern rappers sought out bay area mobb music artists for features. having spice one or yukmouth on their albums gave midwestern folks credibility they wouldn’t have otherwise had. but when spice and yuk’s major-label deals ended, they had to rely on those features to make their cheddar. are you saying a similar thing is happening here on a global scale?

i’d question the second half of that statement, though. i think the foreign demand for validation from domestic rappers preceeded the domestic rappers’ “need” for penetration of foreign markets.

a good example is the last Zimbabwe Legit album, on which US rappers were prominently featured on almost every track; only one song featured ZL’s african peers, which may be surprising given the
rise of motherland MCs since ZL first came out. did ZL approach Vast Aire and the Jungle Brothers, or was it the other way around? you imply the latter, but i suspect the former.

this also gets into the whole hip-hop vs. rap debate. there are scads of major-label castaways from the hip-hop side of things who have been able to support themselves by touring in european and asian markets, even when domestic markets deemed them over the hill or out of fashion.

i’m not sure whether this phenomenon is a byproduct of globalization, or just an expansion of what has been happening in the domestic market for years. what do you think?
Null says:

December 10, 2007 at 2:49 pm

I think as the above commenter pointed out theres some intresting points made and a wide-space for some blog-to-blog discussion on the topic,

I look forward to see what else you have to contribute based on the topic
Kurt says:

January 3, 2008 at 1:39 am

I know I’m way late on this … and I still haven’t got my hands on the foreign policy piece. But like Null, I look forward to more on this.

You say “U.S. rappers are now more likely to guest-appear on overseas artists albums than they are to appear on those rappers’ albums. It’s not because of North American arrogance, but because those rap artists desperately need to build demand overseas.”

Two points on this. First, I reckon easportski is right that “foreign demand for validation from domestic rappers preceeded the domestic rappers’ “need” for penetration of foreign markets”. Most non-US rap scenes have gone through periods where inclusion of a US guest on an LP is there to lend cred, to prove that the local scene has earnt some respect from

Second, I think there is a bit of US arrogance here with some/many artists. If the market imperative was the only factor driving US artists to link up with foreign artists, then this could just as easily work by US artists including foreign MCs on their own releases (thus helping them sell overseas), as well as appearing on the foreign releases. This seems to happen much less though … and I wonder if this is because doing this would threaten domestic sales for US artists? Would it be fair to say that many (not all) of the US hip hop audience still thinks that rhyming sounds wrong if it’s not got an american accent? (Certainly seems that way, from my position here in Australia).

Anyways, I think (UK-based writer) Patrick Neate had some more coherent thoughts than mine on this in his book It’s Not Where You’re From, from a couple of years back.

And hey, I’m optimistic about the solidarities that can start to form. I just saw a Katalyst show recently here in Sydney, to promote his new LP. Alongside a bunch of local (ie Australian) MCs (like Hau and RuCL), he had J-Live and Stephanie McKay (US), and Steve Spacek (UK/Aust) on stage with him. And apparently as a consequence of them guesting on his LP, he looks like doing some production work for these artists. This could be a nice example of influences travelling in both directions…

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