u/Rand_moss2

white person acting more black: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xs5AIzWScgY

black person acting more white: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/S4Y26YHsG08

with interracial marriage no longer taboo and rap culture influence being prevalent, are there more people who are trans-racial, meaning they act like another race rather than being their own, and are the mixed-race rappers like drake (jewish mom/black dad), j cole (black dad/white mom), logic (being biracial) etc simply catering to that demographic shift of confused individuals in racial-mental transition, because these artists themselves are also racially confused, which contributes to more mediocre art that contradicts itself by trying to satisfy different and polarizing identity-ideologies by code-switching, hops on bandwagons just to be para-socially manipulative, and doubledips in white/jewish/black privilege to garner those fanbases in order to sell records than the old strategy of staged rap beef as spectacle?

and to find better rap as an artform, seek out artists who are less contradictory of themselves (even with bipolar game and kanye behavior) by them having more grounding in who they are and are not transitioning in-between racial and identity mind states to be more focused on social commentary and activism that seem to benefit more people rather than dodgy party/emo sadboy music as merely tactical 'self-pity for attention' diversion of avoiding real topics in lyrics?

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYLlpA_RqE5/

for the independent route, patreon only takes 10-12%, and bandcamp is also 15% for starters, but once you passed the $5k mark, it also reduces to just taking 10%, which is why curren$y and alchemist etc are all over bandcamp selling their wares https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTGheE1muVI&t=2064 alchemist talking about bandcamp being a gamechanger

a ton of labels folded or were bought at the turn of the millineum, even rocafella, etc. rapper-run labels are dysfunctional at best or just give the fascade of independence when they are actually under another major label. there are rumors that labels want to sign disfunction and trap artists in 360 deals unable to recoup their loans and advance money.

back then, rappers like jay-z used rap moreless as a vessel to get to where he was going because he approached it more like a business. nowadays with college more prevalent thru no child left behind, only hard headed individuals pursue music when it's always a popularity cycle and even the ones that make it successful (with their own independent label branding) end up dead in sketchy circumstances, like nipsey, pnb rock, dolph, juice wrld, xxx, when they are just coming up to upend their circumstances and really claim freedom from their label, their life is taken away similar to biggie and pac, who were on the cusp of going independent once they finished their album deals with bad boy and deathrow, respectively.

only a few rappers make it out their initial fucked up deals like with rick ross and big sean but they 'pledged an oath' and still end up rapping about nothing...rappers who are intelligent, who are 'self aware to limit about what they spew out as ignorance' is rare like kendrick and even j cole, and it seems like most rappers just want to reinforce ignorance in their raps not caring about the consequences from their words as long as they chase the bag and there's booty clapping music for money to be thrown at strip clubs, expecially with 'thot rappers'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUTiCO9mC6M

are people wisening up to end up choosing different careers working for themselves or as disgruntled employees making 'predictable money' without chasing the rap game anymore? is this why the recent music seems like a retread rehashed rewording rebranding of previous nostalgic hits of current rappers in the game still spewing about barely anything that makes a dent in the culture? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYuiVn8uFgc

also even with youtube, dont be going to these invitational exclusive networking functions just to end up at some ritual or disappearing because of it, unless it's an open conference hosted directly by youtube, smh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mascM4mTFJg

the south really had it figured out with all those independent artists back in the 90s/early 00s. people were making money without needing big labels. but then greed started creeping in, or some people weren’t managing money right, and everything fell apart, where there wasn’t really a system left for people to keep making money on their own, so the whole scene collapsed

a lot of money moving through southwest wholesale. you could get a full package done for like $1k with pen & pixel, and even work with your budget if you didn’t have it up front

then thru southwest wholesale: about $200 would cover your UPC, ISRC codes, and distribution setup for around 20k CDs. usually it'll be like 10k CDs and single promos that got sent to stores like Sam Goody, Circuit City, Warehouse Music, FYE, etc across the country. smaller markets might only get a few dozen copies, but your main region would get more.

that still left you with about 9500 CDs in your own hands. you could sell those yourself out the trunk or drop them off at local shops. plus, with the pen & pixel deal, you get posters and flyers, maybe 300 prints. some would go to southwest for promotion, and you keep the rest

a lot of people figured out they could cut out the middleman and just sell everything themselves. if you moved those 9500 CDs at $8 each, that’s $76k. then you reinvest, do it again, book shows, hit the road, and now you’re looking at $150k or more pretty quickly

but things started going bad when people began abusing the system. artists who had been making money started trying to get fronted packages, promising to pay later. then they get locked up or disappear, and southwest never got their money. that’s when southwest started taking losses, even though their prices never really changed

when southwest went under, it also hurt a lot of labels too, legit ones like Suave House, Suckafree, and Cash Money were owed serious money. some say millions. even after Tony Draper got a deal with Sony/Relativity, he kept working with southwest

honestly, if artists like Flip or Cash Money hadn’t signed major deals when they did, they probably would’ve gone down with the rest. at one point there were thousands of labels in the south, but after southwest collapsed, only a few survived

wreckshop records is a good example. they had artists like fat pat, ESG, and big moe. things were looking up - especially when ESG dropped 'Shinin & Grindin' and got attention from Interscope - but they couldn’t capitalize on it. big moe was next up and already selling over 100k on his debut. he ended up signing with Priority, but there were issues with the deal, and the label never really recovered. by around 2005, when southwest was fully done, wreckshop was gone too

a lot of those underground artists just disappeared when southwest shut down. guys like big bear, there’s barely any trace of them now. no videos, nothing. a lot of them probably went back to whatever they were doing before music, or just fell off the radar completely