There's some gratifying poetic justice to the fact that, as of last week's Billboard charts, Chamillionaire's album finally outsold Paul Wall's. At 730,751 to 730,179, that's a slim margin of less than 600 copies, but considering that Cham is at #24 and climbing, and Paul is exactly a hundred spots lower at #124, that margin is undoubtedly going to get a lot wider. I'm no big fan of either, and haven't even heard the albums -- in fact, I take some perverse pride in the fact that I managed to interview Cham (via e-mail) and write a magazine article on him recently without listening to more than a mixtape streamed online (plus all the scattered old shit I checked out when he first started getting mentioned a lot a few years ago). I think he's a little overrated, and amateurishly crams syllables way too often for someone who's supposed to be a hugely talented rapper, but he's still better than Paul, maybe my least favorite person in mainstream hip hop right now, doing his stupid dances and running every H-town cliche into the ground and looking more like a chubby, grinning idiot every time I see him. And when The People's Champ debuted at #1 last fall (which I'm pretty sure was a first for a Houston MC, which seems in itself kind of insane) and The Sound Of Revenge debuted at #10, it seemed like a victory of the corny once-sidekick over the more talented MC, nevermind all the racial issues that could be brought up.
But then Paul released the horrible "Girl" as a single, and Cham went with the kind of ballsy choice of "Ridin'," which paid off because there's an untapped market for songs about hating cops in the club-single-or-no-single environment of Southern hip hop. I mean, "Ridin'" is sitting at #4 on the Hot 100 right now, no doubt buoyed by Billboard's recent decision to take into account iTunes purchases, which I could go on and on about the good and bad implications of. But the bottom line is that iTunes affecting Billboard boosts songs that actual people like more than radio programmers, and democratizes the charts a little more. And there are plenty of reasons to have reservations about "Ridin'," but I think it is a pretty great single, one that sounds better every time I hear it. And for all the hype about Houston blowing up last year, only Mike Jones sold a million (which makes, what, 3 platinum solo rappers from the city ever, along with Lil Flip and Scarface (plus Geto Boys went platinum once, but UGK only ever went gold, right?)), so it'd be kind of cool if Chamillionaire got to join that club after being written off by a lot of his own fans. Especially since he seems like he has a much better shot of becoming a career artist than any of the current Swishahouse guys that people seemed to get sick of by the time they dropped their 3rd single.
Cham going platinum after over 6 months in stores and hitting the top 10 with his 2nd single after missing the top 40 with that Scott Storch bullshit would also kind of make it a sleeper hit. And there aren't many of those these days in the SoundScan era, especially in hip hop, where everything is focused on the first week, and 80% of the promotional push is done before the release date, and if it doesn't sell well right away the label pulls out on the last 20%. I was thinking about it a while back, and decided that arguably the last real sleeper hit in mainstream hip hop was Trap Muzik, a record that took over a year to sell a million and peaked with the 3rd and 4th singles, and that might be the most influential rap album of the past 3 years, if every song and album with "trap" in the title is any indication. I'm sure there's still underground releases that find their audiences slowly, but in the accelerated mixtape market where DJs drop something new every week, even that's probably rarer and rarer.
But then Paul released the horrible "Girl" as a single, and Cham went with the kind of ballsy choice of "Ridin'," which paid off because there's an untapped market for songs about hating cops in the club-single-or-no-single environment of Southern hip hop. I mean, "Ridin'" is sitting at #4 on the Hot 100 right now, no doubt buoyed by Billboard's recent decision to take into account iTunes purchases, which I could go on and on about the good and bad implications of. But the bottom line is that iTunes affecting Billboard boosts songs that actual people like more than radio programmers, and democratizes the charts a little more. And there are plenty of reasons to have reservations about "Ridin'," but I think it is a pretty great single, one that sounds better every time I hear it. And for all the hype about Houston blowing up last year, only Mike Jones sold a million (which makes, what, 3 platinum solo rappers from the city ever, along with Lil Flip and Scarface (plus Geto Boys went platinum once, but UGK only ever went gold, right?)), so it'd be kind of cool if Chamillionaire got to join that club after being written off by a lot of his own fans. Especially since he seems like he has a much better shot of becoming a career artist than any of the current Swishahouse guys that people seemed to get sick of by the time they dropped their 3rd single.
Cham going platinum after over 6 months in stores and hitting the top 10 with his 2nd single after missing the top 40 with that Scott Storch bullshit would also kind of make it a sleeper hit. And there aren't many of those these days in the SoundScan era, especially in hip hop, where everything is focused on the first week, and 80% of the promotional push is done before the release date, and if it doesn't sell well right away the label pulls out on the last 20%. I was thinking about it a while back, and decided that arguably the last real sleeper hit in mainstream hip hop was Trap Muzik, a record that took over a year to sell a million and peaked with the 3rd and 4th singles, and that might be the most influential rap album of the past 3 years, if every song and album with "trap" in the title is any indication. I'm sure there's still underground releases that find their audiences slowly, but in the accelerated mixtape market where DJs drop something new every week, even that's probably rarer and rarer.
Labels: hip hop
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