With Eminem prowling the top of the sales charts and Nelly waiting in the wings with a highly anticipated new release, it would seem that rap is as potent as ever at music stores. And there's no doubt that hip-hop has become inseparably woven into the whole cloth of American youth culture.
So why is there a murmur of discontent beneath the beats?
Sales of hip-hop albums in the first quarter of 2002 were down an eye-opening 26% from the same period last year, by far the largest drop among major pop genres, and longtime observers on the scene have been grumbling that innovation and star power are on the wane.
There are other challenges too: Rap concerts have never matured to rival the genre's record sales, and the music's young fans are so enamored with fresh sounds that it has been nearly impossible for artists to create long-term relevancy.
The youth of its fans also makes hip-hop one of the ripest targets for online music theft--no other age group is as active on the Internet or as likely to feel it's acceptable to pilfer music via downloadable files.
"I would say the health of hip-hop is down, but I would say the health of traditional prerecorded label music is down too," said Violet Brown, the lead urban music buyer for the Wherehouse chain.
"There is a lot of burning [of homemade CDs] in hip-hop and a lot of bootlegging.... A friend of mine teaches and says flat out that 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade kids do not buy prerecorded music; they only gets 'boots' that are leaked early on the [Internet] sites."
"The Eminem Show," the blockbuster release that will on its own buoy the genre's second-quarter sales, was abruptly moved up on the release schedule last month after Interscope, the rapper's record label, cited rampant trafficking of the music online and on street corners.
But even with all that, the sharp decline in first-quarter rap sales charted by the Nielsen SoundScan tracking service may have more deeply rooted causes.
"Business has been bad overall, but a lot of the rock releases are doing extremely well," Brown said. "That's part of what's going on. The same customers who buy rock-rap buy rap. They are definitely sharing the same consumer."
Consumer surveys show that the majority of rap album buyers are suburban white males in their teens. And a significant chunk of that base has turned in the past few years to guitar-driven bands that tap into hip-hop beats and rap-style vocals, often with an aggressive sonic presence. Rage Against the Machine may have made the template for the sound, but Limp Bizkit and Korn were the bands that made it an MTV-friendly music sensation.
