The Emotional Labor of Commercial Success in Rap Music

Happy Tuesday! Thanks for opening the tenth edition of the Stan newsletter. A newsletter exploring the bidirectional relationship between artists and fans. As always suggestions and feedback are always appreciated. You can shoot me an email at dkuhlor@gmail.com or tweet me at @denishakuhlor.

“I’m trying to make a million dollars off a rap tune.” - J. Cole on January 28th

For this article of Stan I seek to explore the effects of the emotional labor that plague artists once their music is embraced by a fan-base they did not initially consider as their audience. For the purpose of this specific article I will be exclusively focusing on rap artists (plus a slight point about Beyonce/Coachella) as I think this dilemma plagues these artists the most often.

I thought a lot about this article and realize there is not necessarily an answer to some of the questions I posed so rather I hope this article serves as a point of discussion while also bring awareness to a dynamic that many artists are not comfortable speaking about. I will also link the amazing work of many people who have explored this topic in way greater detail than I have.

As someone who has been to at least a 100+ concerts, the most fascinating thing to observe (after the performer obviously) is the audience demographics of the concertgoers. The audience composition at a concert is influenced by many things including the price of a ticket, accessibility of the venue, day of the week, time of the performance, and many more factors, which is why the audience at a concert is not an accurate depiction of an artists fan-base.  Additionally, as we have discussed before, while attendance at a concert is an indicator of an individual's interest in an artist it does not necessarily mean they are a highly engaged fan or a stan (I dive deeper into this topic here: Followers, Fans, Stans: An Artist Framework for Tracking Audience Engagement). With that understanding, it is imperative to explore how it impacts an artists well-being to constantly having to perform to audiences that they are on a varying scale of alignment with. Noname tweeted (then deleted this last week) and it has been on my mind a lot:

"Whats funny is most black artist are just as uncomfortable performing for majority white crowds but would never publicly say that out of fear and allegiance to 💰 Which isnt a bad thing necessarily cause niggas gotta eat but yall wouldnt be up and arms if I quit workn @ McDonalds," she added. "When I go to work, thousands of white people scream the word nigga at me. and no I’m not changing my art so it is what it is. catch me @nonamebooks."

The Emotional Labor of Commercial Success

“These white kids love that you don’t give a fuck.. because that’s exactly whats expected when your skins black. They want to see you dab, they want to see you pop a pill. They want to see you tatted from you face to your heels and somewhere deep down fuck I got to keep it real they want to be black and think your song is how it feels.” - J.Cole

Noname’s since deleted tweets reignites a point not discussed enough. Artists have typically strayed away from speaking on this topic but that is beginning to change. J.Cole explores this topic on his song “1985 - Intro to the Fall Off.” Artists have worked to reverse engineer the composition of their shows for years (i.e - moshpits). Anecdotally, most moshpit tickets aren’t the most expensive ticket at a concert even though they provide the most immersive experience. Many artists are willing to offer these tickets at a somewhat reduced price with the hopes that their most passionate and engaged fans will get a ticket. Some artists are even more methodical about this granting these tickets out via radio contest or exclusive pre-sale for fan club members. Some artists take it even further by providing pop up concerts for free or next to nothing (J. Coles - Dollar and a Dream Tour). While it is a historic moment for the fans in attendance, I would argue that it is even more transformative for artists.

Inevitably one of the ironies of commercial success in music can be attributed to basic economics, supply and demand. The more popular an artist gets the more money they can command around their likeness and artist offerings (tours, vinyl, merchandise, etc.) which alienates many of an artists most engaged fans simply because they don’t have the money. Furthermore, when you take into account the stats about wealth and discretionary income in America it quickly reveals who has the disposable income to patronize these artists. Suburban white youth are the largest consumers of rap and hip hop music, however in his song 1985 J.Cole cautions artists to create music and build a fan-base way more expansive:

“One day, them kids that's listening gon' grow up. And get too old for that shit that made you blow up. Now your show's lookin' light cause they don't show up which unfortunately means the money slow up. Now you scramblin' and hopin' to get hot again but you forgot you only popped 'cause you was ridin' trends.

The music paradox lies in that the people that create the demand (black culture - i.e black twitter) don’t frequently correlate with the consumers of the supply.

How do Artists Deal?

Artists employ multiple techniques to combat this dynamic and feel more comfortable on stage. Amine made headlines when during his performance of Caroline instead of saying the n word he instructed the audience “if your not black don’t say it.” He did it again on Tiny Desk, you can watch here. Then there’s artist like YG who “test” fans to test to what extent they are fans. YG’s concert now features a part during his song FDT where he instructs fans to come on stage and scream it with him. If you don’t? You are kicked off stage and asked to leave the concert. Some artists like Noname are just transparent about their feelings. There is an inflection point of commercial success when artists can leverage the dynamic to work in their favor.

“Instead of pulling out my flower crown, it was more important that I brought our culture to Coachella.”

There does become a point for megastars where they simply can do whatever they want and choose to produce and create musical experiences for a fragment of their fan-base. Their celebrity is so big and they have so many engaged fans in some ways the rest just fall in line.

Until then?

Read More on This Topic:

1) The Politics of Race in Rap - Harvard Politics

2)Re/presentation of Hip Hop: An exploration of white hip hop fans, consumers, and practitioners

3) A Historical Analysis: The Evolution of Commercial Rap Music

4) Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection by Nancy Baym [This book is phenomenal and there are a few chapters in which Nancy touches on the emotional labor of being an artist.]

Stan Moments

My Headphones

1. Ballin’ (with Roddy Ricch)

2. Daniel Ek - The Future of Audio on the Invest Like the Best Podcast. I really enjoyed this, he makes a really interesting point about how creativity will be the last frontier to be overtaken by automation.

If you made it this far, you are a gem.

Happy Tuesday!

Best,

D