« Will The Bay Ever Emerge On A National Level? »

[Em Dub's note: No, this isn't my alter ego. This is the first article from the most recent addition to the Thizzler On The Roof family, Matt #2! Yee!]

Since I was a youngen, I have regularly been asking myself the above question. Other than Too $hort, Digital Underground, E-40, and The Luniz’ first album, Bay Area rappers seem to have forever fallen short on the task of building fans outside of Northern California, and surprisingly Kansas City. Yet over the years, even the aforementioned rappers have seemed to lose their ability to have much of a national impact, especially with the younger generations.

As Roach Gigz said in his recent interview with MTV, a strong explanation for this is that for a really long time, and even somewhat today, Bay Area rappers didn’t have to put in the work to build a national fan base in order to make a living off of rap. Instead, all they had to do was get the Bay fully behind them. Then due to the fact that they are pushing their albums independently, and unlike other parts of the country, people in the Bay would actually go to the stores and support their local artists, rappers in the Bay had the ability to earn cash comparable to some nationally known artists.

Sucker Free - MTV Shows

Yet that doesn’t fully explain everything. There have been times in the history of our local rap scene in which artists have had a strong urge to branch out and become national stars. When I was a senior in high school, The Hyphy movement started to take off, and it seemed like we had a legit chance to finally show off our culture to the rest of the country. The music was fresh, creative and fun to listen to. As a result fans gravitated towards it, as did major record labels and major media outlets. Unfortunately all of that lasted about a year and a half. With the success of E-40’s, My Ghetto Report Card (which to this day is an undeniably dope album) and Mac Dre’s music, it seemed like every local MC thought Hyphy was going to be their personal cash cow. All they had to do was say “go dumb”, “get stupid”, “thizz” and the rest of the hyphy euphemisms over a simplistic synthed out instrumental and they seemed sure that it was practically guaranteed for the track to be a hit. The diversity of styles in the Bay has always been one of our strongest attributes, but the allure of getting paid off of getting hyphy eliminated any distinguishable characteristics from most of the new crop of up and coming rappers, and even affected a handful of veteran MC’s as well. Within months of My Ghetto Report Card’s release, the music got so watered down, repetitive, and thoughtless that even avid Bay Area listeners gave up on the local rap scene. To this day the word Hyphy has such a negative connotation in The Bay that new artists like DB Tha General, distance themselves from it by having songs like “Anti-Hyphy”, off of The Hardest Out, and even Keak Da Sneak who was on Mac Dre’s original track entitled “Hy Phy”, and whose personal biggest commercially successful hits were “Super Hyphy” and “Tell Me When To Go”, spit “I come to knock shit out, I ain’t trying to spar/ And let the Hyphy movement die, fuck the CPR” on his recent Tonite Show release with DJ Fresh and The Whole Shabang. 

Yet with death often comes new life, and in this case, as Hyphy music fell off the scene, it made room for a new generation of local MC’s to emerge and make an impact. Additionally, because there is no longer a blueprint for national success to blindly follow, a lot more individuality has come back into the music. J Stalin and The Jacka brought back the MOB sound and mentality of the 90’s, and as a result currently reign as the most popular rappers locally. For the first time in a while Young Gully and Shady Nate have brought back an emphasis on pairing hard core street lyrics with true technical ability. Davinci and Nio Tha Gift represent the streets as well, but they ask listeners to think about these familiar themes in terms of the bigger picture. Jay Ant, Erk Tha Jerk, and Moe Green show off the fact that despite what the industry image of a rapper is, you can be from the hood, without being all thuged out. And Roach Gigz has utilized his ridiculous dexterity as a wordsmith to make upbeat, hyphy-esque party music. Yet what has allowed all of these Bay Area rappers, and more (sorry if I left you out, but there ain’t room to write about everyone), to recently start to succeed is that they are finally being themselves, and not copying some image of what they think they are supposed to look and sound like.

Yet, now it is more important than ever for these artists to build a national fan base. With album sales seriously plummeting each year, the only way for musicians of any genre to really put food on the table is live performance. Despite ticket sales dropping in 2010, touring has maintained being far and away the most profitable portion of the music industry for years now. While in the past releasing an album had high prospects of being a legit money making endeavor on it’s own, now a days releasing an album has moved in the direction of just being a way of giving an artist new material so they have an excuse to go on tour again. It’s a large reason why so many legitimate hip-hop projects coming out both locally and nationally, that feature all original production, are being released for free. Rappers know that unless you’re one of the elite names in the industry, fans will not take the risk to spend money on your project. But if it’s free, they’ll give it a download, and if they like it, they very well may pay to go see your show. This set up has allowed artists like Wiz Khalifa, J Cole, and Big Sean to establish vast fan bases, and make some legit bread without having dropped an official album. 

With all of this in mind, if the new breed of local rappers want to make a legit living off of their music, they can no longer be satisfied with just holding the bay down. There are not anywhere near enough local performance opportunities to make a real living. Additionally, even if there were a lot more shows in The Bay for local rappers, fans aren’t trying to see the same rapper perform the exact same songs 3-4 times in a year. So that leaves them with a need to go on the road. But promoters and venues across the country won’t book an artist unless they are confident that that performer will draw fans. Therefore it is now financially important for Bay Area rappers to build an audience in New York, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Chicago, etc... while 5-10 years ago it wasn’t really the case. 

If anyone from Northern California has recognized this the most it is Lil B. While personally there is not one song of his that I would choose to listen to on my own time, he understands the modern hustle and it has paid dividends. He flooded the internet (blogs and social networking) with free mixtape after free mixtape, and tons of ultra simple music videos, and used that exposure to sell out multiple shows in New York, Atlanta and other cities far from the West Coast. That resulted in favorable write ups in The New York Times, coverage from MTV, a spot on this year’s Coachella line up, and now he is the first Bay Area member of XXL’s Freshman 10, and thus the only Bay Area rapper to rock the cover of a major rap publication in years, if not ever (I can’t think of a cover, can anyone?).  

Yet he’s not the only local rapper starting to get national attention. As I noted earlier, Roach Gigz was recently interviewed on MTV, he’s had a couple of favorable write ups by Complex (yet for some reason the rest of the national Hip-Hop blogs are sleeping heavily), and while his shows haven’t been as frequent as they should be, he’s going to be doing his thing at South By Southwest this year which should help his exposure a lot. Moe Green, Davinci, and The Jacka are starting to get some love on the national blogs as well, and the three of them performed at last years AC3 conference in Atlanta, and will also be at this year’s South By Southwest. All of which are good signs that things are moving in the right direction, but the question is, will we finally be able to nationally emerge as the hip-hop mecca that we know we have been for years? Will we be able to maintain the diversity of our artists, or will once again floods of copy cat MC’s emerge and pull us back into the gutter as soon as someone gets famous? Will Bay Area rappers stay unified, but also maintain a high enough level of quality control, which would mean not allowing their mediocre homies to get on tons of tracks? Only time will tell, but I’m interested in your predictions. Especially since if you’re still reading at this point, you probably have a strong opinion. Hit up the comments section and get the discussion started.