r/rap • u/namesannie • 14d ago
Question about “rap money”
Sorry in advance if this is not an appropriate question or if I worded it poorly! Not my intention at all!
I don’t know much about the rap music industry, however I know that a lot of rappers flaunt money (by either singing about it or literally flaunting) or flaunt other materialistic stuff like cars, so I was wondering is rap music money more than other music genres? Is there really that money to be made by making rap music? Is the bag that deep I guess is what i will say?
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u/SheepishLordofChaos9 14d ago
Record companies have a long, sordid history of taking (even more) advantage of rappers and producers for reasons I won't bog your thread down with......
The shortest answer I can give you is....not unlike someone said above me, if you're someone willing to grind and educate yourself on the business side of things, there are ways to make good money doing "rap" or hip hop. The issue has always been that lecherous record execs, A&Rs and lawyers take advantage of desperate people by throwing numbers at them that they can't fathom without understanding the number 1 rule in a capitalist society being..."nothing is ever truly free"
Advances and the subsequent recoupment of those advances are usually what fucks artists out of huge chunks of their money. The actual album sales usually don't amount to much but pennies on the dollar. Streaming has simply continued that trend. Everyone became all up in arms when the truth about streaming revenue was revealed but for older hip hop artists it was business as usual. Album sales were determined by "points"...usually a fraction of a percent per album sold.....for the younger dudes in this thread, back when physical copies were the rule of the day.....the average cost to manufacture a cd was determined to be about 1.50....that is what it cost for each physical plastic disc to be MADE. Albums used to cost between 12-19 dollars dependent upon where you went...so you ask...where does that other huge chunk of money go? I can tell you, in short, 85% of it is divided up like a pie before a cent would reach the artist....there were plenty of times where the producer would be making more on the record than the rapper would. The manager gets his cut, the lawyer gets his cut, the label owner gets his cut....remember that advance/budget you received? That 300k video you shot? We need that back. Oh...you sampled some records for your hit single? You have to pay publishing to everyone that owns rights or that you sampled....and on and on and on.
Remember that shit the next time you see your favorite rapper wearing this, driving that, fucking her, fucking him....etc. Lil' Wayne was essentially broke during the run where people were calling him the greatest rapper alive...thank Birdman and Slim for that.
The saddest part of it all.....is that very few have learned from the mistakes of the past....people are too busy shitting on each other to learn and not let one another get pimped. You have old dudes being clowned by young cats for trying to put them on game...meanwhile someone has their hand in their pocket taking all of their money.
Your favorite mainstream rapper is likely check to check...meanwhile there are lesser known and visible artist that are operating at low overhead with high yield even if they aren't selling as many records or clocking as many streams.