Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

This isn't new. This has been happening for a while.

Whether or not you love or hate the music, hip hop is one of the most meritocratic facets of the music industry. Look at Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Kanye West -- all people who got their starts on the blogosphere.

View on HN

While some of the rappers you mentioned were noticed in the blogosphere, the point is that they didn't remain unsigned. That is a big difference. Drake did not become a household name until signing with Cash Money.

Kanye West was actually the opposite. He was in the music business and had a lot of connections for quite awhile before going solo. The internet just helped to make him more popular as a solo artist.

Well, Drake was pretty popular in Canada since he was an actor on the TV show Degrassi.

That is true. I forgot the Degrassi connection.

RapGenius is also a big factor in the meritocratic rise of quality hip-hop. A track like Kendrick Lamar's Keisha's Song[1] would have been inaccessible and quickly discarded by a human like myself had it not been for the RapGenius page[2] for that track.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpX--7xb2IA [2] http://rapgenius.com/Kendrick-lamar-keishas-song-her-pain-ly...

Kanye was a producer for Roc-a-Fella before blogs were even a thing.

All those guys were heavily promoted by Big Music though, the new thing is that aside from a spot in the Freshman class at XXL (which is probably a huge negative in 2013), Macklemore is almost entirely an internet phenomenon and unlike everyone else you named is completely unaffiliated with Big Music. The point is not that blogs are popular, it's the degree to which they are popular.

For all intents and purposes, blogs are pretty much affiliated with big music now though. And for what it's worth, Drake was only really affiliated with big music after he made it big on his own. Even when he was (allegedly) promoted by big music without being signed, that was in a bid to win build him and win him over.

While I agree that an entirely internet phenomenon is a bit different, I don't think it's a unique case. Macklemore just happens to be exemplifying an extreme case of a trendthat's been going on for a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com