Jay-Z might have been better off staying out of the studio and in his executive office at Def Jam records. The man who was once on top of the hip-hop world, or at least staring eye-to-eye with P Diddy, has only managed to hawk a disappointing 708k copies of the album that marks his return. Bob Lefsetz writes, "Let's change the equation. Let's say this was a movie. What we'd have here is a ten million dollar opening weekend. And it's not like the picture only opened in a few theatres and is gonna break wide, this is it, the whole enchilada has been blown, it's not like there can be MORE publicity, or it will be available in MORE stores. In other words, it's downhill from here. After Xmas is this record TOAST?"
Possibly. I recently looked at hip-hop's decline and the growth of ringtones. The $64,000 question is, what's causing hip-hop to tank? I don't entirely agree with Lefsetz conclusion, but I think he's got just the tip of his foot in the door when he wrote, "Greed. Shooting for the top, for riches, the middle was abandoned. Nobody wants doubles when you can possibly have grand slams, when your corporate bosses are pestering you to meet expectations."
Frankly, at this point, Jay-Z will be hard pressed to go Double Platinum on album sales. So, while trying to hit one over the fence, did Jay-Z smack an easy pop-fly? To make matters worse, Jay-Z was also recently hit with a sampling lawsuit. Maybe Puffy was right when he said, "Mo money, mo problems."
1. what the fuck yall talking about. Jay-z is still on top. Yall really don't know Hip Hop.
Posted at 8:46PM on Nov 29th 2006 by kast