Industry Lie #4080: Not Bad Selling Bad But Bad Selling Good by Homeboy Sandman

I know these days on PHH an interest/'Hip-Hop Is Read' post is a lil' scarcer than in years past.. Time to get back in the swing of things..

Peep enigmatically skilled emcee outta Queens, NYC Homeboy Sandman's latest write up for HuffPost (how dope is it that a nice rapper writin' for political websites tho?) "Industry Lie #4080: Not Bad Selling Bad But Bad Selling Good" :

My last piece covered how negativity, (most notably criminality, misogyny, and materialism), has a stranglehold on popular hip hop today. Response was varied. There was agreement that it is a horrific dilemma. There was suspicion that I am merely jealous because it's not my music dominating the airwaves. Blame was assigned to everyone from rappers to listeners to labels. Amidst this can of worms one common response stood out to me as particularly puzzling; "it's what sells." 

The notion that hip hop consumers have an insatiable thirst for negativity is widely accepted and regularly circulated. In today's society where the bottom line reigns supreme, generation of revenue is seen less as an excuse, and more as an reasonable explanation, for immoral and socially irresponsible behavior. One commenter went as far as to assert that rappers who play into redundant stereotypes are "being good capitalists." 

I don't like this argument for two reasons. The first is that It suggests that it's acceptable for integrity to take a backseat to lucrative business opportunity. 

The second is that, it's not even true.

Read The Rest Here