Man. So Willy Northpole dropped today. Willy is the first Arizona rapper to really drop on a major label, so his success is going to play a large role in determining the industries opinion of Arizona as a viable market to launch urban acts from. I have many thoughts on this, that I plan to elaborate below, but first, a bit about our lives.
I’m typing this in such a shithole of a place to live I don't even want to talk about it, no furniture, no beds, no real internet, two people in a space the size of your average kitchen. I spent the day at the office of a record label whose president can’t even look me in the eye. I’ve been hiding most the weekend in the corner wondering why G had to die so randomly and dealing with the plethora of questions involving his, dare I say shady, demise. I guess listening to Pinocchio Story and Cudi’s Rollin on repeat doesn’t do much for my mood, but it’s been a wack week or two and if I didn’t have things to look forward to (moving this week, getting paid Friday, leaving this godforsaken desert next week) I’d really be tripping right now…
I guess mostly I’m just exhausted by the state of AZ music. Our G-Unit artist hasn’t even put a song out anyone in AZ knows about. Our Black Wall Street aka Amare Stoudamire’s artist has blatantly fabricated MySpace statistics (cmon yall) and has never to anyone’s knowledge performed a show in Arizona other than during All Star Weekend. Willy Northpole is the most commercially viable, well backed and probably dopest of these artists, but they (or he) did him real dirty out here in AZ. I haven’t seen one (1) poster for his cd release, one flyer, met one street team member, nothing. Lots of twitter posts, some love from 101.5 having his song in rotation etc. but man you can’t even promo in your home state for your release? Someone’s tripping… And what’s sad is the industry is all about promoing him, but only to the rest of the industry, so it’s hard for them to understand the average person in AZ might not know he’s even dropping today.
I’m super anxious to see Soundscan next week. I’m hoping he sells 5,000 but that’s so depressing that that’s what I have to hope for. My man at Universal said he’d put money down he doesn’t sell 2000, which is more depressing. If he sells 10k that’d be spectacular.
And that’s SUPER depressing. This man owes his label a few hundred k at least. He’s got Neyo on his album, BOB on his album, Bobby Valentino, Don Cannon beats… That doesn’t come cheap. Say it cost 50k to get Neyo, they sell 10,000 records they haven’t even paid back Neyo, nonetheless producers, recording, samples, promo. And to believe the XPOZ article that came out during Superbowl he owes Capri jewelers 50k+ for stolen chains….
Why would they drop an album? The streets aren’t banging for Willy, they were 6 months ago when he had a single out (Body Marked Up isn’t even on the album) but its not like he’s doing a ton of shows or has a ton or press, or blowing up the airwaves etc. Someone’s doing AZ dirty, whether it’s his team misleading the label that they have AZ on lock to sell 100k on some Jeezy talk… Or whether it’s the label saying “this promo is good enough” when in this climate it really isn’t.
I’m hoping so badly he sells and I’m just missing the bigger picture, even if Def Jam’s buying up the records because AZ’s about to look idiotic if he sells 2-5000 records. The first AZ rapper out and no real support in his hometown. This man should have been all over everything anyone could have put him on. And artists like Silver Medallion really need his success. Because we don’t have the luxury of a major we can’t plan a release date and drop and build up to sell 10k first week. We gotta drop on the low and grind it out and try to sell 10k in a year to get noticed. But how the hell are we as Phoenix artists going to be national press worthy if our major label artists can’t sell records? In one sense I’m happy at least he dropped so someone from AZ is out there, but I’m so nervous about if he even makes the new records charts next week…
Man, what can we do as a community to push these projects? We need every AZ artist (there’s only four, let’s be honest here, Juice, Willy, Hot Rod and Silver Medallion, no one else matters yet, no offense intended, but no one else is even buzzin at all on local or national to make a go at it) to sell 25k out the gate off AZ love alone. That’s not even a lot of records… For the 5th largest metropolis in the US! How can this happen. I’ll put aside what I think of these artists music and what I think of their work ethic and support just because that’s what should happen to build a framework that will allow my group to be successful, but some people have got to take it upon themselves to build that framework.
Someone just tell us what to do. If the labels aren’t going to push them we have to. The fact that Silver Medallion has done more shows locally than Willy, Hot Rod and Juice combined is scary to me (85 as of this weekend), I’m not saying they should be doing some of the wack ass shows we do (lol) but people gotta get support to kill their hometown. Even press! Where the New Times articles (Willy had two), AZ Republic (anybody?), 944 (anyone?), the ASU paper (anyone?). This is SOOOOOOOOO bad. I mean, me and Carnegie just harassed people until we got articles, ya’ll labels don’t have people to do that? If you don’t have a hit record then national exposure doesn’t really mean much, and none of these people do (Willy been on the verge, he got Street singles), so why isn’t anyone building a local base to sell records? Where are these mixtapes? Where are the posters? The club appearances even? I’ve never seen any AZ rapper pull up whipping hard to pop bottles, or even heard about it, the exception being All Star Weekend when these rappers had their sugar daddies paying for their events and everyone was talking about Arizona being “their state” (“your state” could get real ugly real quick in this club scene lol, for anyone). I’m terrified for AZ music, and just out of survival, this is detrimental to the rest of us trying to come up to get the deals that ya’ll have!
Someone just tell us what to do. We been grinding out here too long to move to LA, but today might be a step backward and not a step forward… The industry out here needs to connect to the people, let’s do it.
And they’re bootlegging my fucking cd on 16th and Roser.
