Is The Music Industry Giving A Pass To Signed Hip-Hop Artists Promoting Explicit Music & Videos?

We will make a slight alteration in our topic today and dive a little deeper into one of the struggles un-signed Urban artists face in their music careers. Although many media channels are challenging the state of rap, trap, and drill music, we haven't yet seen any signs that this genre will soon go anywhere. We agree that some versions of rap music could get pretty dark. Still, we also understand that many artists who speak on violence come from those environments, having to adopt a certain mentality to survive. It's unjust to expect the entire mindset and instincts of an individual whose environment changes without being educated on survival in the new environment, compared to rehoming a zoo animal into the wild after seven years.

The most popular hip-hop artists are still thriving, many making millions of dollars annually, but how are they doing it? Many unsigned artists are aware of the power of marketing their music, and a few are taking advantage of that power to excel, but if you look at hip hop, things start to look like the odds are stacked against them on purpose. Throughout 2016 - 2019, we heavily advocated for unsigned artists to censor their explicit music and music videos as it makes it easier to promote their music on the most utilized advertising platforms. All of our efforts were ignored, but looking at the market today, we completely understand why.

At the same time we were encouraging censorship, two things were happening that were out of our control.

Without us knowing, this made AsheQ Music appear not to support the hip-hop community, which couldn't be further from the truth. This begs the question, why (or should we say how) are artists signed to label or distribution deals able to effortlessly reach millions of listeners in just a matter of days? Especially the new signees that appear from thin air? If millions of videos and songs are released daily in such a competitive industry, how can they slip through the cracks? Here is our theory.

The music industry doesn't survive off of the music itself, but the partnerships, endorsements, and other relationships lead to funding and effective marketing sources. This is how a rap artist could receive a 1 Million to 10 Million dollar record deal before they've sold any records. Suppose a record label constructs relationships with the heavy hitters of social media, radio, management agencies, touring agencies, insurance companies, law firms, etc. Then, they have everything they need to dominate the market. What does that look like? All their assets (hip-hop artists) receive tier-1 services from these relationships. Potential benefits are:

Those are just a few, but let's hone in on the particular treatment regarding ad restrictions. If you are or have worked with a rap artist, you know the restrictions regarding what will allow you to promote them. Cursing, too much skin, content classified as "shocking", and so on are out of the question. We think this could be a leverage ploy to maintain control of who is most famous for explicit hip-hop, allowing them to monetize and control the money that explicit hip-hop music generates. So what do the artists do? View labels and distribution deals as the only means to make money in hip hop.

We could go deeper into this subject on many levels, but we'd like your thoughts on this matter as we believe this is the wake-up call rap artists need to become actual competitors and benefactors of hip hop in the music industry. Instead of complaining about how much the hand that feeds you is feeding you, let us learn how to pour food into our bowls. We'd love to help!

Wait! We have one more theory.

The industry really is just run off bots, fake views, and inflated fame.