DJ Akademiks believes that hip-hop is still not in a great place even after the intense battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar last year. In fact, he believes that's one of the main reasons as to why. In particular, he's talking strictly from a sales and charting perspective.
While on stream, the rap pundit noticed a trend while scrolling through the projections for the top 50 albums the Billboard Hot 200. For context, he was using HITS Daily Double for this. What DJ Akademiks saw stuck out to him like a sore thumb. Outside of a few outliers such as Doechii, BigXthaPlug, Lil Durk, and Tyler, The Creator, a majority of the albums were coming from Drake, Kendrick, and Opium artists.
In other words, Ak firmly stands by the fact that only albums tied to the feud or artists like Playboi Carti or Ken Carson (in this case) have any staying power. In moving outside of the top 10 --which includes GNX, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, MUSIC, and More Chaos-- the rest of the chart is ran by older Drake and Lamar albums.
DJ Akademiks On Drake And Kendrick Lamar
Take Care (2011), good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), and DAMN. (2017) are filling out the latter half of the top 50. Moreover, DJ Akademiks feels that in order to stick, you need to have essentially a worldwide fan base and a loyal one to have any chance of sustained success.
The New York based independent journalist also went onto to state that labels like UMG, Interscope, and Republic are just fine with older records moving units. As Ak puts it, "People think that the labels want to break new artists. No. They wanna break new money. They don't give two f*cks if new artists drop --of course they want the business to continue-- but if they don't have to put any promo or marketing money into GNX, Take Care..." then can live off of that.
In a way, though, this another way for Akademiks to commentate on the Drake and Kendrick Lamar battle. Not too long ago, he broke down the first night of Lamar's Grand National world tour and actually defended the mocking of Drake with the "Not Like Us" lawsuit.
"I'm calling everything fair. If this is part of the show, I don't think that's obsessed with Drake. I'm clowning you on tour gang. I'm not obsessed. The Super Bowl performance was obsessed. Him doing a full show and then getting to the climax, which is "Not Like Us," his biggest song ever. Yeah, he's supposed to clown Drake. I get it."
