Why do rappers (or artists) 'fall off'

[rousseau]

This likely isn't too mind-blowing for many, but I enjoyed this answer to the question - 'Why do artists often produce an initial, fantastic album, but then lose popularity'

https://www.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/1neo58/why_do_rappers_fall_off/

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that artists spend pretty much their entire lives up to their first album, writing that album. The Weeknd in his recent AMA said he had been writing and perfecting House of Balloons for years to the point where he had multiple completed versions of each track and just picked the versions he liked best. Kanye had been stashing instrumentals for years away for The College Dropout. I guarantee that Kendrick Lamar had the at least some of the ideas floating around in his head for GKMC and Section.80 since 2004 at the latest. Nas' entire life experience to that point was summarized on Illmatic. etc etc.

Now I'm not saying Kanye, Weeknd, Kendrick, Nas fell off after their first work, but it proves the notion correct: artists spend 20+ years writing their first album(not just the literal writing, all the experience, practice, honing, training etc that goes into it). Then they are expected to drop a new project every year or two and it is hard to conjure that sort of artistic inspiration on a dime sometimes. Obviously there are tons of exceptions(many of whom I've named already).

Another issue I think that happens with a lot of rappers these days is almost over thinking it. They are starting to blow up off mixtapes, earlier albums, and then release a new album that really strays away from what got them hyped in the first place. Whether it is being too overproduced(Wiz Khalifa), too many pop attempts(J Cole, Yelawolf) or just a natural change in style(Earl), rappers can overthink it and lose part of what made them great in the first place. I'm not saying all change is bad, and certainly Cole out of those rappers has found a pretty happy balance on Born Sinner with radio stuff that still feels more natural, but it isn't always executed well.

I almost feel the rappers that never change are some of the most immune to falling off. Curren$y pretty makes the same type of album/mixtape every time he drops something with little variation. And he is consistently good. Ghostface Killah, same deal. You can listen to tracks from Fishscale, 12 Reasons to Die and Supreme Clientele back to back to back and while there is definitely differences, none of it sounds too radically out of place. Big KRIT's album may not have been as good has some of his tapes, but he pretty much does similar things every project. I feel like guys like that, as long as you like their schtick, aren't gonna fall off as much as say someone like Cudi who constantly does crazy out-there shit that can be more hit or miss.

This is eye-opening for the writing I do myself - I've spent about 10 years accumulating inspiration and honing pieces, but if you asked me to produce something of equal quality within two years - next to impossible.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Artists who can produce at peak inspiration for five or six albums are the outliers (and legends.)
Totally subjective assessment:
Aretha's hot streak: '67-'72
Joni Mitchell: '69-'76
Dylan: '64-'68 and '74-'76 (Similar to Dylan, with fallow periods of restated themes and mild-to-good releases, followed by unexpected masterworks, would be Miles Davis, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen...you can tell I have no knowledge base to bring rap into this!)
When you get a truly lesser album by one of these artists, say, Aretha's Hey Now Hey, Joni's Dog Eat Dog (which should have been shortened to Dog), Dylan's Down in the Groove, you realize that not only are they going on sheer momentum, having had their say in previous albums, but they're releasing stuff which wouldn't have been released at all, if it was their debut material. Then a couple of years will pass and they'll amaze you with something fresh and wonderful. In Miles' case, it was usually a complete metamorphosis into a new sound. Any artist who produces at his/her peak with, say, a 20 year span between masterworks is one of the absolute wonders in music. (John Fogerty, for instance: white hot in the '68-'70 period, and releases the smokin' Blue Moon Swamp in '97...To my taste, others who pulled this off are Etta James, Gregg Allman,in jazz: Ella, Duke, Oscar Peterson, Dexter Gordon...) A whole 'nother discussion is the artist who produced a brilliant string of performances and then died young, leaving you to guess at what we missed if they could have had more time (Robert Johnson, Fats Navarro, Coltrane, Jimi, Janis...)

 

[rousseau]

...you can tell I have no knowledge base to bring rap into this!)

Rap is pretty young, but if we're talking artists similar to what you mention I'd say Jay-Z fits the bill. He has 14 number one albums, and was still producing very good, relevant music as late as 2009 on Blueprint 3. Although I think there's a caveat here that after rap blew up in the 90s it became a money making machine, and so new albums by people like ~ Jay Z, Drake, Kendrick Lamar tend to have teams behind them. It's a far cry from Bob Dylan sitting in a hotel room strumming a guitar.

If you're ever interested in listening to some of the classics - Notorious B.I.G. is a legend of the genre who produced two classic albums before he was murdered. Jay Z's debut album Reasonable Doubt is incredible (as are some of his other albums, but he took off after this one). and Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid Mad City, and DAMN are also classics (he won a Pulitzer for DAMN).

You might appreciate the story behind Jay Zs career. He was a very successful drug dealer before hitting it big, and one of the most popular underground rappers in NYC, but he had no incentive to launch a rap career because he was already making so much money. I forget exactly how it went, but there was some tumult between him and record labels that had him stall his career. He'd play underground shows and throw money into the crowd to give an indication of his situation.

There's a documentary on Netflix about the history of hip hop that you might enjoy. It's all good, but the episodes about Notorious B.I.G. and Jay Z are well worth watching.

 

[ZiprHead]

That's definitely not a trait singled out by rap/hip hop. It's virtually every artists problem. Cut your first album, it does well. The record company wants another, in six months. Uh oh, I used all my best stuff on my first album.

So many one hit wonders.

 

[rousseau]

That's definitely not a trait singled out by rap/hip hop. It's virtually every artists problem. Cut your first album, it does well. The record company wants another, in six months. Uh oh, I used all my best stuff on my first album.

So many one hit wonders.

It likely extends to other strands of art too - creative writing comes to mind. Good art, more broadly, needs inspiration. Visual arts like painting maybe not as much, depending on your subject.

One part of the answer in the link I like is the description of the 1st album as the accumulation of the artists life experience. Sheds some light on breakout albums.

 

[James Brown]

I've seen the same observation made about authors.

Your first novel was loosely based on the ten years you spent as a nurse in a Indonesian refugee camp. It's published to great acclaim.

You spend the next year mostly in airports and bookstore signings. What are you going to write about next?

 

[Mumbles]

That's definitely not a trait singled out by rap/hip hop. It's virtually every artists problem. Cut your first album, it does well. The record company wants another, in six months. Uh oh, I used all my best stuff on my first album.

So many one hit wonders.

Todd in the Shadows has a series dedicated to this - he picks a one hit wonder, their origins, their subsequent albums, and whether or not they "deserved better".

It's remarkable how often he digs into them and realizes "actually, they're still huge in other countries, *we in the US* just forgot about them."

As far as Rap goes, a lot of it comes down to "the genre actually just changed beneath them", "Huh? They walked away from it", "What? This guy actually had a lot fo major hits, wrote for several other people, and is still actually pretty popular", and the like. Same often goes for, say, late hair metal bands right before grunge showed up.

As far as rap goes...

Yep, there's Biggie, with two smash hits and was killed. Tupac was similar, when you get right to it. THere's sampling-related issues (Bomb Squad's entire sound was destroyed by a SC ruling that sampling three notes meant you had to pay - even if the notes were chopped up, filtered, and rearranged to create a wildly different sound). And honestly, a lot of them were just treated like one-hit wonders right from the start - two hit at most. How many people still follow, say, DJ Jazzy Jeff, even though he actually did a lot of good music?

Can we say that, for example, Kanye got better through the year - right up until he hit a wall? And that a lot of other popular rappers from them either ran into their own problems with drugs and the like, or just...weren't that good (eg. Ja Rule)? And that a lot of people who were popular then, at 18, will just naturally change with age?

And finally, Rap in particular just hasn't been around for long enough that we can look back on 50 years and see any consistency in much of anyone? I mean, in 1980 everyone sounded like Melle Mel (anyone can just go listen to "The Breaks" or "Rappers' Delight" and hear the voice and inflections I'm referring to hear - it's the old "Well I'm <insert name here> And I'm here to say" vocal style.) It just doesn't have the same history that other long-standing music forms do yet.

 

[ZiprHead]

That's definitely not a trait singled out by rap/hip hop. It's virtually every artists problem. Cut your first album, it does well. The record company wants another, in six months. Uh oh, I used all my best stuff on my first album.

So many one hit wonders.

Todd in the Shadows has a series dedicated to this - he picks a one hit wonder, their origins, their subsequent albums, and whether or not they "deserved better".

It's remarkable how often he digs into them and realizes "actually, they're still huge in other countries, *we in the US* just forgot about them."

My deceased brother's band was bigger in Europe than in the US. Here, they were a one hit wonder. Although I've met a couple people, upon hearing who my brother was and his band, said "I loved that album".

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

That's definitely not a trait singled out by rap/hip hop. It's virtually every artists problem. Cut your first album, it does well. The record company wants another, in six months. Uh oh, I used all my best stuff on my first album.

So many one hit wonders.

It likely extends to other strands of art too - creative writing comes to mind. Good art, more broadly, needs inspiration. Visual arts like painting maybe not as much, depending on your subject.

Most visual arts don't support the "one hit wonder" phenomenon. An artist has to have not only a body of work, but a style or "voice" that makes them stand out. Once developed, that style is much more easily applied to new works than it would be for a musical artist or a writer. If a painter/sculptor/photographer seems to burst onto the scene, it's only because they've been there for years or even decades and finally got noticed by the right people. They don't usually disappear after being "discovered".