The Lil Wayne Myth
I’m sure at some point in these last two or three years you’ve heard about market oversaturation. An artist puts out too many songs or albums or mixtapes or videos or interviews or whatever and you start to get sick of them right? Wrong, kinda.
Obviously I’m referring to Lil Wayne and Beyonce here. Wayne put out like 5, maybe 6 billion songs in these past few years. And now Beyonce is slowly gaining enough votes to win the “You’re Doing Too Much” award. Single Ladies, Halo, Ego, Video Phone, etc… People always say that oversaturation causes your audience to get sick of you. They aren’t thirsty for your product anymore.
Well I don’t see Lil Wayne or Beyonce starving. They’re obviously getting paid still because people are still buying their music. So does the oversaturation theory still apply? You tell me. Wayne can still hop on any remix and people will support it. Beyonce could put out fifteen more black and white videos and people would still hype it.
And that isn’t at all to knock their hustle. My point is that I think if you have the talent, skill, charisma, or whatever that “it” factor is, flooding the market won’t matter. If you’re subpar however and put out 15 remixes of the same song, that’s when it gets annoying. People were more tired of “A Milli” than they were of Wayne. Everyone felt the need to hop on that beat and that got annoying.
So people of Dr. Jays, Does putting out too many tracks, or doing too much, negatively affect an artist?
For Wayne it worked…It was the best marketing scheme at that time. He was on every remix, dropping mixtapes left and right and still doing great work. Not to say that every single song he dropped was classic but very solid…
I would say he paved the way for how upcoming artists should drop. Just look at how Gucci basically re-entered the spotlight. But at the same time, not everything Gucci dropped was solid. So the method/scheme works for artists that have the talent and worthy to do so…
The whole track a day for 30 days is very annoying but just imagine Andre 3000 doing that opposed to OJ Da Juiceman (no shots)
That’s a tough one. I think Wayne’s quality definitely slipped releasing all of those records.
The jock factor also comes into play. People sometimes mess with Wayne/Beyonce types because their stars, it’s not about the music 100%. It’ll be on the radio, you’re going to hear it 1000 times whether you try to or not. Some people let it brainwash them. Me? I try not to pay attention.