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Do You Believe Illmatic Only Sold 1,686,000 Units?

yes....and remember it didnt go gold until 96 I believe...Critical acclaim and popularity are two separate things.
 
5 Grand said:
Well I can name three African artists; Miriam Makeba, King Sunny Ade and Fela Kuti. Wikipedia doesn't even have their sales figures.
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yes this is what i’m saying. look at any top 1000 albums list. you gonna have 950 albums by groups from western europe or usa. and 50 albums from the whole other rest of the world. you can name hundreds, thousands of american artists. you can only name 3 african artists.

don’t you see what’s going on? you telling me no one from china or india made a top 1000 album or makes any good music?

everything we take in is based on what usa or england says is good. everything else is disregarded. that’s because usa and england are the only places that buy albums in such large quantities.
 
SheerExcellence said:
yes this is what i’m saying. look at any top 1000 albums list. you gonna have 950 albums by groups from western europe or usa. and 50 albums from the whole other rest of the world. you can name hundreds, thousands of american artists. you can only name 3 african artists.

don’t you see what’s going on? you telling me no one from china or india made a top 1000 album or makes any good music?

everything we take in is based on what usa or england says is good. everything else is disregarded. that’s because usa and england are the only places that buy albums in such large quantities.
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As I understand it, American culture is appreciated worldwide. Other cultures don't have the same appeal.

Here's my hypothesis; When Black people came over to America during the slave trade a new race was created. Africans mixed with Native Americans and White Americans. You can tell because Africans are much darker than Black Americans. Generally, Africans tend to be dark skinned while Black Americans are dark skinned, brown skinned and light skinned. If you name your top 10 rappers you'll see different shades of brown.

So the new race that was created invented new styles of music; gospel, blues, jazz, rock, and Hip Hop. These are all forms of music that were created by Black Americans. These styles of music were marketed globally.

When Michael Jackson was big in the 80s he was a global phenomenon. I can't think of any Russian, Indian or Chinese pop stars that were a phenomenon in America. The same goes for Hip Hop artists, 2Pac and Wu Tang are good examples. Alot of Rap artists that have modest success in America have a big following in Europe and Japan. But there's not too many artists from Europe and Japan that have a big following here, if any.

I think it goes back to Black Americans having access to professional recording equipment that Africans don't/didn't have access to. Back in the 50s and 60s a Black recording artist could go to a professional recording studio and make a record, something that an African artist couldn't do because their technology wasn't as sophisticated as ours.


That's my hypothesis.
 
ok we have veered way off course. i was just saying primarily western europe and usa buy 90% of the records sold worldwide.


All these new race theory and stuff you have is interesting to think about, but its another topic. i need some weed and hennessey to contemplate all that you discussing right now.
 
Lol yeah I do believe it. Illmatic wasn't as popular of an album at the time in terms of record sales. People were buying into Wu-Tang, Snoop blew up in '94 like 50 in '03 and they were also anticipatin' Big's debut Ready to Die. '94 was a phenomenal year for hip hop. Illmatic didn't get the press it deserved and it's one of those conscious lyrical records that never sell higher without strong singles.

Same could be said in '96 when Jay dropped Reasonable Doubt. '96 dare I say was a better year than '94 in terms of classic albums and great records being put out. Pac dominated that year, Nas dropped It Was Written which was highly anticipated, OutKast came strong wit ATLiens etc. Nas and Jay came out wit they albums at a time where more people checkin' for other artists.

I mean you can still point to other factors contributing to that 1,686,000 number, but I think most critically acclaimed projects in movies or music don't get that type of exposure in terms of sales or popularity, but moreso quality.
 
Hiram said:
Lol yeah I do believe it. Illmatic wasn't as popular of an album at the time in terms of record sales. People were buying into Wu-Tang, Snoop blew up in '94 like 50 in '03 and they were also anticipatin' Big's debut Ready to Die. '94 was a phenomenal year for hip hop. Illmatic didn't get the press it deserved and it's one of those conscious lyrical records that never sell higher without strong singles.

Same could be said in '96 when Jay dropped Reasonable Doubt. '96 dare I say was a better year than '94 in terms of classic albums and great records being put out. Pac dominated that year, Nas dropped It Was Written which was highly anticipated, OutKast came strong wit ATLiens etc. Nas and Jay came out wit they albums at a time where more people checkin' for other artists.

I mean you can still point to other factors contributing to that 1,686,000 number, but I think most critically acclaimed projects in movies or music don't get that type of exposure in terms of sales or popularity, but moreso quality.
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Yeah, what he said^^^^^
 
mryounggun said:
Lol. Fam what are you talking about? It ain't even that deep. Nevermind.
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I know it's not that deep. It's just that my jigga warrior alarm went off.

I've been posting in these forums for a long time so I know whose who, unfortunately. I'm the guy that use to post magazine scans of nas and jay z that all over these hip hop forums

Jigga warriors always coming in nas threads like yourself with revised history. That's why they words hold no weight to me.

The hood had illmatic on bootlegg. Tupac while he was locked up had illmatic on bootlegg. MC Serch even said he found a garage full of 60,000 bootlegg copies. Nas even said that he wasn't mad that it got bootlegged. Thecoli and boxden know that illmatic was heavily bootlegged. Yet guys that use to post on the IC dont.

Lol, funny
 
I understand that Illmatic was an "underground" album when it was released and didn't have any "hits" in the traditional sense.

But my point is that it's probably the most critically acclaimed album in the history of Hip Hop. I'm not saying that it sold alot of copies when it dropped, I'm saying that it probably sold several million copies over the past 20 years due to it's critical acclaim. Especially after the Nas/Jay beef, people would have bought it to see what the fuss is about.

Just like people would have bought Thriller over the past 20 years, to see what the fuss is about.
 
Nas/Jay beef happened when limewire and napster were poppin. people were droppin $10 just to "check it out" unless they were already into that jazz infused hip hop


and of course people checked out thriller to see what the fuss is, it has both critical and commercial acclaim. the majority of the album are singles. apples and oranges
 
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