Why Do Rappers/MCs Make EPs?

[Achewon87]

In the streaming era?...

Shorter projects get more streams bc you run them back more often...

 

[GOAT]

The greatest rap album ever was only 10 tracks.........

Some my fav albums all time...

Whats Going On - 9 tracks
Lets Get It On - 8 tracks
Curtis Curtis Mayfield - 8 tracks

 

[MorganFreemanKing]

Between August 2019 and now I made 10 albums/mixtapes. Each album has 22 tracks and none of them sound the same.

Now all I have to do is get them mastered.

It's not difficult to make an album where all of the tracks are different, or they don't all sound the same.

It might be that these MCs/rappers don't make their own beats, so they need to pay producers.

I know Jay Z doesn't make beats. Neither does Nas as far as I know.

But how hard is it to pick 20 beats, make 20 songs, and then delete/cut the 5 worst tracks?

Due to this new era of music distribution and consumption, methods have changed for the most part. A lot of new artsist and fans CLEARLY don't know that there is a HUGE difference between putting out an album and just releasing a collection of songs. Making an album doesnt seem to be as important as it used to be, a lot of folk just want music.

When they made albums in the past, it wasn't just a matter of making x amount of song and then that was the album, artists usually made much more music during the process than what was released on said albums. THEN picking the songs to go on said album would probably have various criteria such as subject matter, sound, sequencing. Crafting an album was art in and of itself. So a lot of artsist would have "unreleased music" that would end up featured on some compilation years later.

Then came the mixtape era which is a double edge sword. Generally it's good because artists are putting out music on their terms. On the other hand, for a lot of folks that meant RELEASING. EVERY. THING. THEY. RECORD. A lot of which belongs in the trash. so if an artist wants to put out an EP for the sake of cohesion, more power to them. If they wanna do it because the songs used wont' fit elsewhere and would just end up in a vault otherwise, so be it but call that collection of song what it is, a compilation.

But don't just pad albums with filler just because.