some worthwhile points:
- thinking your going to blowup and live off of rap for life is not realistic for most rappers
- unless you're making over $2000 a week you should have some other form of income now
- life experience counts for something
- Jay Elect shows an exception to the rule
- people will keep doing what they love
- you can learn things in the rap game that can help when you retire
- many people won't ever give up rapping cuz they love it even though they won't be making a living from it
but going deeper, although he was on point a lot in this thread, like usual, the following quote seemed to come out of some deep personal anger or something:
Thun wrote:
1. To all rappers not named Rakim, Biggie, 2Pac, Chuck D, Eminem, Nas, or Jay-Z: YOUR ART IS NOT ETERNAL DESPITE YOUR BELIEF TO THE CONTRARY. Nobody, and I mean nobody - not a college professor, not an aging fan, not a tween, not a historian, not alien picking up terrestrial radio waves in his intergalactic space-jeep will give a fuck about your music. That goes for everyone here from Slug on down to Stoop Kid. Yeah, you might see your name pop up on some Last.Fm favorites list and you may even be invited to perform Scribble Jam revival show in Iceland in 2020 at your own expense, but your music will not live on as art - nobody will look to your music as being influential, innovative, or profound. If you believe otherwise, you're exactly the semi-literate idiot we've always believed you to be. Any enduring theme or substantive quip that can be attributed to rap music can be found in the works of the aforementioned seven rappers - you're culturally disposable.
Thus, any claim that putting in years of effort into da game bears some kind of transcendental reward in the future is bullshit -
maddoggy, just because a musician doesn't have millions of fans doesn't mean "nobody will look to your music as being influential, innovative, or profound" ... it doesn't mean we're "culturally disposable" ... these are real people affecting real people's lives and though it seems to piss you off for some reason, these rappers have good ground for thinking they're making some kind of difference to some people ... every little fan you look down on that likes an indie rapper is a person and thus a cultural entity, so they do make a difference ... and who knows what will come of all these works and words put in ... certainly not you.
this is another thing ... people acting like you have to either blow up or rapping isn't worth it ... sure i don't get to make tracks like id like to for the time being, but im using rapping as part of my day jobs since they are all about communication ... what ive learned from rapping is even part of my phd work on an ancient medeival monk ... so rapping is more than just the music industry ... it is philosophy and poetry just like all sentences ever uttered and it will compete in the threads of memes in untold ways
no one knows the future ... so to tell people following their hearts and pouring out their hearts, and trying to find and speak the truth, that there is no transcendental reward is just fallaciously begging the question
that's coming from one college professor whose cared about and quoted indie rappers to kids who never heard of them but had their thinking engaged and often changed in some way
[prepares for the Wrath of Thun]
