Good points made on this thread.
Perhaps many artists are faced with a situation where you have to question your motives. On one end you want to appeal to other homies because that's not only who you can directly relate to but many times who you want to relate to. On the other hand you have to think about the business aspect and think about not limiting yourself to a market. The question then becomes, to limit yourself to one market that you want to appeal to? Or to appeal to other markets and lose the support of people who will generally feel and support you?
Redrum from Deep Sleep is a good example of this conflict. In this album, we didn't want to leave out homies at all. We wanted to put cuts on there that homies could bump. People are still out there banging hard and going strong, so it's only natural that since we also come from that same background that we incorporate that into the music. Then again, for the larger part homies don't feel that twisted shit that Redrum often spits about. The cover for Voices in my Head is not a cover that will appeal to many homies. Many homeboys and homegirls won't give the album a chance because of its cover. When you really listen, the album has a lot of deep cuts on various subjects and is still banging but with an original twist (no pun(s) intended). So in the end, we ended up with a product that is all Redrum and displays his versatility at the expense of not appealing as much to the homeboy market. Then we have Blockmade coming up and that's pretty much the opposite since that's all mostly gangbanging music. Shit, mostly my ass, all gangbanging really.
Then you have artists like Sleepy Santino who have a good product out with a good mix of content with wide market appeal. That really makes you wonder on whether homeboys really are given a chance by the general population.
I know my post seems like I'm plugging these artists but you guys that have heard these artists know it's also true.
