Link: Part 1
Label chiefs and A&R execs talk about looking for that elusive element of "star quality" in aspiring artists-intangible stuff like whether or not listeners believe someone's music or if viewers want to be the person they see on MTV. But if predicting potential for success were easy, the labels wouldn't be wrong so often. (Jay-Z wouldn't have had to start Roc-A-Fella Records to put his music out himself. And Lil' Zane would be quadruple platinum.)
Most of today's biggest names are former outcasts and loudmouths that few believed in and no one would have wanted to be. 50 Cent was just a chubby kid from Queens with a chip on his shoulder before bullying his way to the top of the game. Kanye West was a college-dropout Chicago producer tugging on Jay's coattails. Eminem was just some White backpacker MC from a trailer park in Detroit. And who would have thought Lil Wayne would be the Hot Boy sitting on top 10 years after Juve hit with "Ha," ha?
While the pool of true hip-hop superstars is shallower than ever at the moment (in case you haven't heard, the industry is experiencing something of a down cycle), there's bound to be a few diamonds in the rough among the newbies. So the XXL brain trust set up shop in the boardroom for a few weeks and emerged with a Top 10 list of hopefuls. We considered things like technical proficiency, swagger, presence, co-signs from already-established artists, and the extent to which they move the crowd. So, without further ado, here are the 10 rappers we believe have the best shot to reach the top.
Next Up: Saigon
Success in hip-hop isn't always just about talent. More and more, it seems, an artist's prospects rely on a marketable life story. In that light, Brian "Saigon" Carenard should be a sure bet for superstardom. With a degree in street pharmacology, a pair of attempted-murder charges and a seven-year prison sentence on his portfolio (all before he was old enough to legally drive), the 30-year-old New York lyricist has a background that most rappers would trade their six-figure advances for. But here's the catch: That's not the story he wants to sell.
"I'm not gonna exploit it," says the reformed thug of his unseemly past. "Record companies market music to kids. If I'm knowing this, I'm not gonna give these kids a bunch of poison and not give them nothin' good. If I'm telling you about being a gangsta, I also gotta give you the flip side of the coin."
Saigon would much rather have fans and label execs focus on his rap résumé than on his rap sheet. Since emerging on the scene in 2001, he has released five heralded mixtapes, been co-signed by everyone from DJ Whoo Kid and Kay Slay to Mark Ronson and Jay-Z, and landed a recurring role as himself on HBO's hit series Entourage. To top it all off, he's been signed to superproducer Just Blaze's Fort Knocks Entertainment imprint on Atlantic Records since 2004. "Everything I acquired up to this point is because of my music," he says. "I'm not down with no crew. Nobody put me on. I carved my own niche."
Not surprisingly, Sai's sense of integrity doesn't always jibe with the agenda of his record label. For instance, the first single off his long-awaited debut, The Greatest Story Never Told, was "Pain in My Life," an emotional duet with singer Trey Songz that covers such topics as STDs, child-molesting priests and suicide. In an era of ringtones and catchy dances, the weighty record wasn't exactly what Atlantic brass was looking for. "It was a big fight, because I believed in the record," says Saigon. "But it's the label's money, and if they don't feel like they can sell it, they don't care about what I feel about my music as an art. They care about what we can sell." The song came and went quietly late last year.
This summer, Saigon finally put the finishing touches on The Greatest Story Never Told, which he expects to have out by early '08. Armed with a more commercial single, "Come On Baby," and plans to reprise his role on the next season of Entourage, he believes if he keeps the focus on the music, all the hard work will pay off. "I just made an album for my art," he says. "What you're gonna hear from my album is honesty. You're gonna hear the fact that I care about my people. You're gonna hear the fact that I care about Black music and Black culture as a whole."
Pain in My Life feat. Trey Songz
"P" feat. Kool G Rap
C'Mon Baby feat. Swizz Beatz
Dreams
True Story
Next Up: Plies
There are rappers who choose their words as carefully as they'd choose their last meals. And then there's Plies. When the Fort Myers, Fla., native has something to say, odds are he'll tell it to you straight-no chaser. Take, for instance, this oh-so-romantic line from his T-Pain-assisted breakout single "Shawty": "I don't **** on the first night/'Cause after I beat ya, baby, I'm liable to **** up ya whole life."
Granted, he's no Romeo. But in hip-hop, honesty is usually the best policy, and it's also Plies' living creed. It's this candor that's helped the rookie gain the loyal, and growing, fan base that copped 96,000 copies of his Big Gates/Slip-N-Slide/Atlantic Records debut, The Real Testament, during its first week of release this past August. "I tell the truth," says Plies. "I was never the dude that was tryna push you about street cred and stripes. I done been through it. I'ma give you my life. I'ma give you my issues. I'ma let you make your own decisions." It wasn't Plies' original intention to be a rapper. Born Algernod Lanier Washington, raised by a single mom in Fort Myers' Michigan Court Projects, he transitioned from the streets to the music industry on the business side. Employed by his older brother, Big Gates, who'd formed an independent label, Big Gates Records, in 2001, Plies worked behind the scenes before he wrote, and then voiced, the hook for a song ("Tell Dem Krackers Dat") originally created for one of the label's artists. When the song hit in 2003, carrying the first-time rapper's name beyond local borders, he saw the moneymaking potential in performance and started working on material for himself. Mixtapes like 100% Real ***** and 36 Ounces led to a 2004 deal with Miami-based Slip-N-Slide. Two years later, he thought he'd caught his first break after recording a verse on an Akon track-only to have his contribution cut after he was arrested for his involvement in a shoot-out at a concert in Gainesville. (Two members of Plies' entourage are facing attempted murder charges.) Snoop Dogg wound up replacing him on the final version of the song, which would go on to become a No. 1 pop hit: "I Wanna Love You."
Plies seems to have recovered nicely, though. He knows why the streets embrace him and why it looks like the rest of the world might soon follow suit. "I try to give you stuff that I feel like we all can relate to," he says. "Both the male side and the female side relate to. And the honestness of it."
Shawty feat. T-Pain
Hypnotized feat. Akon
I Just Want the Paper
100 Years
I'm So Hood w/ DJ Khaled, Trick Daddy, T-Pain, Rick Ross
Next Up: Rich Boy
For somebody who never aspired to a career as a rap star, 24-year-old Rich Boy has settled into the role quite comfortably. After leaving Tuskegee University's mechanical engineering program to pursue the beatmaking skills he'd learned from a fellow student there, the Alabama native found his calling on the microphone largely by chance. Four years ago, when Atlanta producer Polow Da Don was visiting a Mobile radio station with his since-defunct group Jim Crow, he heard a demo track Rich Boy had made-"Cold as Ice," it was called-that featured some of the very first rhymes the newbie had ever laid to wax. The next thing you know, a deal with Interscope Records is on the table. Next thing after that, it's 2006, and "Throw Some D's," an infectious celebration of double-size rims, is rattling chassis across the country.
These days, of course, a hit single doesn't guarantee big album sales. Despite the success of "D's"-and strong follow-up singles like "Boy Looka Here" and "Good Things"-Rich Boy's self-titled debut album has scanned a respectable but somewhat underwhelming 350,000 units since its March release. Still, the realistic rookie remains relaxed. "I feel like the way numbers is doing right now, and the way the game is, I feel like I did outstanding," he says, citing early work from today's powerhouses like T.I. that failed to reach a wide audience. "Especially for my first album, because even all the bigger artists that's bigger than me, on their first album, it didn't do too good."
Though he has no complaints about the push Interscope gave him (Rich Boy has spawned three singles, each with an accompanying video), he recognizes that superstars are rarely built by waiting on music executives to move. He's decided to personally finance a video for an album cut called "Let's Get This Paper"-a song that touches on everything from the war in Iraq to police brutality and the disproportionate rate of incarceration among Black males. "I feel like if it's in my heart to put it out, I need to just do it, and it's not a money issue. If this is my career, I can't be worried about what I'ma spend."
That may seem like an awfully noble sentiment coming from the "Throw Some D's" guy. But if there's one thing Rich Boy wants to make clear, it's that he's far from a gimmick rapper. He may have come to rhyming recently, but unlike many of his peers, who boast of their status as hustlers first and rappers second, Rich places artistic passion over money as his main motivation. "I feel like that's what a lot of artists are missing, like that's what we need to bring the game back to-making it an art form, where you do it from the heart."Let's Get This Paper
Throw Some D's
Ghetto Rich feat. John Legend
Boy Looka Here
And I Love You feat. Big Boi and Pastor Troy
Next Up: Lupe Fiasco
It was the leak heard round the hip-hop world. When Lupe Fiasco's 1st & 15th/Atlantic Records debut, Food & Liquor, hit the Web two and a half months before its intended June 2006 release date, the 25-year-old Chicago MC quickly vented his frustration-via radio, the Internet, the pages of this magazine. Roughly 310,000 album sales later, he's still a bit peeved. "I think it would've been more," he says of his scant SoundScan figures. "It's like, who really cares? Do the fans really care? But then you turn around and it's the most critically acclaimed album of 2006."
Lupe's grumbling is certainly justified. After all, his initial hype was built on the ultimate co-signs-Kanye West granted him a guest verse on "Touch the Sky," off 2005's Late Registration, and Jay-Z served as co-executive producer of Food & Liquor. And while it wasn't a smash, Lupe's debut single, "Kick, Push"-an unexpectedly cool tune about skateboarding-amplified his buzz. Coupling conscious, pensive wordplay with rhymes about cartoons, robots and clothing brands that were largely obscure to hip-hop heads, he was labeled both a geek and a trendsetter. "That vanguard of people that really embrace something fresh? I think I got that audience," he notes. "From reviewers, DJs and everybody on down."
So when his album leaked, the embittered freshman MC sought to offset the faulty plumbing by re-entering the studio (a Pharrell-produced track here, a Jay verse there) to prep Food & Liquor 2.0. By the time it arrived, though, chatter about the cat's being reminiscent of a young Hov (or Nas, depending on whom you asked) might have died down, but the impression Lupe made lasted. "The haters couldn't even hate no more, like, 'Yo, this ***** wears glasses,' or, 'This *****'s a nerd.' It's like, 'Dude is nice!'" says Lupe, who earned three Grammy nods off Food & Liquor. "Everybody's coming out with the shoot 'em up, bang-bang, throw money and Champagne on somebody... I choose to talk about something else."
This aversion to all the things commonly glamorized in hip-hop is dually rooted in his Islamic faith and his cultured upbringing on Chicago's West Side. Simultaneously upset with and allured by early '90s gangsta rap, the rapper born Wasalu Jaco developed a love/hate relationship with the genre and started rhyming. Before turning 21, he endured two failed record deals-one with Epic, as one-fourth of the rap group Da Pak, and a subsequent 2002 solo contract with Arista. So despite an offer from Jay-Z to join Roc-A-Fella, Lupe chose to cultivate his own imprint, 1st & 15th, a company he'd started in 2001 with childhood pal Charles "Chilly" Patton. The label latched onto Atlantic in 2004.
With his sophomore disc, The Cool, dropping in November (leak-protected, he insists), Lupe's still pushing his creative license to the limit. "It's a very dark album," he says. "I'm killing my career, because I'll never do the same thing twice. Fans see that, and it's like, 'Yo, this dude, he's always coming with something new.'"
I Gotcha
Daydreamin feat. Jill Scott
Hurt Me Soul
American Terrorist feat. Matthew Santos
Steady Mobbin
Next Up: Lil Boosie
Folks love Lil Boosie 'cause he wears his heart on his sleeve. Gloating and emoting over Louisiana bounce beats, the 23-year-old Baton Rougian has earned what is surely many rap fans' highest compliment: a comparison to 2Pac. "It's one of my top motivators when someone tells me in the club, '*****, you the next 'Pac,'" he says. "I idol 'Pac... When they tell me that ****, I go home and get focused."
While Boosie is new to national fame, a slew of loyalists stretching the Southern belt have exalted his ghetto testaments for years. Having grown up in a poor but close-knit family (he slept in the same bed as his grandmother up to the age of 16), he got serious about his rhymes after his father succumbed to cancer in 1997. "It made me start rapping," he says of his dad's passing. "That's when I really wanted to express myself."
Originally discovered by local No Limit recording artist Young Bleed, Boosie-a self-proclaimed "neighborhood bad azz"-released his debut album, Youngest of Da Camp, on the independent C-Loc Records in 2000. Things hit a snag, though, later that year, when he was sentenced to jail for being in a stolen car. Luckily, Pimp C's Trill Entertainment business partners, Turk and Mel, came through with bail and a recording contract that partnered the troubled teen with fellow Baton Rouge youngster Webbie. Within a five-year span, the duo dropped two joint efforts, along with their respective solo work.
So to hear him tell it, the attention Boosie's been getting lately is way late in coming. "I feel like I've been overlooked for a long time," he says, his pinched, high-register voice sounding even edgier than usual. "When Cash Money was dropping hits, I was dropping hits... Real talk, if I had a $10 million budget, I'd be selling millions."
He's probably getting closer to something like that. After Trill secured a deal with Atlantic Records, he scored his first countrywide radio play last year with the Yung Joc-assisted "Zoom" (on which Boosie says he carries a Glock 'cause he's "paranoid like 'Pac"). And this past summer, he ascended another level, with his song-stealing verse on the "Wipe Me Down (Remix)" (on which Boosie claims he and his cohorts are "famous like the Ninja Turtles"), from Trill's Survival of the Fittest compilation. "When I put my verse on that mutha-****a, it just took off to other places," he says in the midst of prepping his forthcoming set, Show the World: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz. "They done let me get in the door. Everybody get their time to shine. Now it's mine."
Zoom feat. Young Joc
Wipe Me Down feat. Foxx and Webbie
Ay Bay Bay (Remix) w/ Hurricane Chris, The Game, Baby, E-40, Angie Locc, and Jadakiss
Hatin
Set It Off
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