Your Favorite White Boy

Even though Shawn Carter’s Blueprint 3 was one of the more widely anticipated forth quarter releases, D.C.’s own Wale had a buzz of his own around the October release of his debut album, Attention Deficit. Wale had generated some of the biggest hype of any new artist after releasing two well received mixtapes The Mixtape About Nothing and Back To The Feature.

But recent sales have him at around 30,000 records sold, which by most standards, even in this recessionary economy, is a certified flop.  While even the once-mighty 50 Cent can even brick these days, I think Wale was a bit of a surprise to most observers.

Wale isn’t the typical rapper – he can connect with a wider audience than a street dude like Jadakiss, he had great exposure on Jay’s Blueprint 3 tour, he had an internet buzz as a XXL Freshman – hell, he even had Lady Gaga and Rihanna lace his tracks.   His album, while not considered a classic, got decent or good reviews.  So, Wale managed to avoid the usual pitfalls that explain a poor debut.

This leaves us to search for a larger meaning for why Wale bricked.  Rizoh over at The Rap Up takes a solid cut as to why this may be the case, which even caught the attention of Wale himself.   While I agree with many of his points: that internet buzz doesn’t translate into sales, Wale missed some opportunities and even his attitude having an impact, I think there’s a bigger issue at play.

Wale is an accessible hip-hop artist.  He can craft radio-friendly ditties while keeping his lyrical credibility intact.  There’s no way he could be pigeonholed as “too street.”  Wale’s lack of sales speak to a systemic problem with the record business itself.

I’m not saying that we should blame label politricks, but if you can’t market successfully a versatile dude like Wale, how is hip-hop ever going to grow past ringtone rap and focusing on that one-hit wonder?  These labels had a lot to work with here.  Attention Deficit had something for everyone, yet they still couldn’t get people to take an interest.

Its clear to me the label was happy to leave Wale to fend for himself.  When heads are saying they couldn’t find a physical copy of the album and I myself would never had heard about Attention Deficit save for a small iTunes ad, you have to wonder just when labels feel they should get behind an artist. Social networking and internet buzz is fine, but you still need to get the machine behind it if you want to see big numbers.

Wale’s lack of success does not bode well for those who want to see rap leave the trendy/fad box forever.  If these labels don’t figure out how to get behind and market real hip-hop music and quality hip-hop artists, rap music will dies a death of a thousand cuts bricks.

Tags: Attention Deficit, Labels, Wale