Road trips are interesting. They give you time to think and ask questions you don’t always have the time to ask? Questions for yourself or questions for others, the main point is we do think of several good questions. On a recent I-95 trip I came up with some questions to which I could not think of a good answer. I’ll tell you exactly how it went. I was on I-95, I had been driving for 3 hours and had about another 4 in front of me so I was pretty tired and not in the most chipper of moods.

I turn my system up and then… something happens. Suddenly I find my arms moving and I’m singing along to the new Rick Ross CD that was in my player. All the sudden I’m not so tired and feeling alright. When the next song comes on I’m even more hype and still doing my limited dance moves from behind the steering wheel. “Boss!” I yell along. You see what I was doing right there was something I rarely find myself doing or at least realizing I’m doing it. I was enjoying myself. That’s right. Enjoying myself. You wanna know what the best part was about it? The cost to enjoy myself? $10.67. That’s right, I cop CD’s on Tuesdays. Anyway when I realized my mood had changed and what was taking place it made me ask several questions. The main one is what is happening to our values?  Why is music so unappreciated? Why do we not take the time to realize what music is and what it brings to our lives? Also the best question, what the hell are all these fake ass “fans” doing with their $13.00’s?

The average price of a CD on the Best Buy shelves is around $13.00. Now like I said earlier, I’ve been on the new Rick Ross CD for a minute. Now this isn’t a plug for the new Ross album trust me, but just to use it as an example as it’s what I’ve been riding to the last couple of weeks. A good CD can give you literally hours, no fuck it, DAYS of enjoyment. I’ve been riding to the album, rapping along to it, dancing, smoking to it. When they play the song with T-Pain on it in the clubs that whole shit goes nuts. And it’s not just this CD. Plenty of albums have brought me the same experience for the same, if not longer periods of time. Do you know how many times I’ve listened to Blueprint?  Just think of your favorite song right now. When it comes on how does it make you feel? Does it add to the stress of everyday life? Or does it give you a little relief, if even only for the 3 minutes it’s playing? I know for me it does.

Now we know people are not buying CD’s. This is not new news. We are among a generation that doesn’t understand it costs money to make music and therefore it should cost money to enjoy music. I’m 21. Not an old man, but old enough. Old enough to remember the days when if you heard some new shit you liked, you maybe found out a little bit more about the artist and then you went to the store and bought the record. Do you know there are kids out there who have NEVER bought a CD? No I mean literally never. Any kid who’s under the age of 17, by the time they were old enough to like music that much the downloading had hit and therefore they never had to buy a CD. It’s a totally different way of thinking about music now. Music is disposable. Music is seen as something that’s free, and if it’s not free then why the fuck should we want it?

Now I understand it’s hard out here. The economy is fucked and yada, yada, yada. People are spending less than ever. But let’s ask ourselves. With a CD only costing around $13.00 are we really hurting that bad? Think of all the other dumb shit we spend money on, most of which doesn’t last a week much less the years and years we can get out of a CD. Then think about what you can get for $13.00? $13.00! I can’t even get a fade for that! Put $13.00 in the tank and see how long that shit lasts you. How much is it to get in the club? How much you gonna spend on drinks that your gonna feel for an hour and then piss out once you get in the club? I mean shit $13.00?! You can’t even get a gram of decent weed for that. How much does it cost to go to dinner? How much on cable a month? What do you spend on white T’s every month? Laundry? Snacks, drinks, fuckin cigarettes, all this shit. Just think of all the things we spend our money on.  Are you feeling me? All this shit costs way more than $13.00, it goes away in a matter of days or even hours, some of  it we consider a nuisance or even a problem and it doesn’t give us as much enjoyment as music. A CD if you take care of it, can last forever. My fade is only gonna last at the most a week. A bag of weed, shit maybe 2 days. Gas? Don’t even make me think about it. Them white T’s are gonna get dirty and stained. That cable, I can pay $100 this month but if next month I don’t pay it is it still gonna be there? Hell no. Have you ever heard of a CD repo man? Me neither.

Now I’m not telling you to not spend your money on these other things and instead just go buy 10 CD’s every Tuesday. What I am saying is we should put shit more in perspective and really think about what we value. Because right now we are telling the artists that we don’t value music. Not even enough to spend the $10.00 you can get a CD for in the first week. The majority of music listeners are not fans or supporters of music. How the fuck you call yourself a fan and you won’t even go buy the record? What’s even more funny to me is how we scream about all the bullshit that’s coming out but yet those same people won’t go buy the “real” records when they drop. Soulja Boy is platinum. Annoying, stupid, corny, whatever. Platinum. The people that were doing all those dumb dances and shit did something else as well. They went out and bought the record.

Now who do you think were gonna hear a new record from sooner, Soulja Boy or say The Clipse? Soulja Boy or Scarface? Soulja Boy or Talib Kweli? The answer is obvious. Supply and demand people, look it up. Also what kind of music now is gonna get the bigger push in marketing? What kind of music will the labels be looking for now when signing new acts? Real music that displays true craft and lyricism? Or some shit that they know is gonna sell? You can have wishful thinking, but we all know the deal. Speaking of The Clipse, let’s look at their situation. This is a group who’s last album, “Hell Hath No Fury”, was the most downloaded of all time. That means tens of millions of people downloaded that CD. That same album sold less than 100,000 copies in stores. Before that album dropped it had been 4 years since they released an album and all the “fans” were dying and complaining saying that the industry had shitted on them and wouldn’t give them a shot. So now who shitted on them? 4 years? HA! That will seem like a weekend compared to how long we will have to wait for a new Clipse record after numbers like that. Imagine if they had done in stores what they had done on the ‘net? THE CLIPSE SELL 30 MILLION IN A WEEK! Come on they would be bigger than Michael and Justin put together. Hell even Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” took 4 months to go platinum. 

It’s really sad when you think about it.  Were saying “Yes we like your music, but not enough to cough up a few dollars.” So once again what are we doing with our $13.00? Are we really looking after our culture or are we just not giving a fuck that most music coming out now is trash and our purchasing decisions play a large part in it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the music that I consider bullshit shouldn’t be bought. If you like the new do that whatever superhero dance record that’s out now, then go cop that shit. I’m just saying I wish more rap fans would act like we have some appreciation and can afford to buy a CD. Because if we don’t will it ever get better? Will we start seeing a resurge in substance related content in our music? Well I know the answer and I’m sure you do as well. It’s a no. A flat out no. If we don’t spend the money on records, they wont spend money on making the records. Do you know most labels won’t even be putting out albums in five years? They will only release digital singles and ringtones. Think about that, a world with no new albums. No more cohesive, expressive, vehicles of thought and ideas put over music. Pitiful. So what does the future hold for this weak generation of music denouncers? Well I’m not a psychic or an expert, I just have an opinion. So on that note,   I’m gonna let someone else handle it. “Soulja Boy Tell Em!!”