Rap Helps Music Biz Out Of Drought

Hip-Hop and Rap just continues to dominate the charts. Sales of Rap/Hip-Hop albums jumped 20 percent during the year 2000, the biggest increase of any music genre. R&B, Alternative and New Age albums also increased on the average of about 8% to 12 %. Classical was down 5%, Country dropped 3%, Jazz went down by […]

Hip-Hop

and Rap just continues to dominate the charts. Sales of Rap/Hip-Hop

albums jumped 20 percent during the year 2000, the biggest increase

of any music genre.

R&B, Alternative

and New Age albums also increased on the average of about 8% to

12 %. Classical was down 5%, Country dropped 3%, Jazz went down

by 5%, Christian dropped 6% and soundtracks dropped a whopping

16%. The top selling Hip-Hop albums that helped inflate this number

are: Eminem’s "The Marshall Mathers LP" (7.9 million),

Nelly’s "Country Grammar" (5 million) and Dr. Dre’s

"Dr. Dre 2001" (4 million), all of which come out on

Universal Records.

Universal continued

to dominate the market, with a share of 28%, thanks to acts like

Eminem, Cash Money, Nelly, Dr. Dre, DMX, Method Man/Redman and

others. Not bad for an artform the majority of the industry called

a novelty.