The State of Hip-Hop with Def Jam CEO Tunji Balogun

The State of “Hip-Hop”

After my chat with Tunji Balogun, I thought a lot about how the responsibilities of “Def Jam CEO” have changed over the past 40 years. Russell Simmons’ day-to-day was quite different than LA Reid’s, and so on. Any startup that exists or grows to a certain size has its own evolution and growing pains. Def Jam’s cultural identity though, adds another wrinkle.

Despite the success Def Jam has had with artists from all genres and regions, like Rihanna, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber, the label is still viewed through the lens of New York hip-hop. You think Def Jam, you think of the boom bap, east coast sound. The balance for anyone in the role is not to dismiss the label’s past while not being defined by it.

But with this type of role, there’s a heightened acceptance that not everyone is going to be happy. There’s a type of Def Jam fan who won’t be happy unless the label’s next superstar is the second coming of Redman.

You know exactly what this person looks like. He’s a man in his 50s, lives in New Jersey, thinks that most new hip-hop is trash, and is likely wearing Timbs as we speak. Trying to please that archetype may gain you some clout on social media. It may land you some favorable press. But that person isn’t in the arena.

Like most adults, they’re nostalgic for the music they listened to as teenagers. For better or worse, their preferences won’t help a record label gain market share, win bidding wars, and become more efficient with its budget.

At the Trapital Summit, Tunji said this quote on how he thinks about genres:

"We met Post Malone as a rapper and he just put out a country album… is it amazing or is it not?  I don't think that the new generation of listeners is that inured to genre...  And I feel like the new generation of listeners is just a little bit more open-minded. They're extremely connected digitally and they are not phased by new sounds.

So I think those of us in the industry, you're still trying to uphold these formats and these genres. I don't know if the artists or the fans who are way more important than us at the end of the day are looking at it the same way. So I think we got to evolve and we got to meet those people where they are.”

I generally agree. First, he’s right that artists and fans today care less about genre definitions. It was quite different when I grew up. Skaters listened to rock, preps listened to pop, and on and on. Most debates we hear today about a particular artist’s genre of music, like “Is Doja Cat hip-hop?”, likely originated from someone who grew up in the era of high school cliques as subcultures.

The challenge though, is that the funding, investments, and opportunities that certain artists get are still tied to these genre definitions. “Pop radio” reaches a broader audience than “urban radio.” A pop artist may get priority for marketing spend, music video budgets, vinyl production, and more.

A genre-less approach to music creation and promotion makes sense in general. The lines are more blurred than ever. As a label head, it’s the right approach to have. On the surface, revenue and market share don’t distinguish between genres. The nuance though, is that the ability to maximize that revenue and market share may be more dependent on the outdated categories than we think.

You can listen to my full conversation with Tunji here or watch our talk on YouTube here.

Chartmetric Stat of the Week

The year-over-year performance charts for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” look like a staircase. There’s a steep incline every holiday season. The song now has 2 billion streams on Spotify, and the music video recently passed 600 million views on YouTube. The song is like a seasonal stock that makes a bigger impact each year as the streaming platforms grow their users.