something most consumers don’t ever want to acknowledge: the success of a lot of mainstream artists, be it popular, commercial, or even in some cases critical, can have a lot less to do with the album itself than everything around it. That might seem counterintuitive - a lot of folks buy into the false equivalency that if an artist is successful they have to be ‘good’, and the more success they get the better they must be - but that’s a fantasy constructed by a hierarchical culture propped up by the record label to further amplify their success stories and conveniently write off their losses. In reality, trends come and go, what might be successful today is a flop tomorrow, and it often has far more to do with how an artist is marketed, promoted, and framed in a media climate rather than the art they make - or to make it more explicit, in my opinion Drake hasn’t made a passable album since 2015, but thanks to savvy marketing, business, and the label protecting their investment, to the general public he’s a ubiquitous success story, and in this social media climate, immediate history gets written fast by the victors and it’s all the harder to correct the record
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