Starving Artist

What does it mean to be a starving artist in 2019?

Are you starving in the literal term or for attention?

Is being a talented musician enough?

In 2019, music sales are directly linked to relevancy. Some of the superstar artists of the past decade or so are having troubles selling more than 120k in the first week, why is that?

Are antics and entertainment needed in order to stay talked about in today’s day in age?

As we’ve seen in the past two years, artists such as Nicki Minaj are having to yell and create drama on their podcasts to be talked about on Instagram and Twitter. Dj Khaled had to throw subtle jabs at Tyler the Creator to merely have his album mentioned, although he has 10+ star-studded features on his project.

Time and again we see artists such as Tekashi 69 use a scandal to create buzz for their project, in reference to his “kidnapping”, days before his debut album released. We also have artists like Travis Scott creating bundles to increase their sales, including merch, stickers, tickets, etc. with the purchase of their album.

This brings us back to the question, Is being a talented musician enough? On the other side of the spectrum, Post Malone is out selling some of these other artists 10 fold, as his last project "Hollywood's Bleeding" sold 500k + in the first week. Maybe the difference is the quality of music? A good majority of the music these days is recyclable. The industry is oversaturated with autotune, mediocre lyrics, and sonically identical instrumentals.

I believe in the end, those who are remembered will be the outcasts. The artists who stayed true to themselves and really had this music shit embedded in their DNA. Artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, J Cole, and Mac Miller will be highly regarded when we look back on our generation's music. Real music will always win, but hey, what do I know?