the cultural impact

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Hey. What happened at the Astroworld Festival is heartbreaking. The first-hand accounts and videos were tough to see, but I can only imagine how the folks felt who attended. My thoughts are with those who lost their lives, those who were injured, and all of their loved ones.

NOTE: This week's Trapital Podcast will be a Q&A from listeners. Got any burning questions about the business of hip-hop? Reply to this email by Tuesday 11/9 at 12pm PT! I'll answer the best questions for Friday's pod.

Today's Trapital Memo covers three topics:

• my podcast interview with The Source founder Dave Mays
• the aftermath of Astroworld Festival
• our sponsor's new study on independent creators​
• Certified Lover Boy and measuring cultural impact

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new Trapital podcast: Dave Mays, The Source

In 1988, Dave started The Source with just $200 as an undergrad at Harvard! In this episode, he spoke about The Source's legacy and how he built trust with early readers. Dave recently launched Breakbeat Media, a new podcast network with the show Don't Call Me White Girl, and more. He explains why podcasts are digital magazines, media trends, and more.

The Source paved the way for so many publications covering hip-hop, like Trapital. This was a full-circle moment and it was great convo.

Tap into the Trapital Podcast here.

the aftermath of Astroworld

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Friday’s Astroworld Festival was an unfortunate tragedy on many levels. We still don’t know all the details, but based on what we know, let’s break down what happened and why.

Lack of crowd control. Both Variety and LA Times have written stories breaking down the challenges from Astroworld’s logistics. Here’s a summary:

• More police officers and security guards were needed in the crowd and at the front of the stage
• Crowds could have been grouped into areas to better manage spacing
• Astroworld had two stages. One where eight artists performed in succession, and the other where Travis Scott performed at the end. Travis’ super fans posted up at his stage up to eight hours before his 8:45pm start time
• The last set before Travis ended 45 minutes before Travis started, which created a huge rush of people
• Astroworld failed to “spread the field” by having multiple headliners at the same time

Overlapping performances could have helped somewhat, but most fans at artist-run festivals are there to see the main act. As I wrote in How Travis Scott Growth Hacked Hip-Hop, in past festivals Travis hasn’t revealed his setlist until after the tickets are sold out. The mad rush toward Travis’ stage is inevitable.

In the past few days, lawsuits have been filed against Travis Scott, Drake, festival promoter Live Nation, and others.

Logistical challenges. Unfortunately, Astroworld’s logistical challenges are not unsurprising, especially for newer music festivals. It takes time to become a finer-tuned business like Coachella, where spacing, field spreading, and festival seating have been improved over time.

In recent years festivals, like Fyre Fest and Woodstock 50, have been shut down due to poor planning. Even Post Malone’s Posty Fest was recently canceled due to logistical issues. Considering the close calls, imagine how many music festivals continue despite their safety measures, and not because of them?

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the aftermath of Astroworld (continued)

Travis’ actions and reactions. The “Sicko Mode” rapper’s history of inciting dangerous activity at festivals has been criticized heavily since Friday. According to the New York Post, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner visited Travis’ trailer before his set to share concerns about the crowd. And in days since, many have reshared Travis’ history of rallying fans to push back on security, rush the stage, and engage in unsafe behavior at festivals.

Does Travis deserve blame for what happened? Yes. But blaming everything on him is like blaming Woodstock 99’s tragic events on Limp Bizkit’s frontman Fred Durst. Both were justifiable targets given their rebellious nature. But focusing solely on them takes attention away from the questions that need answers regardless of the artist performing:

• How can security, police, and medical staff be better positioned to help attendees in the event of a crisis?
• How can the logistics and flow be managed to ensure safety during festival seating?
• How can artists be trained to handle crisis situations during their performances?
• How can newer festivals be held to a high standard for logistics and operations?

The future of Astroworld and music festivals. In the future, we’ll likely see better-positioned security, medical staff, and police officers, and more care put into logistics and spacing. That will translate to higher costs, higher insurance premiums for future events, and higher ticket prices for consumers.

But if Astroworld was an indication of what happens when those things are overlooked, then the price premium is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Read more about Astroworld’s safety precautions in the Los Angeles Times.​

the lasting impact of Drake's Certified Lover Boy

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Last week I wrote a tweet about Drake that wasn't 100% fair to the certified lover boy:

I tweeted this because CLB doesn't yet have mega-hits like "God's Plan" (Scorpion) or "One Dance" (Views). CLB's lead single "Way 2 Sexy" still topped the charts, but it doesn't hit as those records did, and I doubt it will.

But that wasn't a fair comparison for several reasons. First, this was the first time that Drake released an album with no singles released ahead of time. This was all new music.

Second, I've spent relatively less time "outside" with every subsequent Drake release. My perspective on cultural impact has skewed. When Take Care dropped ten years ago, I went out multiple nights every weekend. I had more opportunities to hear "The Motto" and see how people reacted when it came on.

I now have fewer touchpoints to hear "Way 2 Sexy" in the same way. Your boy is in bed most nights by 10pm. My cultural impact gauge has shifted to streaming, social media chatter, playlists, TikToks, talking to people, and other metrics.

Yet for most artists today, the vast amount of good content created makes it harder for a single project to capture attention the way it once did. "Way 2 Sexy" may not hit like "The Motto," but "The Motto" didn't compete against TikTok, Instagram Stories, Apple Music, Fortnite, and more.

It's harder for anyone to have a monoculture hit—even Drake.

The separation of song performance and cultural impact. In the streaming era, it's harder than ever to use Billboard charts as a barometer of cultural impact. The Billboard Hot 100 in the CD era still had plenty of issues, but a song's place on that chart was more correlated with its cultural relevance. If a song topped the charts, there's a good chance that song was in heavy rotation on the radio and MTV, frequently requested to DJs, played in your CD player, and more.

But since Billboard charts are heavily weighted by streaming, it's easier than ever for a song that hasn't had much impact to top the charts. It's great that fan consumption plays a bigger role in performance. But it's shifted the meaning of the charts, how popular artists approach music, and what it means for record labels striving for market share.

In the past year and a half, Drake has dropped songs engineered for TikTok dances, a mixtape, an EP, loose singles, and Certified Lover Boy. In my essay, Nothing Was The Same Since 'Nothing Was The Same,' I wrote about how he's adapted his game to the streaming era, and now he's adapted to the post-pandemic era where attention is harder to come by.

Music performance and cultural impact are still connected, but the relationship is less causal. Gauging a song's impact requires an evaluation of several metrics: streaming, radio play, TikTok memes, sync, interviews, live performances, discussions, and more. It's always been that way. But the more data there is to measure each data point precisely, the less consensus there is on what "impact" really means.

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coming soon

• Trapital Podcast: Q&A Mailbag. Have a question about the business of hip-hop? Reply to this email and ask away! I'll include the best ones in Friday's podcast.

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