Girl power? In a way. A sign of the changing marketing times? Possibly. A small-scale trend? That’s probably the best way to describe the recent arrival of female artist-marketed products. Who are they? Well, one’s a very well known singer. The other is a favorite of both Prince and President Obama. And the third, has seen her name do a complete 180 basically from this point last year. A come up, if you will.
5. B.o.B. – Strange Clouds – 76,000 - Grand Hustle’s guitar playing bandit lands at the top of the charts. I would say this album was under promoted, but “So Good” is certified platinum. Somebody’s out there listening.
17. Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded – 21,000 - Give Nicki two weeks and this album will be 500K deep.
20. Santigold – Master Of My Make Believe – 18,000 - I’ve heard from a couple of people this album is well worth the listen. I guess I’ll find out for myself at some point in the near future.
31. Drake – Take Care – 12,000 - I’ll say it. It’s not many people in music – regardless of genre – that’s making better music than this fella Graham right now.
32. Future – Pluto – 12,000 - I’ll always wonder how much of a bigger song “Same Damn Time” would have been had it had another rapper featured on it. Ross, maybe?
63. Young Jeezy – TM103 – 6,200 - At nearly 600K in the books, I’m interested in what Jeezy has in store for Freddie Gibbs now. He did say he was “the next to blow” in “We In This Bitch.”
98. Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne – 4,000 - Completely unrelated to this album (because I’ve said basically everything there is to be said about it already), but did you see Beyonce and that dress? I’m not sure how I feel about her winning a journalism award, but man. MAN! Jay-Z is one lucky, lucky, lucky bastard man.
As a rapper, one’s goal is to reach the proverbial mountaintop of their profession. Well, Lupe Fiasco did. Literally. Along with Kenna, Santigold, Jessica Biel and several others, the group braved the trip and found themselves at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest point and one of the largest mountains in the world. The expedition was known as “Summit On The Summit.”
Obviously the group wasn’t climbing strictly just to say they climbed a mountain. The mission was to raise awareness for the global clean water crisis. Through no fault of our own, it is often easy to take clean water for granted. This isn’t true for many parts of the world, especially in many nations in Africa. We’ve all seen the commercials with young kids forced to live in the worst type of poverty imaginable. In many cases, even clean water is considered a luxury which is beyond difficult to comprehend.
