What Happened To Them?
Graphic by Michael Loya
By: Emma Beckerman
The hip-hop industry is exceedingly dynamic and cutthroat. Artists compete against famous creators, trends, and fanbases all while producing superior music. Most rappers hit their peak and then their fame starts to dwell. In recent years, trap music has paved its way into the heart of listeners. Trap music involves significantly greater use of beats, editing, ad-libs, and electronic sound synthesizers. For rappers wanting to make it into mainstream rap, they produce music to fit into industry norms.
The rise and fall of artists are heavily based on what people want to hear. An artist’s main issue with producing music is not catching the public ear but keeping it. Rappers continuously fall into the category of one-hit wonders. A few rappers that quickly rose to fame and then gradually began to lose popularity in the public eye are Fetty Wap, Desiigner, and Lil Skies.
Fetty Wap will never be as successful as he once was. Fetty Wap was on cloud nine during his reign of popularity in 2015. Like thunder, Fetty Wap shook the hip-hop industry and created a new type of trap music. Fetty Wap’s biggest hit, “Trap Queen”, stood second on the US Billboard 100 and helped his rise to fame. Fetty Wap, unfortunately, fits into the sad scenario of an artist gaining all their popularity and glory in a short window.
Although Fetty Wap will leave a lasting impression in the hip-hop industry, he will likely not have another breakthrough. New and upcoming artists should thank Fetty Wap for opening a new realm of trap music. Many artists have stepped into this realm and used the techniques he left behind including beats, vibes, and ad-libs.
Fetty Wap showed the world that he was able to start a new type of music and present it in a catchy fashion. Fetty Wap fits like a puzzle piece in the hip-hop trap world, but he is not versatile enough to walk into new styles of music. As the hip-hop industry started to change, Fetty was left behind.
When you hear the name Desiigner you think of one word; Panda. The song that jump-started Desiigner’s career and skyrocketed him into wealth and fame was about pandas. Desiigner bought the beat used for the song for $200.00 and made around $10 million. 2016 was his year.
Shortly after releasing “Panda”, he released “Timmy Turner'' which was certified platinum along with the former. Desiigner’s creative use of repetition, energy, and beats defined his surplus of popularity in 2016. Desiigner signed to Kanye West’s record label “GOOD Music” which ended up erupting into a crossfire. Desiigner felt that GOOD Music was a toxic environment and that he didn’t receive the attention he deserved from them. He left the label and even speculated that Kanye ruined his rising career.
Desiigner, although having unique music, was consistently compared to Future, which ultimately weakened his originality. “Panda” and “Timmy Turner” will forever be engraved in the minds and hearts of listeners. Desiigner released his last song in August titled “Jaguar'' but fell short of reaching as many listeners as he did in 2016. Although Desiigner might never reach the level of popularity he once had, his two hits will remain set in stone as some of the most popular hip-hop songs in 2016.
Lil Skies is a trickier artist to analyze compared to Fetty Wap and Desiigner. Instead of having a few one-hit wonders, Lil Skies produced an impressive discography with “Shelby” and “Life of a Dark Rose” being his most popular albums.
Lil Skies took off in 2017, and one of his biggest criticisms is that he never changed up his artistry. All of his albums have similar sounds and use similar beats. Instead of experimenting, he became musically platonic. Rappers need to keep up with trends consistently or they face the possibility of falling off. Lil Skies' two problems were that he didn’t feed into change and that he didn’t release music as consistently as he should’ve.
Another argument could be that “Life of a Dark Rose” can simply be seen as superior. Unlike most artists that went downhill and never came up, Lil Skies has a chance at redemption. Rumor has it he is releasing “Life of a Dark Rose 2” in December this year. If this album can captivate the ears of readers, he might be able to be on the come-up again. I guess we will wait and see if Lil Skies is ready to be the talk of the town all over again.
