Here we are at the end of 2002 and some of raps hottest acts are preparing to put out an album before a new year starts. This year album sales were down almost 13% from last year, letting us know that hip-hop played a larger part in sale profit than it has the previous year.
The two biggest album sales this year came from Eminem with his album “The Eminem Show”, selling 6.9 million albums so far, and Nelly, with “Nellyville”, coming in at 4.2 million to date. Last year the best selling album came from Nelly although he only earned the number 19 slot on the year-end best album charts. In 2000 hip-hop had more of a stable ground due to the three best selling albums at the time coming from Eminem, Nelly and Dr.Dre. With hip-hop trying to gain stronger ground commercially, many critics believe that next year could be a bigger year for hip-hop all around.
“It has to do, in part, with more R&B radio stations skewing back to harder hip-hop this year, as opposed to last year, which went in a more melodic direction,” Billboard chart expert Geoff Mayfield told the NY Daily News. “Also, a release by Eminem alone raises the profits of the entire genre”. A little bias maybe, but let’s put more names on that top ten list!
