Lil Wayne To Rap Newcomers: "This Sh*t Ain't Guaranteed"
News: Lil Wayne To Rap Newcomers: "This Sh*t Ain't Guaranteed"
Tuesday, Nov 15, 2011 11:00AM
Written by Cyrus Langhorne
Young Money boss Lil Wayne gives his opinion on the state of hip-hop and why aspiring artists should reconsider their decision to become rappers in the new VIBE magazine.
Within his feature, Weezy outlines his case against aspiring rappers trying to make it in the industry without a real legitimate reason.
"All I can say is make sure that you're not rhyming because you figured you could sound like Drake. Make sure those aren't the reasons that you're picking up a pad and pen," Wayne explained. "Make sure that you're doing it for a real reason. I did this when I was 8 years old. I started writing raps for a reason, and that reason was because I loved to make words rhyme. That was my reason for making music. So make sure you have a real reason that you want to rhyme. Don't make that reason be 'I'm tryna make it out the 'hood'' or 'I'm tryna feed my family,' because this sh*t ain't guaranteed to do none of those things. ... If you want to be where I'm at with it-I been in this 18 years. If you ain't got that kind of dedication, then just leave it alone and do something that can actually benefit your future for the long run." (VIBE)
Rap mogul Diddy's manager,
Please Listen To My Demo lets you showcase your music directly to A&R executives (the talent scouts and overseers of artist development) at major record labels. As an artist or a manager you get direct access to label execs, their feedback and their insights. We're sure many artists out there have at one time or another mailed off a demo to a record label, hoping that among the thousands of demos labels receive each year, yours might be listened to and if the stars were aligned correctly you'd hear back from them. Times have changed. The Internet has democratized a lot of things, from videos to photos, social connections, and most importantly, music. We want to take it a step further by connecting artists and managers of artists directly with record label A&Rs to listen, critique and collaborate. (Please Listen To My Demo)
Last year, Grand Hustle's B.o.B. offered some advice to rap newcomers.
"Be patient because this is something that is definitely like a benchmark in your career," he said in an interview. "You'll never be able to do that again. It's like you can become famous but you can't become un-famous. When you're famous people become mad, there's nothing you can do to where people just forget you or be un-famous so enjoy these times and just be patient...It's been a long journey, man. It's good and that's what I would tell the Freshmen now; it's going to be a long journey so don't feel like all the stuff with the label, and the issues you run into... it's normal and it's expected. Even if you had your own record label and you built your own team of people you're going to run into the same problems.! Because people are people no matter what." (XXL Mag)
New York rapper Fabolous also gave some career advice to up-and-coming emcees a couple years ago.
"Really, I guess just coming in with not a lot of knowledge of what it takes to put out an album [is a mistake]," Fab explained in an interview. "Knowing the business relationship between you and your record label, a lot of people think it's just going into the studio, being in the studio all night smoking and drinking and having your friends in there and then when the money don't come back like it's supposed to or the record labels taking every coin away from your album. Then they wanna look back and see what's going on or flip out like, 'Yo where's my bread at?' and it was there, but you ain't do your business right. So I think everybody that comes in, you should talk with certain people or educate yourself to it by looking it up and checking out your business." (SmackTube)
Check out some recent Lil Wayne footage below:
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