“Fred again did 8,000 streams in the first week and sold out four arenas in six minutes”: Lil Yachty on the difference between marketing hip-hop and electronic musicLil Yachty has spoken about the difference between marketing for hip-hop and electronic music, noting how hip-hop tends to be more “fast-paced” and reliant on social media.
The rapper, whose collaborative album with James Blake Bad Cameo arrives later this week, tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that one thing he realised while promoting the record was how different things work in the urban community compared to the rest of the music scene.

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“For instance, [Blake] may not have 700,000 likes on a picture, but he can always count on a show to sell out,” says Lil Yachty, who boasts 12.1 million followers on Instagram — nearly 20x Blake’s 677k.
“In hip-hop, it’s all about your first-week numbers; It’s very fast. Fast-paced marketing and fast-lived content. Versus any other genre [where] it’s a gradual grind, a gradual uphill battle.” The reason, Lil Yachty suggests, has to do with people in urban communities “having a lot more time on their hands to judge and critique others in a positive or negative light.”
“I think we care more about things the second they drop. It’s almost like a FOMO thing where like ‘Future just dropped, I have to hear it at midnight.’ Versus a pop or rock record, it’s like, ‘I’ll get to it.’ And when I get to it it’s because I bought it, I purchased it.”
“If it doesn’t stream really well in the first week, in the mindset of the urban community, it’s a flop,” says the rapper, arguing that this just isn’t the case when it comes to the other genres.
“You have Fred again.. doing 8,000 first week and selling out four arenas back-to-back in six minutes. The math doesn’t math, but people in the [urban] community don’t generally take time to break things down. It’s like, ‘First-week numbers is this? Oh it’s trash.’”
“It’s unfortunate. I hate the first-week cycle,” he continues. “Well I don’t hate it because I don’t give a fuck. I’ll do what I wanna do, whether I sell nine trillion or nine. I did it because I want to do it. But it’s such a pest… It makes the content not about what it is.”

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