An interesting conversation was going on between some people in the music industry that shed some light on what’s been going on. A small portion of what was said really was eye opening:
“Motuphi’s plight is that smart people don’t buy music. Then he did rap and didn’t dumb down. We figured out a long time ago that smart people won’t buy music, they steal it, pirate it, download it. But people who are too stupid to know how to steal your music will buy it. That’s why rappers dumbed down their fans and why successful female music artists have such stupid fans. We’re all hip to the game. Motuphi won’t compromise. He does rap all intelligent like anyone’s gonna listen to it. Who smart listens to rap? Exactly. Motuphi also has that rep for being hard to sign. He don’t answer his phone, won’t return calls. Then, he has the former history of not submitting masters because he didn’t want his music tampered with in the mastering stage. Who wants to sign that extra effort for a product that won’t sell, anyway? Feel me? Motuphi’s own fans starved him out. Millions of people are listening to his music all over the world. Just about everyone I know has at least one of his cuts in their players. Yet nobody bought any of it. He’s probably the greatest victim of piracy in history, in that his music is the most pirated and he’s got so little to show for how much people like his shit. He’s supposedly homeless and his rich fans won’t part with less than the cost of a cup of coffee for the songs they’re bouncing. It’s really sad to see. The internet killed underground underdogs like Motuphi. I’d be surprised to hear that he’s still alive. Motuphi was a musical genius, you gotta give him them props. But he’s like them artists whose work we see in the museum who nobody openly appreciated while they was alive, so they was poor their entire lives. Everyone in music knows that. Ain’t nobody ever gonna defy that blackball. They’s always gonna compete with his underground thunder with strategically timed new mainstream releases and they got him outgunned and outnumbered. True street soldier. But he ain’t gotta a chance. IF he even still alive. He was old as dirt, remember?”
Yeah. That got thrown around a table recently. It rings true, too, doesn’t it? Already disregarded as “dead”…Motuphi…
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