Hip hop artists can make more money from an NFT than a year of Spotify streams. But there are plenty of other reasons rappers love crypto.
From Snoop Dogg to Ghostface Killah, hip hop and Web3 make a perfect pair. So, why do rappers love crypto?Fifty years since Kool Herc’s legendary DJ set at his sister’s party in the Bronx kickstarted hip hop, the world has changed dramatically.
From N.W.A and Public Enemy to Dead Prez and Immortal Technique, hip hop has a long, storied history of challenging the powers that be and speaking on issues affecting urban communities, such as poverty and police brutality. Likewise, Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin rose out of the rubble of the 2007–2008 financial crisis as an anti-establishment challenge to the power and authority of the traditional financial system.
Nipsey’s entrepreneurial spirit is deeply rooted in hip hop, where music has offered many an escape from poverty and the opportunity to live a previously unattainable lavish life of financial security. From jewelry to luxury cars and expensive clothes, rappers have earned a reputation for bragging about and showing off their wealth.
The foundation of rap was built upon repurposing old technology to create something completely new and unique. Turntables became instruments, and vinyl records became samples from which new songs were created. Today, developers fork existing blockchain protocols to create something unique, while memes on Crypto Twitter get flipped and remixed every day.
Her company, Infanity, recently launched a partnership with The Hype Magazine, a legendary hip hop magazine, focused on spreading the word in the hip hop community about the power of Web3. Infanity’s “chief hip hop officer” is Tragedy Khadafi, a hip hop icon from Queens, New York who was the first to use the word “illmatic” on a record — later adopted by Nas for the name of his classic firstBut he tells Magazine that his experience in the music business has been “a painful education” and that “not being informed, not having control over what you create is never a good thing.
Now, compare Spotify to a platform like Sound, where Latashá dropped an NFT for her song “Showtime” in September 2022. 100 fansthe song, netting her 8 ETH — over $10,000 at bear market prices. It would have taken 3.3 million–5 million streams on Spotify to match this payout.at much higher rates. Surveys have shown that Black Americans tend to hold crypto at higher rates as well, many of whom see crypto as an opportunity— four times the national average.
Going on to release that new song as an NFT on a blockchain adds an extra layer of IP complexity — and there is currently no clearly defined legal and regulatory framework for music NFTs. And if an artist says, “screw this,” and decides the process is too complicated and releases an NFT without clearing the sample first, well, then there is an immutable, timestamped record of that copyright infringement.
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