Music feuds can be a lucrative marketing tool

By J.S.

“THE STORY OF ADIDON” is an unrestrained verbal attack. Rapper Pusha T (pictured, left) condemns Drake, a fellow musician (pictured, right), for his music (“ghostwritin’ aside”, “full of lies”), personal life (“you are hiding a child, let that boy come home”) and choice of partners. The song’s artwork is similarly inflammatory, with a photograph of Drake in blackface. It was the climax of a years-long dispute between the pair, played out in a trading of diss tracks.

Those songs boosted the profiles of two already established artists. At the height of the feud, between May 27th and June 2nd, the number of Google searches for Drake almost quadrupled, while the number of searches for Pusha T was nearly 50 times greater than in any other week in the previous year (see chart). That interest seemed to translate into sales and streams. “DAYTONA”, released on May 25th, is Pusha T’s highest-charting album on the Billboard 200. “Scorpion”, Drake’s new album (which addressed some of his rival’s complaints), achieved platinum status on the day of its release last month. The public airing of dirty laundry benefited both sides.

Feuds have been a prominent feature of the music industry, and particularly the hip-hop genre, for years. The notorious rivalry between Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, which began in 1994, became symbolic of the East Coast-West Coast rap wars. While that dispute grew out of real grievances and ended with the tragic deaths of both men, these days feuds often have a businesslike feel. In 2007 50 Cent and Kanye West, two rappers, admitted to engineering a clash as a promotional tool for their albums, slated for release on the same day. “Graduation”, Mr West’s album, posted first-week sales of 957,000 copies, while “Curtis”, 50 Cent’s effort, sold 691,000 units in the same period. It was just the second time since 1991—when Nielsen SoundScan started collecting data—that two albums shifted more than 600,000 copies in a week in America. “Both of the numbers were bigger than what they would have been,” 50 Cent told XXL magazine. “It was just great marketing.”

So great, in fact, that Mr West has continued to pick fights with other artists. He stormed the stage at a music-awards show in 2009 to tell Taylor Swift, a young pop star, that Beyoncé was a more deserving winner. “Famous”, released in 2016, claimed that the incident elevated Ms Swift to stardom and that they “might still have sex”; as a disagreement erupted over whether or not Ms Swift had given her approval for the lyrics, Google searches for Mr West reached their highest point in the past five years (higher even than when he appeared to endorse Donald Trump in April). Ms Swift, for her part, capitalised on the public’s interest in the spat. “Look What You Made Me Do”, the lead single on her album “Reputation” (2017), referred directly to Mr West in both the lyrics and the music video. The song was played 43.2m times in its first 24 hours on YouTube, the largest one-day total for any video on the site.

Yet a quarrel does not always pay off in this way; the decades-long conflict between Ja Rule and 50 Cent should serve as a cautionary tale for artists thinking of using diss tracks to gain attention. A huge star in the early noughties, Ja Rule’s third album, “Pain is Love” (2001), sold 361,000 copies in its first week, while a year later, his fourth album sold 237,000 in the same time frame. But the sales of his next effort, “Blood in My Eye” (2003), plummeted to just 139,000. The album was dedicated to dissing rappers including 50 Cent, Eminem and Dr. Dre, and switched from his regular R&B style to hardcore rap. That musical change may well have alienated his fan base, but it was the poor quality of the feuding that was widely considered the root cause of the album’s poor reception. Critics lamented the “redundant trash-talking” and the “utterly tired” boasts. Ja Rule’s later releases never matched his early success. In an interview in 2013 he acknowledged the damage the feud with 50 Cent had on his career. Irv Gotti, his long-time producer, admitted: “We took the L [loss].”

The feud can be a powerful weapon in a music executive’s arsenal. It generates publicity for artists, be that an up-and-comer taking on an established figure or a legend reminding everyone of their status. Sometimes it reaps rewards. But the stakes are high, and participants risk being ridiculed or overstepping the line. “Losing” damages an artist’s reputation and can hurt future sales. When feuding with Drake in 2015, Meek Mill’s album sales declined by 45%, according to Nielsen Music; he had taken too long to respond and when he did his lines were not as biting or clever as Drake’s. Pusha T’s lyrics and revelations in May, in contrast, came quickly and with a greater punch. Artists are advised to pick their battles.