being yourself vs. making it big (i dont mean selling out or going pop)

bkd3vil

New member
first off I'd like to thank you for EVERYTHING. i thought producers were always bound to rappers until i was exposed to Deadringer and Endtroducing. since then i've been trying to get more and more into instrumental hip hop and honestly i feel more expressive and comfortable producing instrumentals because i feel music can convey messages as good as if not better than lyrics. so thank u again for producing something so profound and literally changing how i look at music.

now for the question, im a producer from Brooklyn but im living in Egypt (trying to get know the culture and all that) and surprisingly theres a hip hop scene growing in the Middle East. Although its a little far behind compared to the rest of the world, rappers are started to blow up. Here comes my dilemma, im starting to get hype as a producer and alot of big local artists want to work with me but part of me wants to stay instrumental even though there isnt a market for instrumental hip hop (in fact nobody knows about it). i still want to work with rappers but my main passion is to express myself. im known for having pretty abstract, electronic sound (i like to experiment ALOT) so sometimes even my beats catch people off guard. so the question is how do u maintain that balance between yourself and what the people want to hear? and how do u expose something to people that they would potentially like but they're not entirely open to giving something new a chance?
 
hey, thanks for the kind words, first of all. so, advice:

follow your interests. i like rap music, so i have been known to produce for rappers. i also like instrumental music, soul music, etc, so i have dabbled in literally anything that i LIKE. my suggestion: get out of thinking about what people want to hear, and get into what YOU want to hear. ALL of it. if its just inst. music, fine-do that. i dont ever ever ever record with the thought of "what do people want to hear"? i dont think its the most genuine perspective. luckily, i like music that can be accepted as "popular" at times-rap, soul, inst, etc. that's my 2 cents....
 
I really feel like I should follow my own advice when I tell you this. I have come to the same issues myself. Not quite the same, but pretty similar. What I recommend to you is to do what you like to do, but don't expect it to be on the frontlines. I would do what needs to be done to make that paper. After you got some scratch you can press your stuff out more. From what I have seen it is much easier to come out yourself as an artist if you got a lot of hype. If you track out some mad banging tracks for these people that are flooding your inbox and knocking on your door, then by the time you drop your own flow, their fans could leave them and flock to you. Just what I've seen so far. I'm only 23 so I'm a dumb kid still learning the game.

Case in point, I had to come back and edit this post to apologize. I just realized I posted this on a response from someone way beyond my limits. haha. NOOB here.
 
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