View this video on YouTube
Offset has a lot to say about the current state of the music industry at large.
In a recent interview with Ebro Darden for Apple Music, the Set It Off artist was asked whether he’s noticed “a transition in the game,” specifically in hip-hop. From there, Offset brought up 2023 streaming and sales numbers, chalking up the widely discussed dip to a lack of originality.
"I'm noticing that no content music ain’t catching nobody’s ear," Offset said. "I’m noticing that the numbers are down in our genre specifically because I feel like everything is so the same."
Continuing, Offset lamented that there’s “nothing new being brought to the game,” and not just when it comes to the music itself. He also pointed to other genres, namely pop and country, and cited examples of how those artists have stepped up their presentation.
“Not just on the sound side but just all the way around. Creatively too,” he said. “Most videos be, like, a Rolls Royce in the background, two chains on. That shit getting boring, fellas. … You got these pop and these country artists smoking shit because they coming with the full round, the full package.”
Closer to the eight-minute mark in the video above, Offset extended this assessment to include live performances. Some rap artists, he said, want to charge “$200 a ticket” to see them live while failing to bring production value to what they’re doing.
“That’s why if you look at the lineups, it’s getting thinner and thinner on them lineups,” he added. “They not trying to pay you $600,000 to come just walk the stage, brother. It’s that time for me to change this shit, man.”
See more up top.
The music industry has ebbed and flowed dramatically post-streaming, with country arguably going through its own streaming boom at the moment as evidenced by a number of chart-related developments in 2023. At the time of this writing, for example, Offset's Set It Off is in the No. 5 position on the Billboard 200 albums chart between Zach Bryan's self-titled album (No. 4) and Morgan Wallen's One Thing at a Time (No. 6).
In July, Lil Uzi Vert's Pink Tape debuted in the top spot, ending hip-hop's No. 1 drought this year.
