Paul Wall Seeks Survival As Rap Sales Dip

With music sales on the steady decline, Southern rapper Paul Wall recently explained why he is confident that rap will survive as record sales decline. 

Paul feels the opportunity to put out new music is his greatest advantage.

“I’m blessed to have another album come out. I’m blessed to be able to do what I love to do: make music,” he said in an interview. “We find ways to make up for the lack of album sales, but we don’t really do it for the album sales. I want my fanbase to be happy with music I make. In the industry these days, people want hits more than they want good music. As long as you got one good radio hit you can sell an album, but you got on radio hit and the rest be a wack album. I’d rather have a good solid album, all the way through. I think that’s where I made a name for myself — making good music. Even though I haven’t really had too many big smash hits, I’ve been having good music. Every album got good quality music … good solid albums.” (Baller Status)

Wall’s Heart of a Champion album debuted on the sales chart last week.

Southern rapper Paul Wall’s Heart of a Champion debuted on the charts this week at No. 58. After seven days of availability, the rapper’s new album has sold 7,600 units. (SOHH Sales Wrap)

Rap newcomer Wiz Khalifa‘s record company previously hit up SOHH to speak on the perception of “low” first-week sales after 2009’s Deal Or No Deal opened with 5,900 copies.

“We have built a strong fanbase for Wiz,” Rostrum Records representative Arthur Pitt explained to SOHH, ”even after leaving [Warner Bros. Records] and continue to do our thing grassroots. We dropped the album at a tough time too with no radio presence, major network video coverage, etc. 86 percent of the sales were digital which indicates the grip he has on the net which is the future of the business. We barely shipped more than a few thousand into stores…The impact that this album has had is just another stepping stone in Wiz’s career. We are more concerned about artist development and building a real fanbase rather than have overnight success. This is my 5th year being a part of Wiz’s career and we all couldn’t be happier with the results.” (SOHH)

Last year, hitmaker Ryan Leslie talked about battling low record sales.

“They’ll do big superstar numbers when I’m a big superstar,” Leslie told DJ Vlad in an interview. “I mean, we working on it. It takes consistent messaging and it takes superstar exposure so like I said, usually the vehicle for exposure is a record so once there is a record that connects, and everyone is listening to it, and the people who haven’t heard of me hear that record and that’s the way they’re introduced to me, then I mean, it’s just a very simple process how it goes down. So we’re building on that and we’re working on that.” (Vlad TV)

Check out some past Paul Wall footage below: