So despite D4L's success, it's a safe bet that Dem Franchize Boyz are hoping their career more closely resembles Young Jeezy's, even though their music doesn't. In hip-hop as elsewhere, "album artist" isn't just a sales category it's a music category, too. Young Jeezy has never had a song as big as "Laffy Taffy," but he has sold many more albums than D4L. For the serious stuff, you need the album for the frilly stuff, a song might suffice. ![]() Of course this is a specious dichotomy, but the distinction between serious and frilly exists in many genres, and it often finds expression in consumers' buying patterns. and Young Jeezy get much more respect than D4L and Dem Franchize Boyz, whose hits are considered light club music, as opposed to heavy street music. Tough-talking, lyric-oriented storytellers like T. Even in Atlanta, which has produced more than its fair share of goofy dance smash hits (like "Whoomp! There It Is" and "Get Low," to name two of the biggest), dance-oriented hip-hop is often treated like a guilty pleasure. On the hip-hop prestige scale, goofy dance songs like "Laffy Taffy" don't rate very high. Which brings us right back to snap music. Just as the rise of the vinyl LP helped usher in an era of so-called album-rock, it seems likely that the rise of paid downloads - and the resurrection of the retail singles market - will have unpredictable musical side effects. Billboard recently began including digital-download sales in the formula it uses to compile its pop charts. #Laffy taffy young jeezy album download#In the last few years, though, the idea of buying songs has been resurrected, thanks to iTunes and other legal music download providers. Hit singles often were not singles at all - were not, that is, available singly. Radio D.J.'s often found themselves playing songs that weren't even available except on albums. Listeners who wanted one song instead of 15 were out of luck. Throughout the 1990's, record companies all but stopped selling singles, in hopes that people would buy full-length CD's instead. Still, those hundreds of thousands of 99 centses must be better than nothing. The group's members - Fabo, Shawty Lo, Mook B and Stoney - aren't just chart-toppers they're music industry pioneers, too. D4L has now sold more than twice as many digital downloads as CD's. Last week, the group sold 175,000 digital copies of "Laffy Taffy." That figure doesn't just set a digital-download record, it smashes the old one: the previous record-holder was Kanye West, who sold 80,500 digital copies of his hit "Gold Digger" one week last fall. ![]() In another category, though, D4L is setting sales records. In fact, it's one of the lowest sales totals for a chart-topping act in years. That's considered a success if you're an alternative-rock group, but not if you're a Southern hip-hop group, and especially not if you're responsible for the biggest song in the country. ![]() ![]() D4L released its debut album, "Down 4 Life" (Dee Money/Asylum/Atlantic), in November according to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold about 230,000 copies so far. There's only one problem: people aren't buying the album. It has been hanging around the upper reaches of the Billboard chart since before Christmas, and last week it officially became the most popular song in America. (It far outpaced the group's previous and better hit, 2004's "White Tee.") But snap music's best-known chant is "Shake that Laffy Taffy, shake that Laffy Taffy." That's the refrain from an utterly infectious song called "Laffy Taffy," by D4L. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the rap chart. It's the name some people have given to a dance-centric form of hip-hop, defined by light but propulsive beats and lyrics that often revolve around playful chants.ĭem Franchize Boyz have a snap-music hit with "I Think They Like Me (Remix)," which reached No. Over the last year, so-called snap music has made an unlikely journey from Atlanta phenomenon to hip-hop laughingstock to mainstream juggernaut.
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