Vince Staples says the music trade “monetises individuals’s struggles”

Vince Staples has spoken about how the music trade “monetises individuals’s struggles” and the way that impacts the picture rappers attempt to promote.

The rapper was requested about artists like Tekashi 6ix9ine and YNW Melly, who’ve used gang affiliation and songs about homicide respectively to construct their photographs.

“This can be a enterprise the place we monetise individuals’s struggles, ache, dying and homicide,” Staples informed the Independent. “When you’re a child from a state of affairs, and you are feeling the one manner that you’ll get out of the state of affairs the place there’s immense poverty or unhealthy residence life or low vanity is by doing this factor that everybody is promoting, you’re going to attempt to promote that factor.

“We’ve seen individuals market and distribute dying and destruction inside our communities for many years; they do this stuff as a result of it will get consideration. What do we actually count on after we give individuals tens of millions of {dollars} to say they’re robust? They’re gonna say they’re robust. It’s frequent sense.”

He added that the media is just too fixated on stars with a “unhealthy boy” picture, as an alternative of celebrating people who do good. “These individuals who do the fallacious factor are at all times introduced up [by the media], however nobody who’s carried out the fitting issues has been talked about,” he mentioned.

“Jaden Smith provides meals to the homeless and has a water firm – I’ve by no means heard anybody say his identify in an interview.”

Staples launched his self-titled album on Friday (July 9). In a four-star assessment, NME described it as “a refreshing 10-track LP that completely illustrates who he really is as an artist, and (hopefully) a star”.