Is Merchandise The New Wave For Rap Artists?

With the help of hypebeasts, hip-hop artists have a new money-maker up their sleeves.

Written by Mandie Meier

A hypebeast is defined by Urban Dictionary as “someone who is a beast (obsessed) about the hype (in fashion), and will do whatever it takes to obtain that desired hype.” Hypebeast brands, such as Off-White and Kith, are known to sell out almost immediately in stores and online, only for their items to be resold for outrageous prices. According to ABC News, streetwear giant Supreme has been known to have a resale markup of as much as 400%.

One of the rappers that helped expand Supreme was Tyler, the Creator. The shout-outs to Supreme in Tyler’s lyrics date back to his debut mixtape, Bastard (2009). On “What The F--- Right Now,” he boasts, “Oh you wearin' Vans and Supreme this season? / Stop lyin' to yourself, n---a, me the reason.” Later in the song, A$AP Rocky — another big player in the rap-fashion game — adds, “Why the f--- these n---as frontin' like n---as ain't been invented the swag they runnin' with?”

Tyler isn’t just showing off in that line. According to a Google Trends study via High Snobiety, his statements are accurate. The study shows the correlation of Google searches pertaining to artists respectively searched alongside Supreme. The results found that Tyler was far more influential than his peers when it comes to the brand.

Wearing Supreme could be the reason why Tyler became such an acclaimed figure in the streetwear scene. He took the cultural validation and started his own fashion label, Golf Wang.

Much like Tyler, Kanye West also sweeped the fashion and streetwear community early on in his career. Recently, West has brought a new goldmine to the hypebeast culture — tour merchandise. Efforts like this could be a beneficial way to combat the decline in streaming revenue compared to album sales, which used to be much more lucrative.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Lamarre via billboard

Kanye’s merch started a frenzy in 2016 following the release of his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo. West had just released his major sneaker drop with Adidas and was already getting hype off that alone.

When resellers found out he was creating pop-up shops, they lined up as usual, even without prior knowledge of what was going to be sold at the temporary stores. T-shirts ranged from $45 to $60 in-store and were being resold for upwards of $100. West claimed he made $1 million off this 3-day New York City pop-up store alone. Unfortunately, his efforts reportedly only amounted to about $300,000 with overhead.

The rapper decided to try a different route with his next merch drop for his 2018 collaborative album with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts, with an online store approach. Along with buying merch, West and Kid Cudi offered copies of their album to go along with a purchase. Kids See Ghosts t-shirts originally went for $65 and are still being sold on Grailed, a popular resale site, for around $150 nearly a year later.

In addition to the Kids See Ghosts drop, Cudi and West performed at Tyler, The Creator’s festival, Camp Flog Gnaw in November 2018. West collaborated with Cactus Plant Flea Market to bring merch specific to the festival. The line ranged from $70 to $250 and is now being sold for approximately twice that price.

Most recently, West has been putting on spiritual gatherings every Sunday, called “Sunday Service.” A choir joins West to sing soulful renditions of his songs, along with other hymns. Celebrities also gather and join in at these spiritual events. Even though it’s not tied to one specific religion, Kim Kardashian West says that it has hints of Christianity involved.

At Coachella on Easter Sunday, West was invited to perform his now famous service. Of course, he released merch accordingly. This time, catching flack from twitter users saying the designs weren’t worth the price. One twitter use wrote that the looks appear “uninspired at best.”

The ‘holy spirit’ sweatshirt, originally $165, is now being sold for $270 on StockX.

Travis Scott also got his hand in becoming a merch mogul with Astroworld. The merchandise from the drop, tour, festival and more are still being resold out the wazoo. Scott dropped his merch online with new items every 24 hours for nine days. Scott had something new up his sleeve for this drop. Instead of just selling separate copies of his album, Scott included an album with every purchase. People say this could have contributed to his high sale of album units in the first week and pushing him up the Billboard charts, including Nicki Minaj.

But, how does his merch profit compare to streaming revenue? In terms of the first week of sales, Scott reportedly earned 537,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Aug. 9, 2018. For a major label artist with a high royalty point deal, that could mean he made upwards of $500,000 from the gold-selling album. Scott reportedly sold 200,000 pieces of clothing in the first week of the launch. Prices ranged from $13 for CD, to $374 for a denim jacket. If Scott only made $13 per sale, that would put him at $2.6 million, far surpassing his streaming revenue.

Since we don’t know how much artists actually make per stream, and all the nuances around it, we might not be able to tell just how much artists are actually making compared to merchandise. Regardless, merch has its perks and a bright future in the industry.

Afterglow ATXJune 4, 2019