- 12,105
- 1,410
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2008
just curious to see if his buzz is really out there like that. Haven't listened, he literally just came out of nowhere. Rumored to have bought 75k worth of sales on his fathers credit cards
. Clown is the captain of his college soccer team.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35956024/ns/entertainment-music/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35956024/ns/entertainment-music/
NEW YORK - The name "Sam Adams" mainly hasbeen associated with several American historical figures and a popularBoston beer — until now.
Thecity of Boston is laying claim to yet another Sam Adams: an upstartTrinity College rapper who emerged from obscurity when his primarilyself-produced EP, "Boston's Boy," debuted atop iTunes' hip-hop digitalalbums chart. Outpacing the sales of hip-hop superstars like Lil Wayneand DJ Khaled, the 22-year-old's set sold nearly 8,000 digital copiesin its first week.
Adams'single, "I Hate College" — a remix of the Asher Roth hit "I LoveCollege" — has tallied more than 1 million views on YouTube. He alsocounts more than 25,000 Facebook friends and close to 2,000 followerson Twitter.
There's a buzz lately around Boston rapper Sam Adams,and not the kind of buzz he raps about: A swift undercurrent ofskepticism in the music industry runs beneath prominent iTunes musicrankings for "Boston's Boy," his new EP.
Adams, 22, whose full name is Sam Adams Wisner, is a senior political science major and captain of the soccer team at Trinity College in Hartford.
Hiseight-song collection debuted at No. 1 in the hip-hop/rap category, andat No. 7 overall, after its release March 4. Or did it?
Could acollege kid with no significant presence in the industry do alarge-enough volume in sales to rank so high on iTunes (only about8,000 copies of the EP, as it turns out)?
If so, is itindicative of the growing obsolescence of the capital-M, capital-IMusic Industry in how young people find and consume music?
A handful of music-biz insiders doubt it.
Oneskeptic, Jay Frank, senior vice president of strategy for CMT andauthor of the book "FutureHit.DNA," uses his blog to examine variousdisparities between Adams' alleged iTunes numbers and other salesindicators. Another doubter, music-industry observer Bob Lefsetz, wrotelast week that "a little birdie" told him that Adams' numbers werefaked. Lefsetz has insider connections at Apple, which runs iTunes.
Billboardmagazine, on the other hand, supports Adams' numbers, and the rapperhimself has denied juicing the numbers, both in a statement and in aseries of Twitter posts written in a vulgar frat-boy hip-hop patois that's unprintable here.
Regardless of the numbers, Adams follows proudly in the footsteps of party-rap acts such as Shwayze and LMFAO,with a touch of Asher Roth thrown in. His rhymes are an unsubtlecollection of braggadocio, crude sexual allusions and drug references(surely a comfort to Trinity's soccer coach), and Adams delivers themwith conversational flow in a rough (occasionally Auto-Tuned) voicethat alternates between sounding smug and oddly belligerent.
Hisbiggest song so far, "Driving Me Crazy," rides a synthesizer vampcribbed from the Eurythmics' "Walking on Broken Glass," and he's alsoattracted attention for "I Hate College," a response to Roth's "I LoveCollege."
What all this means for Adams' commercial prospects isanyone's guess, really. He's well positioned to appeal to thecollege-campus party crowd, but whether his act can translate to awider audience remains to be seen. The controversy certainly won't hurt.
Adams,a descendant of the presidential Adamses, performs at a CD-releaseparty tonight in a sold-out event at Harper's Ferry in Allston, Mass.,just outside Boston.
I don't approve.