No matter what context it is in everyone seems to hate a sellout. Whether it is a close friend who ditches you for new friends or even a hard-working employee who takes the better paying job and leaves all else behind. This selling-out issue is bigger than ever in hip-hop. When a fresh, new rapper comes up the first people who gravitate to the rapper usually fall in love or just get hooked to the rappers style and technique. Though just like everything else in the business world corporate America likes to get their hands on things that can generate money and these types of fresh rappers gaining a substantial fan base are a perfect example of that. Thus, many of these newer faces in hip hop that people gravitate to when first coming up often veer away from much of their original style and technique in order to appeal to the type of music these giant music labels want from them.

There have been many rappers recently that have attained huge attention and acclaim right off the bat and later signed massive deals to huge record labels such as Def Jam and Interscope. Artists like this include Trinidad James (Def Jam), Logic (Def Jam), Chief Keef (Interscope), and Machine Gun Kelly (Interscope). All of these artist obtained a lot of buzz from their earlier material from mixtapes like  Young Sinatra: Undeiable and hot tracks such as "I Don't Like" and "All Gold Everything".

For some artists though when they went through this transition many of their original fans believed they sold out on many of their original elements as far as style and technique. Rappers who have popularly been tagged with criticism of selling out on their true stylistic elements include Big KRIT, Future, Slaughterhouse (the group), and Yelawolf. All of these artist made a big name for themselves in much of their work they did previous to putting out commercial releases meant to be mainstream music. Take Big KRIT for example who had an incredible amount of positive feedback both blog wise and general hip hop fan wise from his three big mixtapes before releasing his major label debut album Live From the Underground. These mixtapes being Krit Wuz Here, Return of 4eva, and 4eva n a Day in which he made music that not only was catchy with great dirty south production but also had great lyricism that many times seemed to encompass either terrific and vivid storytelling of his southern life or have a positive message that many of his listeners fed off of. After he got signed to Def Jam and released Live From the Underground many believed he stepped away from these elements in order to appeal to the label that was paying him a lot for this project to get commercial appeal which in many people's eyes didn't include the same elements of his perevious mixtape.

I have always believed this to be the case for many rappers in this situation. I'm the type of guy that gets hooked to rappers on many of their early elements of music and hate to see it all watered down in the name of a commercial success because a major record label has thrown enough money at them. In addition I feel they do this just because they want to be the "best ever" and that really cannot happen unless many people know your name which is really only feasible if you have at least some commercial success on the mainstream. I however idolize such artists as Macklemore, Joey Bada$$, Hopsin, and recently even Chance the Rapper who have all decided to pass on major record deals (and essentially hit the mainstream hard) in order to stay independent in their music making process and probably give up a lot of potential money in the process. Sure you might not be buzzing on the radio but when it comes to an artistical craft that they have devoted their whole lives to is that really the most important thing? I say no and I applaud artsit like these esepecially Macklemore who has proven that you can be independent as artist and still have huge success across the nation and even world with his hit songs like "Can't Hold Us" and "Thrift Shop".