Music industry took twists, turns in ‘08

Ne-Yo’s Year of the Gentleman, released on September 16, and other music this year, showcased more gentlemen in R&B and hip hop than usual. Hip hop and R&B also had plenty of political controversy and change.

In 2006, hip hop lyricist Nas declared that hip hop was dead. But this year, Lil' Wayne introduced Tha Carter III in June, after doing remixed songs with everyone from Jay-Z to Chris Brown, and sold over one million in its first week.

While Lil' Wayne's sales proved Nas wrong, Nas’ July release of Nigger (later retitled Untitled) did well, regardless of the controversy over the album title.

Untitled was in the Billboard Top 200, replacing Lil’ Wayne’s CD at the No. 1 spot.

Speaking of winners, 2008 brought political unity to the music industry as entertainers like Diddy, Russell Simmons, will.i.am, Mos Def, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Ludacris, Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, T.I., Common and Jay-Z encouraged voter registration and celebrated Barack Obama’s win.

The vote came in on Diddy's reality show (Making The Band 4) R&B groups Day 26 and Danity Kane. Danity Kane’s sophomore CD Welcome to the Dollhouse topped Day 26’s self-titled album with 236,000 units sold versus 190,000 in each group’s open the opening week.

Unfortunately, the last season of Diddy’s reality show broadcasted Danity Kane breaking up.

Other artists’ 2008 success was bittersweet. Rapper T.I. was arrested on firearms charges as his album Paper Trail hit No. 1 on Billboard charts, and Jennifer Hudson’s self-titled debut, which earned her 217,000 first-week sales, was overshadowed by the slaying of her mother, brother and nephew. Platinum-selling artist Lyfe Jennings was arrested for a domestic dispute after hitting the Top 200 with Lyfe Change.

Heavy criticism was apparent with experimenting artists like Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War, which sounded more like mumbling than singing. Joe's Joe Thomas, Nelly’s Brass Knuckles and Raphael Saadiq's The Way I See It were met with shrugs.

Beyonce tried something new as well with the release of her third album,

Hip hop legends resurfaced like LL Cool J's Exit 13, Q-Tip’s The Renaissance and Ice Cube’s Raw Footage. R&B veteran Mariah Carey topped her own sales record with the biggest opening week sales of eleventh album E=MC2 with 463,000 units sold.

Hip hop artist Flo-Rida, who had a recordbreaking 3.3 million downloads of hit single Low (featuring 167,000 first-week selling artist T-Pain of Thr33 Ringz) didn't match sales with his new CD Mail on Sunday, grossing 86,000 sales and No. 4 on the Billboard charts.

Grammy-award winning artist Usher had fans scratching their heads with Here I Stand, boasting about his wife, fatherhood and love instead of the player lifestyle, partying and dancing. Some wanted the old Usher back, but the baby-faced singer is all grown up now. Soulful John Legend brought us plenty of hipshaking songs on his latest album Evolver though.

December releases are making great Christmas gifts, like Keyshia Cole’s A Different Me, Anthony Hamilton’s The Point of It All, Jamie Foxx’s Intuition, Musiq’s Onmyradio and Common’s Universal Mind Control.

November releases from Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak and Ludacris’ Theater of the Mind talk about love and heartbreak, with Ludacris declaring on hit single What Them Girls Like, “If your man don’t tell you how beautiful you are…you are beautiful, baby.”

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