First, Nielsen ended the record-store charade by releasing SoundScan, which used point-of-sales data from cash registers in stores. It often over-counted songs that labels preferred (like rock) and under-counted genres they were indifferent toward (like country and rap).īut in 1991, this changed. It was warped by label preferences and record-store inventories. So, for many years, Billboard wasn't a perfect mirror of American tastes. The Hot 100 changed from a political document to a statistical register. That way, the Boss's album flies up the chart, which encourages fans of popular music to come back to the store and empty the shelves still holding his records.
But the smart thing to do would be to tell Billboard that Bruce Springsteen is selling like crazy. The honest thing to do would be to tell Billboard that AC/DC is the band of the moment. You’ve just sold out of AC/DC, but you're still stocked with Bruce Springsteen albums. Imagine, for example, that you're a record-store owner in the 1980s. Both parties had reasons to lie, and not just because the labels would pressure radio stations and record stores to play the hand-picked hits. Instead, they relied on an honor system, by asking record stores and DJs to self-report the most popular musicians of the moment. For decades, these lists were put together using methods that would offend even the most careless statistician, as I explained in " The Shazam Effect." Billboard had few ways to truly measure what albums were being sold in stores or played on the radio. In the middle of the 20th century, Billboard started publishing the Hot 100, which lists the most popular songs in the country, and the Billboard 200, which does the same for albums. (I promise this is an interesting story about methodology, perhaps the only one I know.) It might have gotten its critical boost from an unlikely ally: Billboard's statistical method. DMX’s gruff voice will be missed.But for chart-watchers and Top 40 radio listeners, rap clung to the fringes until the early 1990s. At least the album signifies a better fitting finale to a troubled career than his last couple of releases – the unofficial and unauthorized Redemption Of The Beast (2015) and the disappointing The Undisputed (2012) – would have done. There’s just not enough DMX here.īut despite its faults, Exodus is a moving final DMX chapter, a posthumous album that wasn’t supposed to be posthumous at all – adding to the bittersweetness of it all. Alicia Keys has a limp contribution, people like U2’s Bono and Moneybagg Yo (whose appearance was the only part of the album DMX did not hear before his death, maybe not coincidentally on the weakest song of the album) shouldn’t be on a DMX album, and there are others still that add nothing good to the album – it kind of feels like DMX is a recurring guest on a compilation album, almost being drowned out by all the other artists present. Also, there are WAY too many features, and not all of them good. Enough big names were involved on the production side, but none of them brought their A-game. The biggest problem with Exodus is the lazy and uninspired production from Swizz Beats, DMX’s longtime collaborator and friend who ended up finishing the album (with some input from others such as DJ Premier and Kanye West). Exodus has its moments – “Bath Salt” with (old?) guest verses from Jay-Z and Nas is a dope track, as are “Hood Letter” with the Gridelda family, “That’s My Dog” with The LOX, “Dogs Out” with Lil Wayne (who surprisingly comes with the strongest guest appearance of the album), and especially the heartfelt “Letter To My Son” – but the album also has problems. Allegedly Exodus was nearly finished when DMX died, but it feels like a posthumous project very much regardless – an album cobbled together without the artist’s final say. DMX’s untimely death on April 9th of 2021 happened just as he was completing work on his eighth album, Exodus – his first Def Jam release since 2003’s Grand Champ.