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Do They Know Latin Hip Hop? The Latin Billboard Mistake by Heist

This year's Latin Billboard Awards were at their best, we can not deny that Latin Music has made a huge impact within the last two years and many are reaping its benefits. But as so many things must come to an end and a new beginning give way to bigger and better things; we see that many are still not properly schooled in what is happening around us. Billboard Magazine is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis. Its most famous chart, the "Billboard Hot 100", ranks the top 100 songs regardless of genre and is frequently used as the standard measure for ranking songs in the United States.  Everyone pays very close attention to this weekly magazine and follow it very closely as the industry changes.

The issue we are facing at this moment is the misrepresentation of our music. We have many sub-genres which are categorized as to follow sales and maintain organization within the Latin Music Market. This year at the Latin Billboard Show we saw a misplaced artist take home an award which he shouldn''t have gotten at all. Not to take away from Toby Love in any shape or form, the young man is a great singer and his album "Toby Love" which is wonderful rendition of Bachata/Tropical music was a huge success and deserves all the merits it has garnered. But that is just it, the fact that he is a Bachata Singer and was placed under "Latin Rap/Hip-Hop Album of The Year" shows that we are being represented completely wrong. How is it that this same artist can win "Tropical Airplay Song of the Year, New Artist" but yet even be placed in a category dealing with Rap and Latin Hip Hop? Does anyone else see something wrong with this?

This is not about the artist Toby Love; this has nothing to do with his music or any artist at all actually. This has to do with Billboard directly and how now we have to look at this company and question if what they are reporting is based on a true understanding of the music they track. Latin Hip Hop & Latin Rap have always been in the shadows of every other genre out there, and now not only are we being overshadowed indirectly by other genres it is now direct because we are being hit with losing to artists who have no place to be competing against our TRUE Latin Hip Hop Artists. How can Toby Love win to Akwid? These young men have been in the game so much longer and have sold so much more but yet lost to a Bachatero!

Billboard will try and say that they had no other place to put Toby Love and that the only category that would fit best for him was the Latin Rap and Latin Hip Hop category, but we all know the reality is he should have been put into the same category as Aventura which is Tropical and Bachata. If the young man came from those roots, and his music is based around that music he should have been there to begin with. We are only making things harder for others when we make errors such as these! If they don''t know the music, then they need to hire someone who does and work more closely with people who are living this on a day to day basis. Do not ruin what so many have been working so hard to develop by making mistakes that only take away from the achievements so many are making and have made. Years ago we would have understood because there wasn''t such a huge assortment of music for Latinos, but now we are in a position that we do have so much going for ourselves that we have to keep creating new genres to keep up with the times.

Latin Hip Hop is the next big thing, and many know this to be a fact. MTV will be airing music by Latin Hip Hop artists very soon in upcoming shows, and many others are already participating in bringing this culture to the forefront. Artists that work everyday to make a difference were overlooked for this mistake and for that Billboard needs to realize what they have done and rectify this immediately before it happens again next year. We had many Latin Hip Hop artists who had New Albums last year lose out on being recognized only because someone made a bad call and said put Toby Love in the Latin Rap and Latin Hip Hop category. I feel strongly against this, not because he won but because he was erroneously put there. Either you get on track or step out the car! We need to know our music and how to market it if were going to remain a player in any genre! We only harm ourselves when we continue to make these mistakes.

Written by: Heist

www.Perrealo.com  

www.myspace.com/heistness  

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