Hip-hop Stories

 

Allston – If you were checking iTunes’ Top Ten Hip-Hop charts on September 13^th, you may have noticed something out of the ordinary. While albums from Jay-Z, Kanye West and other hip-hop icons placed throughout the ranks, breaking in at number nine, between Eminem and 2pac, was “This is Our Science,” the latest album of an indie rapper from Minneapolis named Astronautalis.

That’s the rap name Charles Andrew Bothwell, 29, gave himself when he was fifteen and battle rapping in Jacksonville, Florida, but he goes by Andy when interviewed before the last show of the tour for “This is Our Science.”

“I was out bowling on the night the presale went out,” Bothwell says at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston, off the road from Philly after playing 41 shows in 45 days. “And I got a text message from my record label and they were like, ‘dude, we’re gonna need to make more of these.’ Because we were planning on making about a hundred. And it was just in the first five hours we had already broken every presale record they had had.”

The presale of the album crashed the sales website of New Haven based record label, Fake Four Inc., but they did not give specific details when asked.

In a time when listeners can get their music for free through illegal downloads “there’s no reason to pay for music,” Bothwell says. “You pay for music out of a show of support, it’s like a political vote. And to get that sort of affirmation before the album even came out was like – it was mind blowing! I was completely dumbfounded!”

For the rest of the story, go here!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Benjamin-Cooper-Freelance-Journalist/303440223006366