Worst Career Implosion: Iggy vs DaBaby

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Thought this would be a fun poll to do. Two rappers who in just a few months took popular music by storm garnering hit after hit whether as a lead or as a feature, even having number one smash. 

And just 12 months after their peak in popularity would see both their popular reputation and their commercial success take an absolute noise dive thanks to bad publicity and bungled label management. All the while, rappers who are more respected who've never gotten hits but have managed to garner a fanbase/following, have had better career trajectory than these. But which of these have had the worse fall from grace?

[Private Dancer]

I feel like Iggy had a natural fall-off. She was hot for the time being...but not a promising career.

However, Dababy was on the rise with a nice fanbase,and  sponsor deals, and then...well...I'm sure I don't have to say

[JOJO SIWA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME]

DaBaby because one minute he was EVERYWHERE and had his hands in everything and suddenly POOF, over, doneso, bye bye.

Iggy has still managed to have smaller levels of success.

[kimberly]

yeah these aren't very comparable because Iggy just released flops that didn't click with the public and her 15 seconds were up. despite her popularity never exactly recovering, she's still putting out music to an audience that enjoys it and can tour the country without needing to sell "Buy One Get One Free" ticket deals like DaBaby is doing right now 💀

Iggy was always controversial but I don't really recall her having any particular "turning points" per se, correct me if I'm wrong. the one thing I kinda remember is her SNL performance of "Beg For It" with MØ being pretty bad (I can't even find a full video of it so they really wiped it off the internet lol). to me, "Beg For It" sounded and felt like it could have launched a successful album campaign, but was ultimately fumbled and panned. songs like "Team" and "Savior" didn't really help her either, even though I did enjoy the latter.

so my vote goes to DaBaby. as far as career implosions go, his is pretty epic. from being regarded as the most popular "rent-a-rapper" for pop artists and performing at the Grammys multiple times in one night, to falling from grace so hard that Dua Lipa doesn't submit her year-end No. 1 single for Grammys and radio stations switch to playing the solo version, and now selling BOGO concert tickets...

[.indulgecountry]

DaBaby, because he's a shitty human and he's truly "over."

Iggy just transitioned from mainstream popularity to just being popular in niche circles (i.e. with the gays). She works her ass off and deserves better, but has had some moments of indie success since her star faded.

[johnm1120]

Iggy went from, it girl to punchline in like less than a year.

[Joe1240]

Dababy for this one..He was everywhere with "Rockstar" in 2020 and other hits and now recently his songs don't get attention anymore. HIs song with Dua Lipa is basically forgotten about due to what happened. I vote for him for worst career implosion.

Iggy just declined naturally and got lots of major features out of it with Jennifer Lopez & Britney Spears and after "Black Widow" she never had a major hit again.

[kimberly]

Nov 9, 2022 5:06:06 GMT -5 kimberly said:

Iggy was always controversial but I don't really recall her having any particular "turning points" per se, correct me if I'm wrong. the one thing I kinda remember is her SNL performance of "Beg For It" with MØ being pretty bad (I can't even find a full video of it so they really wiped it off the internet lol). to me, "Beg For It" sounded and felt like it could have launched a successful album campaign, but was ultimately fumbled and panned.

Iggy spills some "Beg For It" tea on Twitter tonight:

[JukeboxJacob]

nah honey Beg For It flopped because it sounded exactly like Fancy but so much worse. She was also degraded into a meme when that video of her "freestyling" went viral

But DaBaby - yeah this ain't a fair comparison he's never gonna be relevant again

---------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Justice for Team which should've been a HIT

[rainie]

maybe this is a hot take but i genuinely think dababy has a higher chance at scoring another hit, although it's still almost zero. his time as a lead artist are done but i don't think it's out of the realm of possibility he could get a hit as a feature + his flow is unique enough that i can see people randomly getting nostalgic for it and giving him a comeback ala meghan trainor, though like meghan's comeback i'll be rooting against it if it ever does happen

iggy miiiiiight score another charting hit or two but there's a zero percent chance they last more then a week or two. almost ten years later she's STILL a total punching bag and a readily available example of white people ruining everything. and as there's been more and more discussion abt cultural appropriation since her heyday, there's no way mainstream rap circles welcome an iggy azalea hit again, whereas at least in the case of dababy we're seen people make total comebacks after doing way worse s**t (ala chris brown, kodak black, etc)

[.indulgecountry]

Dec 17, 2022 21:15:46 GMT -5 rainie said:

iggy miiiiiight score another charting hit or two but there's a zero percent chance they last more then a week or two. almost ten years later she's STILL a total punching bag and a readily available example of white people ruining everything. and as there's been more and more discussion abt cultural appropriation since her heyday, there's no way mainstream rap circles welcome an iggy azalea hit again, whereas at least in the case of dababy we're seen people make total comebacks after doing way worse s**t (ala chris brown, kodak black, etc)

But see the thing with this is I almost always see this narrative from white people not black people about Iggy as of 2022. It's the mainstream white pop audience that left her and caused her to be more of a flash in the pan for a couple years as a big name, but she's been doing fine -- more than fine when you consider how well she has been killing it as an INDIE act bringing some of the best visuals in the game and getting modest streams while staying booked and busy, without record label politics holding her back (that was probably a bigger issue for her career stifling than any public perception). Since going indie, she has also proved what a hard-working and talented artist she is, plus her downfall wasn't just from her being a garbage human being for literally no reason at all like DaBaby's case. She may/may not have a better chance of scoring another major hit again, but she proved with "Kream" and "Sally Walker" that the lightning could strike. Those weren't like major, major mainstream hits but they out-performed anybody's expectations of Iggy at that point, and she could pop off in a viral way in a similar fashion to what we're seeing rn with Meghan Trainor, someone else people counted out as likely never getting the kind of success she's getting rn. Either way, as recently as less than 2 months ago Iggy was getting paid six figures to perform a six minute set at a Raiders game and meanwhile DaBaby is just desperately trying to give away his concert tickets so people will show up.

[Kelly's 10th Fan]

Iggy may be a punchline, but she's a punchline who managed to sell off her catalog for 8 figures in the year of our Lord and Savior 2022, eight years after her last relevant Hot 100 appearance. You could argue she was overvalued, but regardless, who really got in the last laugh?

Put another way, Iggy is the one who fell off, not her hits. It's highly unlikely she'll ever have another big streaming/Hot 100 'hit' again, but Fancy alone is a musical time stamp in pop culture and will always get her booked somewhere when she wants or needs to be. In that sense she's a bit one-hit-wonder-ish (I'm aware she's not a OHW), but there's no shame in that.

DaBaby has the opposite problem - he has objectively higher odds of stumbling his way into another chart appearance (albeit more likely as a feature) because the audience he aims for isn't one that cares about being morally repugnant, but if you hopped in a time machine and rode out to 2030 I highly doubt you'd find anyone in the future willing to pay life-changing money for a DaBaby catalog. Say Rockstar to someone on the street and if you get any recognition from that song title at all it's more likely to be them singing Post Malone back to you first. Having a hit is not the same as having impact, and DaBaby fully lacks in the latter. I'd say his falloff was worse because he's exactly the type of person who needed a solid 5-7 years of hitmaking and starpower by association (collabs) just to avoid his music being forgotten completely, and IMO he didn't make it. Were he not so insistent on doing or saying something intentionally antagonist every other month for attention, he himself would be easily forgotten, too.

[After Minutes]

DaBaby literally had the potential to become one of the the most commercially successful rappers in the world with genuine staying power

[kcdawg13]

Iggy wasn't really around that long, she only had a couple hits and then disappeared off the charts. She's the usual one-year wonder like Twenty One Pilots & Macklemore for example. So it's hard to say her career imploded since she really didn't have much of a career. Iggy's commercial trajectory is more in line with Roddy Ricch, who also scored a couple hits in his breakout year and then sputtered out, it wasn't an "implosion."

On the other hand DaBaby was actually a huge star, notching a whole round of hits between 2019-2021 and getting album bombs and shit. Dude was one of the biggest in the game for at least a couple years, and then it all faded away in what felt like over night. Dude had huge crossover hits only 2 years ago and now his name is a punchline, so you could probably compare DaBaby more to artists like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer who were also huge mega stars that became punchlines very quickly.

[Ernesto]

DaBaby, no doubt!