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.A G R E AT Y E A R I N H I P H O Pthan Brooks or anyone else in the nation.Because most music critics and industry observers had no idea who DMX was, they spent thenext week scurrying around to acquire more information aboutthe rapper.The following week DMX’s label, Def Jam, took out a full-page ad in Billboard to celebrate the occasion.The ad featured a waist-high close-up of DMX, eyes closed, head tilted slightly upward in a prayerlike position and read: , — The ad exuded an air of confidence that called attention to rap’s rapidly rising status in the music industry.Perhaps more important the ad served notice that the movers and shakers in the rap gamewere for real and that hip hop was a formidable player in the high stakes world of commercial music.Overcoming Brooks, by now acrossover and country megastar, was no small matter.Since the in-troduction of SoundScan in 1991, country music, and Brooks in par-ticular, had become one of the music industry’s biggest triumphs.In 1998 country, according to the Record Industry Association of America, held a market share of 14.4 percent.Though the share was down from an all-time high of nearly 19 percent in 1993, it was still a strong showing.Buoyed by its steadily rising market share, rap, a genre longvilified as “street music,” found itself poised to challenge Nashville’s claim as America’s most popular music.Def Jam’s ad, as time would soon reveal, was right.Over the next six months, and in the ensuing years, hip hop’s steady charge toward the mainstream turned intoan all-out assault as a worldwide audience tuned in to rap as never before.63
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