How does gracing XXL’s Freshman cover change the trajectory of an artist’s career? The Village Voice broke it down by the numbers. As it turns out, getting the look doesn’t guarantee getting an album out any time soon. There is only a 26% chance of an artist capitalizing and dropping an album in the same calendar year (Macklemore and Future being among the few who did). Furthermore, though the term “superstar” is quite objective, the Voice points out that there’s only a 13% chance of the freshmen hitting it big. Drake and Nicki Minaj famously turned down the cover and went on to reach huge heights.
As far as age goes, there’s a 26% chance all the freshmen are at least 30 years of age. This is once again true on the 2014 cover,with the likes of Jon Connor and Jarren Benton.
Also, if you’re a white rapper, good luck getting on the cover. Less than 10% of all “students” to ever be on the magazine were white, and the bulk of that came with the 2012 cover featuring MGK, Iggy Azalea, and Macklemore. Ironically enough, there’s a 43% chance of a white rapper featured on the cover actually blowing up. Though that percentage is obviously skewed given the fact that there have been significantly less white artists than black in the cover’s history, it’s nevertheless staggering.
You can check out the full numerical breakdowns over at the Village Voice now.
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