Every successful artist has a gimmick. Some of them may call it an image, but I call it a gimmick. Yeah, I said it, a gimmick. Tell me a rapper who made it and I will tell you what their gimmick was. I mean, let’s keep it totally real, my man Jay-Z has a stellar career and most recently, his hit single D.O.A. targeted other people gimmick. Right? Yeah, it couldn’t have been a hit song without his legendary flow and a hard hitting track, but the premise of the track was a gimmick in itself! In other words, death to auto-tune really means death to a gimmick.

DOA itself eventually became a gimmick in and of itself! Why target auto-tune? Why target a gimmick? Simple, I’ll tell you in two words, job security. Established artists are “the house” and “the house” always wins. The wanna be rapper is “the gambler”, wagering their time and resources on beating “the house”. If they win, they become part of “the house” and the more houses there are, the less money they can make because the market share gets smaller. So what does “the house” do when “the gambler” figures out a way to better their odds and beat the “the house”? I’ll tell you what they do, they do whatever they can to stop them from using that tool and in this case, that tool is auto-tune and they try to kill it! (more…)