Straight Flexing

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A lot has changed since 2008. I graduated college in the spring. The economy crashed and we hit the Great Recession. A Senator from Illinois was elected the President of the United States. And Nigga had the #1 record in Mexico.

Felix Gomez, better known by his stage name Nigga, is a chart-topping reggae artist based out of Panama. He came up with his nickname after being told “he sings like a black guy from Jamaica.” Nigga would receive much success throughout Latin America with his hit single “Te Quiero” and it even held the #1 spot on the Latin Billboard charts for 20 straight weeks. The single won a Latin Grammy for Best Urban Song and the similarly titled album would be nominated but ultimately lose in the Best Urban Music Album category.

In the midst of this success there was obviously controversy surrounding Nigga’s moniker, so as a compromise he decided to go by the name Flex in order to begin receiving airplay in the United States. Nigga also edited and released versions of his earlier songs as Flex, without any mention of the Nigga nickname. The name change might have hurt his career longevity as none of his later albums reached the heights of his debut album, but he’s still garnering lots of streams for the hits that he did amass early in his career. On Spotify, his Flex account has 600,000 listeners a month and his Nigga account is garnering almost triple that at over 1,600,000 unique listeners each month. It’s clear that his fanbase prefers Nigga over Flex.

I find it extremely curious that in today’s climate Nigga is able to still thrive in the streaming world. Usually artists with questionable or controversial names get held back by them and don’t make it past niche fame on sites such as Soundclick, Audiomack or Reverbnation. Nigga has had a #1 record, won a Latin Grammy, and is still pulling in millions of streams each month. Based on Spotify’s payout of $0.004 a stream, Nigga’s label EMI is generating at least $100,000 a year off of his music. I’ve seen artists get cancelled for way less than using a literal slur as their artist name.

Maybe Spotify’s board is full of Nigga lovers.