Topical EPs Are a Priority for Rap Labels

Here’s a real pop stumper. N.W.A. hasn’t released a new album since early 1989. So how is possible that the popular gangsta- rap group has sold 900,000 records in the past five months?

Easy. N.W.A.’s record company, Priority Records, has resurrected one of the record industry’s most neglected marketing tools . . . the EP.

“The band had really gone a long time without a new record, but they didn’t have enough material ready for a full-scale album, so we decided to try an EP,” explains Priority president Brian Turner. “You could say necessity was the mother of invention.”

Thanks to necessity, N.W.A.’s “100 Miles and Running” EP could go platinum. Buoyed by its surprise success, Priority quickly put out a new Ice Cube EP, “Kill at Will,” which has already topped the 700,000 sales mark.

Now other rap-oriented labels are getting into the act. Tommy Boy Records has just released a new EP by its hit act, Digital Underground (cleverly titled “This Is an EP Release”) while Select Records has just issued an EP of its new group Chubb Rock. (Most EPs contain five or six songs and have list prices of $6.98, compared to $9.98 or $10.98 for tape or album releases.)

In the rap world, the future is now. Veteran rock bands can go years between albums without alienating their fans. But rap fans are pop’s most fickle constituency. Most groups risk losing their core audience if they drop out of sight for a year.

“Rap simply has a shorter shelf life than any other music,” says Tommy Boy president Monica Lynch. “If you let your new songs sit in the can, they’ll get dated. So an EP can get your material out while it’s fresh and keep your group in the spotlight. If your act has any career momentum, you want to keep it going, because in rap you never know how long the momentum is going to last.”

The EP also gives a rap label like Priority a crucial economic boost. Turner discovered last year that most hard-core rap groups have an audience ceiling of 1 million fans. “For most of our records, we’d sell 1 million--and then stop cold,” he says. “That’s hard-core rap’s current consumer base.”

But Turner also discovered that the same million hard-core fans who bought Ice Cube’s album last summer would also buy his EP this winter. “We realized that we could put out another EP right away and they’d still buy it,” he says. “So by following Ice’s album with this EP, and then coming with a new album in May, we can sell an extra million records. We’re essentially doubling our record sales without having to expand our audience.”

Priority realizes this neat trick won’t work unless its artists deliver the goods--and the label makes its EPs look like quality releases. For Ice Cube’s “Kill at Will” EP, Priority shot a video to promote its single (“Dead Homiez”). And for N.W.A.’s EP, it commissioned a striking painting to use as cover art.

It’s always possible that Priority will eventually over-saturate the market. But so far the strategy has paid off, especially since EPs look like bargains in today’s recessionary marketplace.

“I tell my artists that if you give me a quality product--that your fans can legitimately tell their friends to buy--then we can put out a new EP every four months,” Turner says. “Things change so fast in rap music, why should we wait any longer?”