The parallels between the film and music industries are uncanny. Not only does Hollywood capitalize on magnanimous audience response by birthing sequel after unnecessary sequel, but Hip Hop is guilty of milking the cash cow where there’s profitable potential, too. Labels know the money-making capacity that album sequels have and mercilessly promote them to death – if not just to maintain their artist’s brand and relevancy, but to also make a pretty penny where pennies are willing to be spent.

And where studios mercilessly suck the dollars out of audience pockets with a “part deux,” consumers are equally, if not more, seduced by the prospect of the sequel. With the recent release of Iron Man 2, for example, the film domestically grossed almost $30 million more in its opening weekend than its predecessor in spite of a smattering of dim reviews, a cinematic feat that shows it ain’t all about the quality of the product – it’s about teasing the audience with the marginal possibility that a follow-up will blow you harder away than you could possibly imagine (even though it rarely does).

Hip Hop heads aren’t immune to drinking the Kool-Aid, either. In its 30-something-year-old life span, Rap has produced classics that aren’t just endemic to the Hip Hop genre – they’re classic in the scope of music history. And when the word “classic” is pinned to an album and a rapper proves capable of producing such an important effort – one that builds on the conventions of the genre while laying the groundwork for its future – there is always heightened demand for a follow-up. Audiences anticipate hearing them with welcome ears – encourage them, even, for the idea of a sequel even meeting the aural game-changing qualities of the first is more than enough reason to entertain the prospect of its creation. Even if the album is hot garbage, at least fans know what could have never been.

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Now more than ever, Rap artists with at least one classic album tucked under their belts need the attention (and wallet-stuffing greenery) that successfully executed sequels can bring. In an age where Soulja Boy is the voice of the new Hip Hop generation (a sentence grim enough to send chills down the spine of the hardest thug), much of the older demographic has come to a stalemate. Ol’ jacks have the choice of either competing with the younglings by compromising their sound (Black Eyed Peas, though they’re long gone); rolling out half-baked albums on the regular to keep their name alive in Rap circles (LL Cool J); or collecting checks by sucking their best work dry (no disrespect to the legends, but Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick and the Sugar Hill Gang stay exclusively touring their classic material).

With much of their mainstream star power diminished to a flicker, many rappers have sidestepped the aforementioned options and decided to hop on the sequel bandwagon. Over the past year, plans have been announced for sequels to classic albums at an alarming rate: Busta Rhymes is cooking up Extinction Level Event 2, Redman has been putting in work on Muddy Waters 2, GZA is laying the foundation for Liquid Swords 2, AZ stays busy recording Doe or Die 2, Capone-N-Noreaga are about to drop War Report 2 – the list truly does go on. And while these rappers may remain more relevant in Hip Hop culture and to heads who live and breathe the stuff, the common thread for these emcees is that they’ve lost the relevancy to pop culture that they once so valiantly had. Focus on Busta, for example, who was once a Total Request Live staple in his prime (never forget the burn that “What’s It Gonna Be” got on the show), with his first five albums going platinum and his sixth and seventh going gold. But the minute he toned down his animated style and gunned for mainstream success, his career went on the decline. His 2009 effort Back on My B.S., one of the spottiest albums of his career, failed to receive any certifications. Some might say that the album was straight up ass.

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That’s because the consumer can’t be fooled when it comes to artists with whom they feel a connection. While each artist has a different story than Busta, they’ve all suffered similar downfalls, whether it was because of their transparent efforts to recapture the audiences they once had by chasing a hit or simply because they lost it. Perhaps they were viable and creative in a time when they were breaking new ground, but personalities quickly wear thin in a digital age where an album that’s taken years to record falls by the wayside faster than it takes to download said album with a DSL connect.

And while a mass exodus to Sequel City might seem sporadic and oddly coincidental for a handful of artists all looking to inject their careers with some venom, the root of the recent incarnation of the sequel movement can be traced to a single artist. Raekwon, one-ninth of the Wu-Tang Clan, reinvigorated the concept of a sequel with the September 2009 release Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, capturing the same grittiness and voracity that propelled him to solo fame when he dropped his flawless debut Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… in 1995. Not only did the sequel channel the same vibe and intensity as its namesake’s predecessor, but Rae also proved that he hadn’t lost the spark that so vigorously tentpoled his debut. While a few albums of questionable content had been released in between, the near 15-year wedge between albums seemed like it almost didn’t exist, and Raekwon recaptured any glory that may have been lost during that lapse in waddling productivity.

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The response was more than acclamatory. While Raekwon has only sold around 200,000 copies of the disc (an accomplishment that, in this day and age, is mighty healthy), it was more than enough to cement his legacy as a solo artist and reel back any fans that may have lost interest in the emcee’s movement. And with the critical outpouring over the album’s playback value, the Chef established himself as the poster boy of reclaiming lost glory. The sequel formula had been a success. All it took was re-subsuming oneself back into that hungry mindset – independent of outside pressures and expectations – and the album became the aural embodiment of picking up where many had assumed (and feared) was the peak of his creativity.

Clearly, the success had a domino effect. Raekwon had recapitulated himself into Hip Hop relevancy, and all it took was giving the fans what they wanted. Heads had been fiending for OB4CL2 since it had been announced in 2005. All Rae needed to do was take his time making sure it played smoothly from front to back, waited for a few years to help build anticipation and, after sitting on the project so long that fans had nearly given up hope on its release, set the joint free, sending ripple effects through the Hip Hop core and beyond. Rappers took note. The idea of releasing yet another album in a line of records that yielded diminishing returns began to seem tedious and unfulfilling for rappers of the same era. Thus began the popularization of the contemporary sequel – fruit-bearing if done right, and even juicier if timed to perfection.

And while several sequels have been announced that haven’t yet come to fruition (all of the previously noted albums are works in progress, yet widely discussed), there are critical consequences if incorrectly approached. The gravest approach to the sequel came shortly after the release of OB4CL2 from none other than Fat Joe, who had recently come off of a publicized feud with 50 Cent that left him almost as scarred and disgraced as some of Curtis’ previous targets (Ja Rule and Cam’ron, though the Dipset front man’s stake in the battle is debatable). The Terror Squad chief was faltering as the people’s champ, and in February 2009, Fat Joe’s label EMI/Virgin Records swiftly announced that they would be releasing J.O.S.E. 2, the sequel to a sequel, a few months later.

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After several delays and a lukewarm clamor for the joint, the album was released on October 6, 2009. And if you’re going by numbers alone, J.O.S.E. 2 was one of the greatest failures from a canonized artist to ever hit retail. When the record dropped, Fat Joseph only managed to move an anemic 8,800 copies of his sequel, which was barely enough to land the album in the Top 100 Billboard albums. Pit against the brick, the original J.O.S.E., which landed in stores on December 4, 2001, moved a mere 22,000 copies in its first week – poor sales for any album by the time’s standards, but ending up being a slow-grower, moving across the platinum threshold within six months on the strength of massive, culturally unavoidable hits. (And if we’re really getting into the nitty gritty here, the grandfather record, Jealous One’s Envy, even managed to outsell J.O.S.E. 2 back in October 1995, moving only 1,500 copies in its first week yet debuting higher on the chart and completing its sales run above the 50K mark).

So where exactly did Fat Joe go wrong? Unlike with Raekwon’s second magnum opus, Fat Joe didn’t abide by the rules. Instead of building anticipation by using digital mediums to his promotional advantage and making sure that the product itself aligned with its source material (as well was with fans’ expectations), Joe simply grabbed every producer with a hit on radio, tapped every hot artist in his rolodex for a guest verse and farted out one of the most empty bids for mainstream acceptance in a long while. The album wasn’t just a failure – it was unlistenable. I recall being at the album listening event for J.O.S.E. 2 before the effort hit retail, and even with a few Remys in the system, the music was barely tolerable. Hearing Joe disgrace the name of his best (yes, I said it) work by parlaying its integrity into this pile of trash was not only one of the saddest moments of his career, but it was a monumental letdown for the Hip Hop community.

It’s here where Fat Joe entirely missed the point of the sequel. Raekwon used the sequel not to earn himself a hit record, but to breathe life back into what listeners believed was a career put on temporary ice. Joe looked at his sequel as a way to pay the next three installments of his mortgage. Hip Hop fans may be misguided at times (let’s face it, we’re one Humpty Dance away from facing God’s wrath), but they’re never blind. And when the stakes are high for an artist like Joe to deliver something to chew on, listeners are going to be even harsher than ever if their hopes are raised and then completely dashed.

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And that’s not only because there’s so much music available to the public that legendary artists are expected to consistently deliver something that floats above the rest. It’s because the sequel is nothing new to Hip Hop, and fans are hip to the game. In fact, the sequel is almost as old as Hip Hop itself, and there’s a strong, unwritten history of artists delivering part twos of their albums that attain the musical heights of part one. Dr. Dre, for example, has only released two solo albums throughout his career: 1992’s The Chronic and 1999’s (The Chronic) 2001. Not only was The Chronic an insta-classic opus, but its sequel picked up right where it left off. It was almost as if Dre recorded both albums in tandem and froze the latter in time, only to release it precisely when the game needed it most. Faster than you could put one in the air, Dre had not only revived his solo career full throttle – he had sealed his reputation as one of music’s finest. He had made lightning strike the same spot twice, and it was no accident.

While the Good Doctor used his hiatus as a means of building hype around 2001, the sequel became a different sort of promotional platform for Nas. Unlike Dre, Nasir Jones had remained relatively prolific throughout the ‘90s, but like many artists who hit their stride on the first album and rode that momentum right down the hill, “Nasty Nas became Esco’s Trash” over the course of a handful of albums. Illmatic had almost immediately been canonized as one of Hip Hop’s greatest records upon its 1994 release, and as soon as Nas got his first taste of acceptance from a wide audience (not to mention bucket loads of cash), the quality of his music was compromised. Nassir sounded like he’d be willing to sell his nuts for a plaque, and while album sales maintained (even aggrandized, in some cases), his reputation in the hip-hop community had been downgraded to “sell-out.”

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We know what happened next. All it took was a lyrical knife fight to get Nas’ mind right. While he had lost touch with the type of music that his core demographic loved the most, it was his lyrical bout with Jay-Z that relit the fire beneath him. After Jay dropped his seminal 2001 album The Blueprint and fired shots straight in Nas’ direction with “Takeover,” it’s almost as if something snapped. Nas needed to take it back to the basics in order to reinvigorate his standing with the “real” Hip Hop, and soon after Jigga dropped his joint, Nas followed with Stillmatic. The Queensbridge emcee re-subsumed himself in the lyrical and creative mindset as Illmatic and, playing the situation correctly, patched over any indiscretions fans perceived him to have had by conceptualizing the album as a whole, rather than as a collection of potential singles. While it wasn’t as aurally gritty as the original, Stillmatic recaptured the hunger of Illmatic with its whip-smart rhymes, potent instrumentals and, of course, “Ether.” Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Nas gave the people what they wanted and hoped he would produce. He took it back to his roots, and those who wished he could throw his “one hot album every 10-year average” were calmed like a newborn suckin’ that pacifier for the first time.

Not only have Hip Hop fans seen the different ways that artists can approach the sequel, but they even knowingly feed into the hype machine. As long as the artist plays the game right (like, for example, if Dr. Dre ever drops Detox, it’s a wrap) and the sequel is in the same musical vein as its companion piece, heads will support the project. It’s as simple as that. Hip Hop fans support good music. Sometimes, the results aren’t as rewarding as an emcee would have hoped (just take a look at Twista’s Adrenaline Rush 2007 and Freeway’s Philadelphia Freeway 2 – each album could have done alright, though each artist missed the mark on several fronts) or as the fan would have liked (Jay-Z’s Blueprint 2 was uneven and messy, and let’s not get into BP3), but it all boils down to artists cultivating that interest and creating a masterful product.

And as Hip Hop’s immediate future is filled with visions of sequels, it’s in the hands of rappers to play their cards right. It’s easy for emcees to hop on the trend train where they see potential to make coin – especially in a genre where your brand is as big as your bank account – but it’s important to for them to use their product to not only protect their individual integrity, but the integrity of Hip Hop. Fans don’t stick around when they don’t feel inspired, and just as not every single can be a “movie,” not every sequel album can be a blockbuster. And the culture’s posterity, for both the creators’ and the consumers’ sake, depends on rappers realizing that. Slapping the number two on the end of your album title is a dangerous move. Sure, it’s just a title, and most rappers who fail will justify the response by boiling it down to the number. But to the people who really love the stuff, the number means everything. Treat it with respect.