In case you’re wondering, Rolling Stone magazine has crowned Eminem the King of Hip Hop. That comes as no big surprise, given the rap beats the rapper laid down on Relapse, Recovery and his latest work with Bad Meets Evil. The only contenders to the throne were rappers who had released at least one solo album between 2009 and mid-2011.

Numbers Game

Between his 7.5 million album sales, his number one rank on Twitter in terms of followers, more than 40 million fans on Facebook and more than 1 billion hits on YouTube, it should come as no surprise that Eminem is on top of the rap heap. No other rapper comes close to those numbers, but the love of one’s fans doesn’t always translate into financial success.

Not to say that Eminem isn’t very well off – he is. But there are other rappers who don’t rap quite as much who end up making more money than him, according to Forbes Magazine. In fact, the King Of Hip Hop found himself in a 3-way for 14th place, along with 50 Cent and Young Jeezy. How does that happen? While other rappers make music, more of their earnings come from sponsorships, product endorsements and production deals than from rap music. For Slim Shady, the money comes from the music and the fans love him for it.

Eminem’s income may get a bump from the $1M+ Chrysler commercial he shot for the Super Bowl, and the deal with Lipton Brisk iced tea, but don’t expect a lot of merchandizing deals from Slim just yet. At 38, he still believes he’s got a lot of rap beats to lay down before he assumes other roles in the music business.

Even though Eminem has a significant lead on other rappers in terms of sales and fans, there’s still plenty of room for new rappers in today’s rap and hip hop music scene. The art form has spent nearly 30 years building a diverse fan base, and rap has been used successfully as a way to reach out to a broad audience.

The genre is far more open to new talent than other musical styles and still represents one of the best, most efficient routes into the music business today. It still takes an investment of time to make the music people want to hear, but new rappers can get into the business by self-producing their own tracks, using something like Sonic Producer. With distribution channels like iTunes readily available to new rappers, there’s no reason not to join the party!

Photo Credit: ep.Sos.de, via Flickr