Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Matisyahu: Selling like hot cakes!

The LA Times has a great article covering Matisyahu


. It talks about the many trials and errors he has gone through being a Jewish-Orthodox Jew in a secular music business:

Matisyahu had to learn through trial and error that it was a good idea to clip his yarmulke into his hair so it wouldn't fall off when he bobbed his head to a hip-hop beat. And that if he tucked his tzitzit into his trousers, the tassels of his prayer shawl were less likely to be yanked away in the pit's mass of writhing limbs.

It also describes just how popular his albums are:

Matisyahu has been on the road for nearly two years straight, a tour that will bring him to the Long Beach Arena Feb. 19. And his 2005 concert CD, "Live at Stubb's" (Sony), has claimed the top spot on the reggae chart for six straight weeks, selling more than 300,000 copies.

"We're moving 25,000 copies of the live album a week," points out Charlie Walk, president of Sony subsidiary Epic Records. "That's spectacular! It's a new movement."


Matisyahu now graces the front page of Sony records website.

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3 comments:

Zoe Strickman said...

This is all great, but I'd like to see some new music from him.

There's the philosophy that if you have a good product, sell it until you can't sell it anymore. He has a good product, but if he came out with a new album, I would buy it.

-Zoe

Ezzie said...

Impressive...

Chaim said...

When I said, like a year ago ... this guy was going to be HUGE ... I actually meant to say, this guy is going to be bigger than huge. Do you realize (stop rolling your eyes, I'm no obsessed!) that this is not just amazing because of the whole chasidic, jewish, chabad, reggae aspect, but he isn't just HUGE now, he is like forefront - front pages huge. Most non Jewish mainstream artists work years to get this type of publicity, record label attention and press. He has only been doing this what? 3 years? That in itself is amazing.