RIAA Top Selling Black Artists
DirectionsName the black artists who have been certified 5x multi-platinum or more by the RIAA. For the purpose of this quiz, black is related to skin color, not ethnicity. Some judgment calls had to be made on my part – groups/duos are in some cases included based on the individual members. Total certifications (1 = 1 million sold = platinum, 0.5 = 500K = gold) along with # of certified albums shown. Object is most certs, not artists.
Stunned that Public Enemy isn’t on this list.
just missed – 4.5.
how did I confuse B2K with Boyz II Men????
This might be a stretch, but Guns N’ Roses, or at least Slash as a solo artist. Slash’s mom (RIP) is African-American (or African-British, since he was born in England) while his father is white. If you accept Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver should also qualify, although they only had two records and I don’t know if they would make the list anyway. What about Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave? Is Tom Morello partially of black heritage? Great quiz either way, lot of great black artists. I’m surprised there aren’t more Motown bands; what a great era of music.
for groups i wanted at least half of the members to be black, so just one black member of a group would not qualify it for this quiz.
A couple of black artists I think may be missing that qualify as 5x or higher: Shaggy, Charley Pride and Tracy Chapman. There are a few others that have at least one prominent black artist like Hootie and the Blowfish and The Black Eyed Peas that you could also consider including.