Traditional Media USA Today is now picking up on Rap’s Demise. Although CD sales are obviously down this year, rap sales are down 33% from 2006, twice the decline for the industry overall, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Established rap stars no longer are sure things in sales. During the past nine months, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Diddy and Nas released albums, but only those by Jay-Z and Ludacris have sold at least 1 million copies in the USA, and only Diddy is still on the charts.

There are signs that many music-buying Americans — particularly the young, largely white audience that can make a difference between modest and blockbuster sales — are tiring of rappers’ emphasis on “gangsta” attitudes, explicit lyrics and tales of street life and conspicuous consumption.

Rap pioneer KRS-One, who just released Hip Hop Lives with fellow legend Marley Marl, offers a blunt explanation: “The music is garbage,” he says. “What has happened over the past few years is that we have traded art for money, simple and plain, and the public is not stupid.”

In 2006, rap sold 59.1 million albums, down 21% from 2005 and 27% from 2004. Sales are trailing those for country albums (75 million) and heavy metal (61.6 million) — genres that rap formerly overshadowed.

Rap is no longer a dominant player in the industry. This year’s top-selling albums thus far are by American Idol rocker Chris Daughtry’s band and jazz chanteuse Norah Jones