Washington and Oregon combined have about 1/4 the population of California, so it's always going to be tough to crack that. If you look at African American population alone, Washington and Oregon combined have 1/9 the population of California. If you look at just Latinos, the gap is even wider. When people address these questions, I always take a demographic perspective, and for some reason, that seems to offend people.
I do think the whole "perception of hardness" thing matters. The white kids who buy rap music cds want to think that they're getting an authentic product that will give them a little glimpse into the hood. How accurate of a glimpse it is, that doesn't necessarily matter. But people won't buy rap music from places that they don't think are hard.
There are certain communities in California that just don't exist in the Northwest. We don't have places comparable to Compton, South Central LA or parts of Oakland and Vallejo. They just don't exist in the Northwest, and if they do, they are small pockets that stretch for a few miles at a time, not dozens. Historically, a very large chunk of the rap coming out of California comes from these communities. That being said, the Northwest has places very comparable to San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento, but for whatever reason, lots and lots of rappers have come out of those cities. More and more though, the rap from California is coming out of places that aren't hard whatsoever, this guy Cashis from Irvine CA, don't get me started on that. So I think demographics has something to do with it to a point, but it's obviously not the only reason.
Still though, you would've thought that maybe for every 10 rappers from California that make it, 1 from the Northwest would have.
