Malcolm Spellman, creator of FX’s The Drop: A Snowfall Saga, says record labels deliberately steered hip-hop away from conscious rap and toward gangster rap because the violence was easier to sell.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Spellman pointed to the early 1990s as the turning point. “Record executives took a culture and decided it was easier for them to make money pushing violence and gangs,” he said.

He went further, arguing that “these labels literally destroyed an entire dimension of hip-hop and took it into the gutter over the next 30 years.”

The Snowfall spinoff follows Gail Bean as Wanda and Isaiah John as Leon, with Asante Blackk as Lamar. The first season wrapped with its finale on October 27, and is now streaming in full on Hulu. It ends with a label rushing out an album after a young man’s murder.

Spellman told The Hollywood Reporter that the industry’s grip on its artists will drive the story going forward. “The label has all the leverage,” he said. “What the audience is seeing in that finale, in the last three episodes, will be completely normal all throughout season two.”

He added, “What we just saw was a dash of what’s coming.”

The heart of the series, Spellman said, is the romance between Wanda and Leon, which he based on his own marriage. “I think they will ultimately be an uplifting story because it’s based on me and my wife,” he said.

Spellman’s comments land in a long-running debate over who shaped hip-hop’s commercial direction in the 1990s: the artists, the audiences, or the executives who decided which records got funded and promoted.

For now, FX has not announced a second season of The Drop, and Spellman told The Hollywood Reporter he is “not worried” about renewal.