Girl Talk's Feed the Animals is one of the greatest albums I've heard in a long time. How did it come about? Gregg Gillis put in the fucking work.
Mr. Gillis, who said he saw “Feed the Animals” as an album of his own work rather than a D.J. mix, spent several months testing out ideas during live performances, then several more matching beats and polishing transitions. He estimates that each minute of “Feed the Animals” took him about a day to create.
(NY Times)
This is after he worked his way up as a DJ and mix artist, mind you. Divide the album over years of practice, and you get a time investment quite a bit higher than a day a minute. Music is like writing, math, speaking another language, or any other skill- put in the time and effort, and you get recognized for it (it needs to be smart effort, though). I think there are far fewer talentless creatives out there than plain lazy ones.
If you haven't heard Feed the Animals, you need to go get it right now. Girl Talk has released it under a Creative Commons license, available to download for whatever price you care to pay. Don't trust my taste in music? Pay nothing at first, then come back and sling the guy his money once you're won over by the album's awesomeness. He's supposedly self-distributing because of copyright litigation fears, but I wouldn't be surprised if he brings in more money this way than by going with a label.
There are also plenty of YouTube videos to give you an idea of what this is all about:
