#Jordan Adetunji

[1000-year-old-virgin]

Jordan Adetunji ft. Kehlani - KEHLANI (Remix)

[inyourbackpocketisbutterflies]

[cozyaliensuperstar7]

Kehlani 👑

nprmusic:

#tinydesk • @kehlani’s Tiny Desk invites viewers on a ride through several of their biggest hits 🖤⁠

🔗 Tap the link in our bio to watch Kehlani’s full performance, premiering only on npr.org\tinydesk or @nprmusic’s YouTube❗️

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 22/06/2024 (uh... the Kid LAROI?)

Sabrina Carpenter has an even more impressive second week than her first, as “Please Please Please” strides up to the top spot for her second #1, dethroning Eminem’s “Houdini”, now at #3, and joining her own “Espresso” at #2. Welcome back to a relievingly dull episode of REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

As always, we start this slow week with our notable dropouts - songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we bid farewell to mostly long-runners or current bottom-feeders. This time around, our obituaries contain “Forget About Us” by Perrie (Edwards), “obsessed” by Olivia Rodrigo, “You & Me” by Disclosure featuring Eliza Doolittle after its return last week, “End of Beginning” by Djo (just as I start to really like it), “Never Lose Me” by Flo Milli and, of course, thank goodness, Vance Joy’s “Riptide”.

As for our returns and gains, we have Sabrina’s residual gains from her biggest moment yet: “Feather” returns to #75 after peaking at #19 earlier this year. Our notable boosts end up being more varied, with “Pedro” by Jaxomy, Agatino Romero and the late Raffaella Carrá at #67, “Nasty” by Tinashe at #66, “Set My Heart on Fire” by Majestic, The Jammin Kid and Céline Dion at #54, “PICK UP THE PHONE” by PAWSA featuring the late Nate Dogg unfortunately at #49, more Chappell Roan gains with “Red Wine Supernova” at #46 and “HOT TO GO!” at #39, “As it Was” by Harry Styles at #33, and naturally, given it’s the Euros, “Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)” by comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and Britpop group The Lightning Seeds is back at #32. It’s topped the charts several times since it first charted in 1996 and routinely re-enters based on different football tournaments and events. I’ve discussed it pretty in-depth on an episode from years ago, so I won’t elaborate as much as I probably would otherwise here, but I suppose we’ll see it rise on the charts in accordance with how the England team’s performance shakes throughout.

As for our top five, well, I already ran through a lot of it, and it’s largely a stable week - “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey at #5, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” by Billie Eilish: both songs that haven’t moved since last week. As mentioned prior, we then have the trio of “Houdini”, “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” in the top three, and without further ado, time for our uneventful little batch of new songs.

New Entries

#69 - “NIGHTS LIKE THIS” - The Kid LAROI

Produced by Clams Casino

Now, I’m not saying that just because there are very few new songs and generally a not a lot of bigger stories, we will have a nearly entirely unremarkable group of new tracks. It just happens that this week, that is indeed the case. There are little quirks, of course - this may just be a Kid LAROI album cut from last year because, well, that’s just what we’re doing this week, but it’s good to see legendary cloud rap producer Clams Casino on the chart. You probably know him from his work with Lil B and A$AP Rocky, and he brings a similar sampled ambiance here, though the main lead is so distorted it almost sounds like it would fit a hexd record amidst all the stuttering and pretty minimal drum patterns but the drums themselves hit really heavily. It’s very much a modern-day rendition of a more typical Clams Casino beat from the early 2010s. It’s a really good beat. So what does Mr. LAROI do? Uh… like a minute of vocal riffing. This isn’t even a minute and a half, it’s practically an interlude with some of his nicest, or really, least awkward, falsetto performances, but outside of some vague breakup grovelling, this does not have much to it other than a really good instrumental… which does it wonders, but I struggle to really call it a fully-formed song. I assume TikTok is behind this, but an extended version would be a smart move here.

#58 - “Kisses” - BL3SS and CamrinWatsin featuring bbyclose

Produced by BL3SS, CamrinWatsin and Punctual

I’m quite tired, I have a bit of a headache and I’m looking forward to being able to publish this episode and take a good rest. Thanks to these guys I’ve never heard of for making that much easier. Over half of BL3SS’s discography on Spotify consists of versions of this song, which is only two minutes. BL3SS is a production duo from London, Watsin’s an Irish DJ, and this is vocalist bbyclose’s only song, with professionals Punctual here to iron out the creases on a pretty standard house track. bbyclose goes for a bratty, Caity Baser-esque cadence that leaves a lot to be desired, especially since it seems to just be a take that’s been copied and pasted over some basic albeit catchy synth bass and four-on-the-floor beats. I appreciate the frenetic drums midway through and the clashing breakbeats earlier, making it feel uniquely tense considering how minimal the melodic elements are, but again, it’s just a bit of an idea rather than a fully thought-out song. The fuzzy synths in the final drop are a good enough pay-off, but it feels like way more could have been developed upon. There’s nothing wrong with a good basic dance tune but the atmosphere isn’t there, there isn’t really a second hook to latch onto, and the remixes are even shorter, including a remix by rapper Kak Hatt that is barely longer than the Kid LAROI interlude. None of them effectively improve on the original or go for a drastically different approach. It’s just all perfectly cromulent dance music.

#55 - “KEHLANI” - Jordan Adetunji

Produced by Prodbyli

Okay, so let me get this straight: not a single Cash Cobain-produced song will chart, but a rando with basically no credits will replicate the sexy and/or slizzy drill sound identically and get a viral hit. Kehlani won’t chart with her lead single from her album that just released today, but a song named after them to garner clicks, which actually samples Summer Walker instead, specifically her 2019 track “Potential”, will magically appear at #55. Then Kehlani will end up on a yet to be released remix of it in spite of the fact they’re just one of six women mentioned in just the chorus, because they can’t get a hit otherwise. Sigh, I mean, it’s got everything you’d expect from sexy drill, a subgenre I’m… very well-versed in if you want a full-on lecture at some point, I’d be glad to share. It’s got damn near every sound you’d be familiar with, even the occasional dripping sound effect which I thought was absent until the second chorus, it’s building tension constantly but also has the stop-and-start feel of a Jersey club track because of the busy but tedious percussion. The high-pitch rapper is about as nasal as the chipmunk R&B sample, he’s talking about a sexy woman amidst basic, fast-paced flows and occasional pop culture references. It’s all textbook and unfortunately, that’s all it is. And once again, it’s barely two minutes but, if you look at the lengths of better and more interesting sexy drill songs, that’s not exactly a complaint. My personal favourite song from the genre is shorter than that Kid LAROI interlude yet feels like a complete track, it’s just kind of how this subgenre works. Hopefully something more interesting or closer to Cash, Chow Lee or wolfacejoeyy from this genre can break out soon, because they have more character than this and genuine hit potential that has so far gone somewhat unnoticed in the UK. I have a full playlist of my favourite sexy drill songs, and not only do so many of them deserve this spot more, they sound like they’d make more SENSE as a hit than this. They’re actually catchy, and funny! I love this sound on principle hence why I’m spending more time on this than I need to and also hence why I don’t hate this, but this is still far from a good impression if you’re a UK chart-watcher opening your ears to this genre for the first time.

#51 - “Choppa” - Byron Messia and Lil Baby

Produced by Rvssian

Byron Messia, a dancehall artist from St. Kitts and Nevis, probably best known for his top 20 hit “Talibans” that peaked at #12 in 2023, is finally back with a single of his own on the charts, enlisting the seemingly go-to crossover rapper of the day Lil Baby for a largely onomatopoeic single about shooting down opps. There’s a simmer to the dancehall groove for sure, especially with the way the subtle tropical drums are mixed to the left, but the higher-pitch vocal loop feels a bit too cheap and robotic to really play off it very well. Messia himself is a bit less reserved, coating himself in his own ad-libs and harmonies in a way that isn’t as interesting as it seems to be covering up some lyrical deficiences - the body drops like a Netflix series? The chopper sings sweetly like it has diabetes? Okay, well, Lil Baby is a complete non-presence lyrically and matches Messia’s vocal tone to some extent, meaning that his slightly off-beat flow renders his verse as a waste of time that was added in post-haste, especially given the structuring: it interrupts Messia’s second verse, splitting it into two, and he only ever returns for a weirdly-mixed recitation of the lead artist’s outro. Not even any ad-libs in the chorus. Once again, production isn’t bad, but as a full song… at least the performances might be finalised? It’s closer to three minutes?

#48 - “DEVIL IS A LIE” - Tommy Richman

Produced by Jonah Roy, Max Vossberg and Kavi

I think Tommy Richman could have a relatively successful - albeit brief - hitmaking career in R&B. He’s got a unique voice mirroring really only one artist - Brent Faiyaz - and even then, he’s not got the same production choices and he goes for a flow closer to rap. I also respect how he didn’t go for the exact same vibe as “MILLION DOLLAR BABY”, deciding to switch his 2000s rap influence from Memphis to almost a New Orleans vibe. I’m assuming he’ll do chopped and screwed for the third one. There is an undeniable funk here for me, but once again, both the beat and Richman’s performance feel pretty half-baked and perhaps rushed. What was special about “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” was how its brevity contained so many hooks and earworms, even with just the one verse and infectious chorus. This is a cute throwback jam, I suppose, and it seems to be rising on streaming pretty well, but it has one-hit wonder follow-up written all over it: a different sound, perhaps one that fits his unique style more than his slight left turn of a big hit, some vocal inflections reminding you of said big hit, a title that cashes in on the song of the summer famously losing that same phrase. It’s completely serviceable, but it stops right there and fails to take any risks or even construct itself in a way that distracts you from how barebones it really is, considering its typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-vocal-riffing-outro structure that barely rakes up to two minutes once again. I can’t help but think that if all five of these songs are not reaching any kind of interesting development or ambition, it can’t be purely for any thematic reason and might just be laziness or, probably worse, marketing. But this was a slow week. Naturally, we’ll get clunkers that just aren’t good enough to find themselves debuting as high on any other week. This Richman fellow though, he’s sticking around… for now.

Conclusion

Clams Casino gets Best of the Week for that beat on “NIGHTS LIKE THIS”. As for the rest… it’s the mid-off of the century, pick your own. As for what’s on the horizon, it may be an exciting week but once again, like this week, the levels of fame from those actually dropping a substantial work are not that consistently high, so we may end up with just more filler. Regardless, thank you for reading, rest in peace to James Chance, and Stephen Spencer of Dario G, and I’ll see you next week.

[9franklin3]

I thought you would change but you won’t…

[justalovelyblackgf]

“Kehlani” by Jordan adetunji has literal crack in it. I listened to that song ALL day and it refuses to leave my head. I’m not hating it though 🙏🏾🥵😭

[kehlanifenty]

[1000-year-old-virgin]

Jordan Adetunji - Kehlani

[vulcanette]

HYPERPOP JERSEY CLUB !!

[expromqueen]

Jordan Adetunji - KEHLANI (REMIX) ft. Kehlani

[thesinglesjukebox]

JORDAN ADETUNJI FT. KEHLANI - "KEHLANI (REMIX)

the "kehlani" version with kehlani

[6.56]

Ian Mathers: You can easily hear Adetunji sing parts of this song in his actual voice, and it sounds great, which just makes it an even weirder and greater move that he shot his shot so effectively that Kehlani actually shows up -- with production that makes him sound about 13 years old. The affect doesn't particularly go with the production or Kehlani's performance (both great), but somehow it still works. Not hoping this starts any kind of trend, but on its own? Hugely fun. [8]

Alfred Soto: If you're going to appear on an eponymous track functioning as a valentine, then giving the audience these parched star poses won't do. [4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: “Kehlani” (song) drags a lot for only three minutes. The beat is basically static, and the only major change in the production throughout the entire song is how much you can hear the Summer Walker sample. Because of this, the chorus feels ridiculously long; the verses use most of the same melodic phrases as the chorus, mixing everything further into mush. But if you only have 30 seconds to spend on this song, it’s fine. Adding Kehlani (singer) was a net positive, since their verse has easily the best lines (see: “step out like my wife but bust me down like she my enemy”).  [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Post-Weekndian R&B struggles with the disease of the eternal pre-chorus — songs that build and build toward nowhere, their languid melodies always slouching toward something greater that never arrives. The original "Kehlani" exemplified this tendency, its moderately catchy melody hammering into you and each additional R&B singer Adetunji listed like an entry in the Domesday Book. The remix — and Kehlani themself — breaks the monotony. They sound like they're bemused at the very concept of a song that pays tribute to them, not because they don't think they deserve it but because the praise feels fitting.  [7]

Taylor Alatorre: There's nothing necessarily wrong about making a Zoomer brainrot edition of Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent," but you'd think that an adopter of the Woman Respecter persona would show a bit more humility in this situation. Geeked off his social media triumph, Adetunji slots in Kehlani's perfectly serviceable contribution then refuses to trim any of his own parts to accommodate it, resulting in a final minute of deflationary pointlessness. I don't think Kehlani was intending to insult Adetunji by stressing their name's correct pronunciation in their verse, but I admire the pettiness. [4]

Mark Sinker: ppl shd be nice abt each other more often [8]

Jonathan Bradley: It's almost ambient, a composition of slow dark textures splintered by distant snare taps. Adetunji raps, I suppose, but his tumbling melodic syllables are so choppy, so resistant to legibility, that I imagine them as shards of light filtering at dawn through the gaps of an abandoned building. Does a track still count as hauntological if its remix summons the apparition it invokes? [7]

Nortey Dowuona: can't be objective, furious it's not me. even angrier that jordan is credited as the recording, mixing and mastering engineer. and he seems like a cool ass dude. jpegmafia could have a pop hit with kehlani too. haha this sucks man. [10]

Katherine St. Asaph: Kehlani owns this song, and thus proves its point. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]