#but off beat rappers just sound... amateurish

[mathgeek101]

Off beat rappers: I am not, and will never be, in love with you. In fact I actively dislike you. Thanks

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 31/10/2020 (Ariana Grande, KSI, Little Mix)

I haven’t heard that Ariana Grande album yet as of writing this but the lead single – and title track – “positions” has just debuted at #1 on the UK Singles Chart, her seventh song to hit the top and second this year after “Rain on Me” with Lady Gaga. Hence, that’s today’s #1 and we have a busy and pretty chaotic week of new arrivals. Welcome to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

A lot of their debuts from last week were completely wiped out on this week’s chart which surprises me, especially for songs I thought would hit it big like “One More Time” by Not3s and AJ Tracey. Our notable dropouts here range from bonafide smash hits like “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek, which hit #1, although I always preferred “Swoosh” from the same album, to pretty easy and quick fall outs from songs I’ve reviewed in the past few weeks. We’ve got songs that peaked in the top 10 like “Rover” by S1mba and DTG and “I Dunno” by Dutchavelli, Tion Wayne and Stormzy but otherwise that’s mostly it as a lot of these drop-outs are just songs that didn’t really reach their charting potential or have mostly had their day in streaming, like the surprisingly quick drop for “my ex’s best friend” by Machine Gun Kelly and blackbear, as well as “Destiny” by D-Block Europe, “Tap In” by Saweetie, “FRANCHISE” by Travis Scott, Young Thug and M.I.A., “OK Not to Be OK” by Marshmello and Demi Lovato, “Airplane Mode” by Nines and NSG and even “Outta Time” by Bryson Tiller and Drake. If you’re worried about the loss of MGK’s song being too soon for whatever reason, don’t fret as “forget me too” with Halsey, a much better song, is here at #72, our only returning entry for the week. I might as well run through the biggest gains and falls, those both being last week’s debuts. “Train Wreck” by James Arthur absolutely surged up to #24 whilst “Hold” by Chunkz and Young Filly absolutely purged down to #59. To be fair to the general public, I think I’d rather listen to something from four years ago than that song as well. Anyway, let’s start our new arrivals with a couple really interesting choices...

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Sofia” – Clairo

Produced by Rostam

Clairo is one of those artists where I feel completely out of the loop on, especially with all the recent buzz from TikTok, and I was not checking for that album last year, and whilst I didn’t mind her feature on Wallows’ “Are You Bored Yet”, I’d never been intrigued enough to check out the solo work until I guess here we see it on the chart, which is big for the genre of bedroom pop, which again I know next to nothing about. Now, I like lo-fi indie rock fine, but I’ve never really tried to look into the bedroom pop micro-genre – if anyone has any recommendations, that would be appreciated – so this will pretty much be a first gaze into not just Clairo but the entire scene surrounding her. I’m not a Vampire Weekend fan by any means but Rostam on production just give me hope, even if the mix here is a bit too drowned in reverb and echo to give the guitars any more impact when they really should have, at least I think so, they’re pushed back in a way that makes an already pretty calm, fleeting indie single even more lacking sonically. Clairo sounds great on this instrumentation, admittedly, albeit kind of uninterested, but it really is about that fuzzy distortion in the drop that feels... oddly anti-climactic and seemingly pointless considering how little progression is made before or after it. Maybe this genre just isn’t for me, but I feel myself turned off from how Clairo’s pretty beautiful vocal harmonies are not reflected by the production here, whether it be the stiff percussion, abrupt ending or overall lack of substance. This is kind of disappointing as I really wanted to like this. The song is a pretty vague but longing ballad mostly revolving around her crushes on people she saw in the mind, particularly Sofia Vergara and Sofia Coppola, hence the name, and I think it’s actually really well-written. I especially love how the chorus seems to acknowledge that not only are these crushes clearly out of her reach as a teenage girl just discovering her sexuality but also mentioning how afraid she is to really develop on any of these feelings because of how it’s prejudiced against and in some countries outlawed, but the song easily works as just a confession of love without really realising the statement, so it doesn’t feel forced or unnecessary. Sadly, I guess Rostam had to put his prints on this one, but the song itself isn’t bad at all. Hey, I’m not going to complain about a song where I can look at pictures of Sofia Coppola for “research”.

#74 – “All Girls are the Same” – Juice WRLD

Produced by Nick Mira

It’s so odd and kind of heartbreaking to see the Genius comments for this track where they say Juice is “up next for 2018”. It’s also pretty amusing to see some of these annotations...

God, I love Genius.com. This is a 2017 Juice WRLD track from the late rapper that was released as a single from his debut album, Goodbye & Good Riddance. I don’t really understand why this had a resurgence – again, I’m going to assume TikTok or some kind of remix – but it is funny to see a bitter, immature and sloppily-written song about heartbreak and how “all girls are the same” next to a lesbian love ballad on the chart... and above said ballad because we clearly live in a society. I’m not going to mince words here: this is a pretty bad song, at least in my opinion. All respect to Juice but he’s clearly not on top form here, with an uninterested and badly-mixed vocal delivery over a really dull, jingly trap beat with awful bass mastering. In fact, the whole song is mixed awfully and sounds really muddy which may have been the point but it doesn’t complement Juice at all. The lyrics here are purposefully immature and at times stupid, especially when he compares himself to John Lennon and is so desperate for a rhyme the dude says this unnamed girl is from Colorado. I’m not going to deny some of the lyrics here are kind of haunting now due to tragic circumstances but I still get a chuckle out of the vocoder on his voice after massive empty spaces in both the beat and vocal track that makes the song sound clearly amateurish (to be fair to Juice, he clearly didn’t have access to the best studio equipment but it doesn’t excuse the major-label streaming release sounding this sloppy), as well as that opening line.

Broke my heart, oh, no, you didn’t!

Yeah, I’ll take “Robbery” over this any day, or even “Righteous”. Sorry.

#73 – “Martin & Gina” – Polo G

Produced by Hagan, Lilkdubb and Tahj Money

It seems we have two melancholy trap-rappers from Chicago appear consecutively on the chart. I love those types of oddities. If you don’t know Polo G, you probably should, at least from his hit “Pop Out” with Lil Tjay last year, and this is his most recent hit. I typically find his brand of mournful Auto-Tuned crooning about life on the streets remarkably genuine in comparison to most rappers but also admittedly really boring, at least for now. I can see this guy becoming a lot bigger and better but as of now he releases so much music and the quality and effort seems to fall by the wayside more often than not. In typical 2000s bling-rap fashion, this hardcore street rapper’s biggest hit from the album The GOAT (perhaps a bit early to call there, Mr. G) is a guitar-based R&B love jam for the ladies, except it’s not a sex jam...

Girl, I can’t wait ‘til I get home to f*** the s*** out of you

Okay, well, that’s one line.

Man, I’m tryin’ to get to know you sexually

Okay, but at least he’s trying to get to know her. The song’s lyrics do have a genuine heartfelt sense of love and companionship with his unnamed woman, and some of these lyrics are pretty funny and pleasant, albeit shallow. I love how in the first verse he says that even on her worst days she still looks “kind of cute”, in a way that makes this song more down to Earth than other thugs-need-love-too songs, especially when he acknowledges the troubles in their relationship, which may be undermined by the unfortunate implications that come with that “Martin & Gina” comparison but that’s really not the focus of the song, even if it is the title. He may talk about the shopping sprees now but there is evidence here that Polo G genuinely wants to live his life with this woman, especially when he says he wants them to move out to California and live in a mansion. There’s flexing there for sure but it’s less out of a desire to sound “cooler” than the other rappers or the audience, and more out of a desire to make the most out of this relationship in case, as he knows he might have to, he should “pull the stick out and shoot” to protect her. It helps that this is a damn good song with Polo’s catchy flow in both the verses and that infectious chorus, as well as a really slick guitar lick behind that trap knock. Yeah, this is pretty great. Check it out.

#71 – “Spicy” – Ty Dolla $ign featuring Post Malone

Produced by Ty Dolla $ign, Westen Weiss and damn james!

It seems that Ty Dolla $ign has finally clocked that people like him for his features and not his solo work as he has released his most recent album fittingly named Featuring Ty Dolla $ign, following a trend of recent massive collaborative albums in pop music. This particular album features the likes of Kid Cudi, Kanye West (twice), Anderson .Paak, Nicki Minaj, Big Sean, Future, Young Thug, FKA twigs because, well, sure, and obviously, Post Malone. I haven’t listened to the album yet, I mean it sounds exhausting but I don’t necessarily like what I’ve heard. “Expensive” with Nicki Minaj is soulless, “Ego Death” with Skrillex, Kanye and FKA twigs is chaotically misguided and a massive disappointment, “Track 6” with Kanye, .Paak and Thundercat is way too boring for these four artists, and that’s all I’ve heard, except that “Dr. Sebi” interlude with Young Thug that I thought was actually pretty damn good for a one minute snippet. I did brief through some songs on the album right now as I was writing this and I wasn’t really a fan of any of it, not even the songs with Future and Young Thug, artists I actually really like. The song with Kid Cudi was pretty amazing though, which I pretty much expected, I mean it is Cudi after all and he’s really felt revived this year, even if he feels out of place on a sex song. The serpentwithfeet interlude definitely adds to that song though, and it actually leads into this track with Post Malone. This is their second collaboration after their #1 hit “Psycho”, but it’s a lot less interesting, replacing the serenity and smooth flows with more fast-paced trap skitters, hit-and-miss flows that only make Ty$ sound all that great in the tail-end of his verse. Post’s verse is out of place and feels like a regression for him, with the verse sounding like it was taken straight out of the Stoney sessions. The guys have no chemistry and Post doesn’t even contribute to a final chorus, which feels particularly odd as there’s not a bridge to round any of this out properly as it just transitions awkwardly to the sixth track, titled “Track 6”. At least Ty$ isn’t facing 15 years in jail for cocaine possession now, which is something I brought up a disproportionate amount of times in older episodes of this show, because, well, sure.

#69 – “Whoopty” – CJ

Produced by Pxcoyo

CJ is an “up-and-coming” rapper with only one song that pretty quickly went viral. There’s something fishy about this. The only other song by CJ on Spotify and I assume other streaming services is this CashmoneyAP-produced trap song called “On Me” that is completely garbage. It does sound pretty odd that while he doesn’t sound dissimilar in “Whoopty”, this uninterested Auto-Tuned mumbler took three years to get another song on streaming and now he’s an energetic New York rapper using a beat that was literally uploaded to the producer’s website as a “Pop Smoke type beat” weeks before “Whoopty” was released, which, by the way, was an immediate viral hit on YouTube. Very strange, very unusual but not very worth talking about as the one thing “On Me” and “Whoopty” have in common is lack of quality. Sure, I like the Indian sample but it’s quickly drowned out by the booming 808s and pretty rote drill beat. Somehow, CJ sounds too energetic and excited to the point where he’s out of place on a beat this menacing. He sounds like a joke made by a record label to create some kind of popular generic drill track and it does not help that there’s a single verse, with part of it repeated as a bridge, and two repetitions of the same over-long chorus. When Pop Smoke rapped over beats, he was aggressive, sure, but had a smoky voice and a lot more charisma than this flat tonal sandpaper CJ brings to the table. It’s almost offensive to Pop Smoke’s legacy that this was rapped over his “type beat”.

#57 – “SO DONE” – The Kid LAROI

Produced by Omar Fedi and Khaled Rohaim

I figured I’d have to talk about this guy at some point, well, what better time than in the midst of a lot of mediocre American hip hop, although this isn’t American, rather it’s actually an Aussie at it this time, with this 17-year-old kid propped up by Internet Money and Lyrical Lemonade and mentored by the late Juice WRLD. This kid really likes capital letters, and naturally I listened to his last hit “GO!” with his mentor Juice... and, yeah, it’s not good. That hook is stupidly infectious – and the pre-chorus is actually more so – but his delivery is obnoxious and unconvincing, especially in comparison to Juice on the same song. Man, I wish that entire song was as good as its pre-chorus. Anyway, this is a new song, not taken from his debut mixtape aptly and rather politely titled F*** LOVE. It uses an unorthodox ukulele loop as its main sample but once again I’m not a fan of this guy’s immature delivery. Maybe in a few years this Kid LAROI will sound less like a Kid LAROI and more like a genuine rapper but right now he is just barely keeping on beat with a jangly pop beat that would sound really interested if accentuated by the right rapper but here it doesn’t work at all. I do actually appreciate some of the lyrics here, even if they are repetitive and vague. Hey, at least they’re family-friendly PG clean for the most part so he’ll get that radio push, but it’s not like it’s matters here in the UK. I’m sure this lad is the hottest thing to come from Australia this year... okay, well, maybe the second hottest – but I’m not a fan, even if some of these melodies are promising. In fact, I really like some of his ideas, especially in the chorus, I just think that tragically, Juice could have done them more justice than this Kid LAROI ever could. Sorry.

#47 – “Bad Guy” – Morrisson and Loski

Produced by BKay and Harry James

Duh. Okay, so these are both UK drill rappers who I’m not very familiar with although I’ve heard of Loski before. Morrisson is a complete unknown to me. They’re both from London, as one would expect. Is the song any good? Well, I do like that chopped violin sample but Morrisson is only vaguely convincing when he claims to know Vinnie Jones and to be Stone Cold Steve Austin, and when he mentions getting “white-boy wasted” with a woman sniffing coke, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but that’s actually the point. I mean, the chorus says this:

You need people like me so you can point your f***ing fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy”

The issue here is I’m not convinced. Morrisson’s double-tracked vocals aren’t intimidating or menacing and are mostly overshadowed by a pretty great beat. His delivery is also something I’m not a fan of and while I can’t say he’s uninterested or not putting his all into it, it just sounds weak, especially when pitted against this beat. Loski is here too, but he doesn’t add much to the “bad guy” idea, especially when he starts talking about The Simpsons and Family Guy. Not Mr. Burns or even that angry chicken that fights Peter, just Stewie, Brian, Bart and Homer. Admittedly, “shell out the whip like Mario Kart” is a pretty fun line and I appreciate his flow more than Morrisson’s... but, yeah, I’m not really a fan. I like the concept but it misses the mark on execution.

#44 – “Golden” – Harry Styles

Produced by Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson

So this is the opening track to Styles’ sophomore effort, Fine Line, an album I thought was mildly entertaining pop rock at best and lazy, absolutely worthless trite at worst. I don’t mind Styles’ take on classic 70’s pop and glam rock but I’ve also never found it interesting, and the songs are at times disjointed and at most times just plain boring. I understand I’m probably alone in this but I really disliked this album and I’m not excited that he’s pushing yet another single. The beeping keys that start the song are immediately met with the crash of a drum beat that sounds as flat as Harry’s singing in that obnoxious, sloppy intro refrain. The verse is equally as awkward, with the song lacking in any kind of substance other than that one line of “You’re so golden” which has been overly annotated by fans on Genius to mean a lot more than it does and should. It’s a confession of love but unlike “Sofia”, there’s very little to grab onto in terms of compassion for the singer and I quickly lose interest in what little story there is to the track. The bridge with the high-pitched guitar squealing and squeaky pitch-shifted murmuring is over and done with as slowly as possible and that refrain of nonsense vocalisations just continues without fear or even self-awareness of how annoying it is. This is probably ultimately harmless but it annoys the hell out of me and whilst I predict success for the track, I really hope against it as I absolutely do not like this at all.

#39 – “Teadrops” – Bring Me the Horizon

Produced by Jordan Fish and Oliver Sykes

Yes, that Bring Me that Horizon. Yes, the metalcore band. At least they used to be metalcore and definitely on that heavier side of Kerrang!-core, but what I’m more amazed by is how they continue to ditch the sound and continue to get bigger as they do so. After 14 years, you’d think these guys would stop getting Top 40 hits – hell, the only other hit they had before 2020 was “Drown” – but this is their third this year! I’ll admit I’m not really up to speed on Bring Me the Horizon – I listened to their last record (which was just fine but honestly probably worth listening to for “wonderful life” alone) but not this EP that the singles have been from, and definitely not their older stuff. For the sake of REVIEWING THE CHARTS, however, I did listen to their earlier singles – you can’t say I don’t do much for this show – and I’m overall not really sure on how to feel about this stuff. I still like “Drown” – and always have – but I’ve never been too big on metalcore so I’m actually surprised how much I really enjoyed the Linkin Park rip on “Sleepwalking” (which I’m impressed I remembered the chorus for). I remember liking the practically nightcore track “ouch” and, yeah, it still slaps. Some tracks are very heavy on the electronic, and “Can You Feel My Heart” is reliant on that vocaloid drop, about two years before that became the norm in pop. Just from a skim of their biggest singles, I’m honestly kind of a fan, especially “Throne”, even if I feel like the EDM influences just kind of go nowhere. Also, none of this screams “metalcore” to me but I don’t know, these guys seem to change their style a lot with the only thing staying consistent being Oliver Sykes, and his tone that shifts between nasal pop-punk-style crooning and chopped-up Auto-Tune growling. I talked to a friend about them and they like their earlier stuff mostly, although he “wouldn’t recommend” their debut album to anybody at all. Another friend said he refuses to listen to their music based on the pretentious title of their third record and honestly I think that’s a pretty fair decision. This song sounds like pretty standard BMTH, or at least from what I can gather from the singles and the formula they follow. It starts with a funky and cute, chirpy electronic groove before it’s drowned out by heavier drums and heavy metal guitar riffs, but this time said electronic groove is less integral to the instrumental and the shift to a funkier bassline in the verse might honestly be for the best, although I do love the way the instrumental is chopped up a bit at the end of each repetition of the chorus. It makes the song sound a lot more unique and even if it sounds just as 2012 as their 2012 stuff, I honestly think that’s fine, especially with that abrupt sharp contrast of his raspy yelling over breakbeats quickly followed by some crooning with light piano backing, which may make the song feel messy or structurally disjointed but honestly it works for the chaotic tone of the track and the angst that is presented in the lyrics. Also, although I haven’t evaluated this band since I watched a couple videos on Kerrang!, this feels oddly nostalgic. Huh. Some additional musings: That falsetto Sykes hits in the chorus is great. My friend said that he couldn’t finish the last album they put out which isn’t a good sign but to be fair to them it was an hour-long IDM record, because, well, sure. I’ve written way too much about Bring Me the bloody Horizon at this point so I’ll just move on but I’ll make sure to check out some of their stuff after this.

#37 – “Loading” – Central Cee

Produced by HARGO

Now back to normality, at least I think so. This is another UK drill artist I’ve never heard of. I like this beat, especially that sample of the horns that I’m surprised wasn’t found by crate-digging but it works pretty well under the drill beat; it sounds like a menacing “gangster” song, especially because of how that sample reminds me of 1930s Chicago. I’m not good on my American (or gang) history so that might be nonsense but you know what I mean, right? Black-and-white footage of men in suits gambling whilst women surround them and they all got their money from drug trafficking and they send out hits. Something like that, I don’t know. The song is kind of boring though, this Cee guy has zero charisma and the references to COVID make this immediately dated (not that this song is lyrically all that interesting anyway), and by two minutes the beat has run its course and just starts getting annoying. Yeah, not much to say about this one at all, but it could have been better.

#8 – “Sweet Melody” – Little Mix

Produced by Peoples, MNEK, Morten “Rissi” Ristorp, Oliver Frid and Tayla Parx

I wonder if now that I listened to Bring Me the Horizon for half an hour straight that the last four songs all sound worse, or at least less interesting, in comparison. Well, I doubt that really, I think these songs will just end up being less interesting. I mean, five separate producers on a simple three-minute pop track? This’ll be as market-tested and manufactured as possible, as one would expect from Little Mix. I didn’t mind their last couple promo singles but this song seems to have some actual traction and even a high-budget video behind it and hence it debuted as high as #8. Well, is it any good? Well, it’s no 2013 Bring Me the Horizon, that’s for sure. Jokes aside, the nonsense vocal refrain is kind of awkward and the R&B production here is kind of minimal and just... off, particularly in the first verse and refrain, where the singing and hard 808 is met with only accompaniment from one stray snare that is just... there? The drop doesn’t feel like it has a proper build-up either, and doesn’t even feel like it lives up to that non-existent tension. I do love the harmonies towards the end of the track and the “he would lie, he would cheat over syncopated beats” line is kind of a bar, I suppose, but yeah, this production is awkward and I’m not sure if it really does the girls’ talent justice. I would have preferred something more dramatic and with more of a climax than the skittering hi-hats and vaguely dancehall-inspired bass grooves, but alas, here we are with a pretty mediocre, uninteresting track, which wasn’t exactly unexpected.

#3 – “Really Love” – KSI featuring Craig David and Digital Farm Animals

Produced by Digital Farm Animals and Mojam

Ah, the trio we all didn’t know we wanted but definitely deserved(?): YouTuber KSI, legendary R&B singer Craig David and a couple virtual elephants. KSI is more than a YouTuber or prankster now to be fair to the guy, with songs like “Lighter” he has cemented himself as a genuine pop star and not in the way that songs used to get viral or even back in 2017 with Jake Paul. KSI is taking this stuff seriously and having fun with it, and, hey, he beat up Logan Paul once or twice so I guess I respect the man to some extent. I’m honestly surprised he got Craig David to be on the song with him. I mean KSI may be popular but I never put much thought into his music or even think it’s any good although the song has clearly debuted this high for a reason. Craig David has a janky hook that just plopped onto the track for a chorus and bridge, with pretty generic lyrics about love, which KSI develops on in some oddly specific ways. He’ll buy this woman Amazon Prime – I hope you enjoy the Borat sequel, guys – and she’ll “wreck his balls like Miley”. Classy. Honestly, the song is mostly fine – KSI’s flow is kind of awkward and stiff still but it’s a lot smoother than it usually is and he does deliver a pretty convincing performance here, as does Craig David, who sounds as great as he did 20 years ago over this groovy house instrumental, with a great bassline that really does fit Craig David more than it does KSI. The trap breakdown is pretty well done as well, which surprised me as I assumed the song would lose all momentum afterwards but, no, it keeps on chugging. This is listenable and far from bad but it’s mostly just a serviceable pop tune. I have no issue with this sticking around as it probably will. Now for the big one:

#1 – “positions” – Ariana Grande

Produced by TBHits, Mr. Frank and London on da Track

Man, I’ve just reviewed 12 songs, I do not feel like talking about the biggest and most important one now. Well, maybe it’s not that and instead the fact that I have this conflict with Grande’s music where someone so unbelievably and obviously talented sounds so incredibly disinterested in the songwriting and production, to the point where her performance is irrelevant. Sure, sweetener and thank u, next had their highs but the former is a complete mess and the latter feels so dull and oddly characterless. Again, these albums aren’t all bad but I feel like they’re still so rushed and infuriatingly so, with Grande having very little involvement, or at least it sounds like that in these albums. Regardless of how much she contributes to each record, it always comes out the other end sounding impersonal, so I’m actually glad she dropped the pretence and is now just doing purely sexy R&B stuff. I haven’t listened to the full album yet but with song titles like “34+35”, I can kind of expect what I’m going into here. That said, I’m not really a big fan of the title track and lead single here, although I can understand why it debuted at #1. Firstly, the video where she becomes the President of the United States for practically no reason is great. Secondly, the beat is pretty good and produced by London on da Track, who I’m kind of disappointed didn’t put his producer tag here. It would have at least been kind of funny hearing it transition into Grande’s sweet whispery vocal tone. I like the slick trap percussion, cricket sound effects and that chirpy guitar pluck, and especially those strings in the second pre-chorus which sound genuinely awesome. Ariana’s a great performer but the chorus is kind of weak, especially lyrically – I don’t mind the opening and main line about switching positions, hell, it’s kind of clever, but “I’m in the Olympics the way I’m jumping through hoops”? Really? The bridge is also pretty short and lazy; I feel like it could have actually been done away with or put as an intro and would have worked just as well replacing the second chorus with that final chorus, background whistle notes and all. That said, the song is a solid lead single and I am kind of excited to hear the rest of the album, even if this is at least somewhat of a retread.

Conclusion

What a mixed bag. I’m generally pleased with what we have here though and I am going to give Best of the Week to “Teadrops” by Bring Me the Horizon with an Honourable Mention to Polo G for “Martin & Gina”, although Clairo would have gotten close without Rostam on the boards. There’s nothing all that bad here except “Golden” by Harry Styles which does get an easy Worst of the Week, with a Dishonourable Mention to CJ’s “Whoopty” for just being lazy. Here’s this week’s “spooky” top 10 – it is Halloween after all:

You can follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for political ramblings if you so wish but I wouldn’t recommend it, especially if you like Keir Starmer, but all politics aside, thank you for reading this far and I’ll see you next week.

[thesinglesjukebox]

BLUEFACE FT. CARDI B - THOTIANA (REMIX)

[5.67]

How much Blueface is enough?

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The problem with all these "Thotiana" remixes is that the featured artists water down the thrill of the original with 1) longer runtimes and 2) more traditional rapping. Cardi B's energy is magnetic and her verse is relentlessly pornographic to fit the song's themes, but it's a net loss with all things considered. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The original "Thotiana" was a perfect candidate for fluke rap hit of the year: its beat, a candy-encrusted LA facsimile, was undeniable, its hook deeply memeable, and Blueface's verses on the right side of amateurish. Yet the song's remix, which brings in Cardi B to double down on the cartoonish sex rap of the original, improves on the formula simply by having less Blueface except where absolutely necessary. Where he played lines like "I'm every woman's fantasy" with a half wink, unsure whether to come off like an actual sex god or a meme of one, Cardi fully commits to the horniness of her verse, taking lines that I'm not sure I can quote without sounding deranged and giving them such a confidence that they come off as normal boasts. On "Thotiana," Blueface sets out the original outrageous claim, but it's Cardi that does the work of shifting the Overton window right into it. [7]

Crystal Leww: The original is easily a [8], if only for it's weird, off-beat (literally) energy. The song's concept has been done to death, from Juvenille to Sage the Gemini, and Blueface adds his own, completely serviceable entry to the mix. A remix with a Cardi B verse to add a big name is wholly unnecessary and slightly worse than the original. Still good though, if only because of Blueface's weird charm. [6]

Jonathan Bradley: One reason I enjoy Blueface so much is that, at a time in which many of rap's most popular figures are using melody to push their flow into new places, his deliberately akimbo delivery turns his words into abrasive protruberances. There's a transgressive pleasure in hearing something so ugly. The "Thotiana" remix has a lot of Cardi B, whose Bronx vowels make her stand out in a different way, which means it has less Blueface: a loss, to be sure. It still has his percussive hook, however, which he likely repeats so often because it's really fun to say. It's paired with a drifting and addictively simple piano line that gives the song a hazy, late-night feel; it belongs on the freeway home as much as it does to the strip club. The combination of theme and beat is a malleable one, and I'd be happy to hear a dozen rappers over it. Bring back the posse cut -- and then bring back Blueface. [8]

Iris Xie: If disorganization is the destination, "Thotiana" works, with the way the compressed slings of the rhyme work with the tinny piano, the bass, the hazy bells, and that it goes against the beat. But with the vocal tracks on top, it gets more confusing: Blueface sounds like he's weaving and drifting through the track -- either with ease or he's hella faded? Cardi B pumps the track with charisma and conviction, as usual, solidifying her reliability as a stamp of approval, but she sounds like she's tripping a bit towards the last few bars of her section. But honestly, I think this song is probably best enjoyed with a slower cognition, either from being high or from sleep deprivation, to smooth it all out into coherence and to take in properly how the beats step up and down. [6]

David Moore: "Thotiana" is shaping up to be this year's "Slide," the song where every iteration after the original improves it in some new way, leading to an embarrassment of riches from unexpected corners and viewpoints and reinterpretations. Except this one's not quite embarrassing yet, as the riches aren't breaking free from the original, which itself isn't as provocative as FBG Duck's "Slide" was as a foundation and also has way too much Blueface left in it (which is one reason why Nicki's and Young M.A.'s versions are more interesting). Here Cardi strides commandingly through another leg of her featured credit imperial phase without breaking a sweat. [6]

Thomas Inskeep: In case you're not sure just how bad a rapper Blueface is, listen to him vs guest Cardi B on this remix of "Thotiana" -- he's just half-talking, mumbling his way over the track, while she rides its rhythm with flair. If this were just Blueface's record I'd give it a [1], but at least Cardi's parts are listenable. Trash this and listen to "Please Me" another time. [4]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Is there some way that I can explain to whomever of the half-dozen labels that Blueface is supposedly contracted to that we liked the clips from the viral songs that Twitter boosted, not his flat and lifeless radio singles? Already on it's 2nd remix, "Thotiana" isn't even the most exciting club record in the (admittedly sparse) Blueface catalog, let alone out of LA in the last couple years, but it's apparently worth flogging to death in spite of the generic quality of the beat and the generally underperforming Blueface verse. Cardi, to her credit, is a significant boost for the record, but even that can't float this dead weight. [3]

Will Rivitz: A slightly better "Look Alive," where the high-profile feature is so domineering that the track suffers because of it. I can forgive Drake, because he's so thoroughly unable to not be Drake that his verse on Blocboy JB's sleeper hit is unremarkable, but Cardi, who has demonstrated her exceptional malleability time and time again, should have been able to play off Blueface's immutable Bluefaceness in a more interesting manner. The Cali rapper's original is tight, goofy, and syntactically stellar, a cute Fiat chugging along the highway; Cardi's Maserati diminishes its charm. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[thecourtreportersportedjorts]

Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2017

In December of each year, Billboard publishes its list of the 100 biggest hit songs of the last 12 months. In response, I take it upon myself to decide which of these songs were the real hits, and which were the biggest misses. As always, I’m starting with the worst. Let’s get started:

10. “Do Re Mi” by Blackbear

If you’ve read my earlier lists, I’ve made it no secret that I’m a big fan of The Weeknd. I’ve been enjoying his relentlessly bleak brand of R&B for years, so I was more than ready to celebrate his ascent on the pop charts with multiple spots on my Best Hit Songs lists in 2015 and 2016. Apart from choosing “Can’t Feel My Face” over Taylor Swift’s incomparable “Style” as my favorite hit song of 2015, I stand by all of it. Unfortunately, any great, successful artist is bound to generate a wave of cut-rate imitators, and thus we now have to deal with blackbear.

When blackbear first appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 last spring, I probably had the same reaction as anyone previously uninitiated: who the hell is this? Prior to this year, the rising R&B singer-songwriter had written and produced for such personality vacuums as G-Eazy and Machine Gun Kelly. He also co-wrote “Boyfriend,” one of Justin Bieber’s biggest and most embarrassing singles to date. If any of that suggests that his breakout single “Do Re Mi” would be a noxious whinge replete with countless fuckboy-isms, you’d only wish it were that good.

Blackbear unfortunately goes the extra mile, topping off his insufferable whining at his “crazy” ex with a failed attempt at wit. “Do, re, mi, fa, so fuckin’ done with you,” the chorus taunts, which becomes awkward when you notice that he’s singing up a minor scale, and the minor solfege progression is do, re, ME, FE, etc. All this is accompanied by a perfunctory Gucci Mane feature and a chord progression that’s eerily similar to The Weeknd’s “Wicked Games,” which is where my issues with the song clicked: when Abel made songs like this, he at least had the good sense not to cast himself in the moral high ground or center his hooks around laughable wordplay. And I thought Bryson Tiller was bad.

9. “Believer” by Imagine Dragons

I’ve been writing these lists for five years now, and while I wouldn’t say that my music taste has changed dramatically since then, it’s certainly expanded enough that I could rewrite my Best Hit Songs lists from 4 or 5 years ago and include songs that weren’t even on my radar before. With that said, doing this for such a long time leads you to wonder if you were ever too quick to heap praise onto something that ultimately didn’t deserve it. And while I wouldn’t say I suddenly dislike any of the songs Imagine Dragons landed on my previous lists, I can no longer call myself a fan when they keep churning out crap like this.

I first mentioned Imagine Dragons in 2012, when I saw them as an innovative new force in rock music, alongside the likes of Gotye and fun. While Gotye still hasn’t followed up his album Making Mirrors, and fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff has made even better music with his Bleachers project, Imagine Dragons doubled down on their stadium-ready sound to diminishing returns. After the sophomore slump Smoke + Mirrors failed to produce major hits, they somehow managed to notch one of their biggest successes yet with “Believer,” a dreary, un-catchy slog of a song.

There are a lot of things that I find deeply annoying about “Believer,” like singer Dan Reynolds audibly straining his vocals on a flat hook, the utterly dour and depressing music backing what should be an uplifting (if not esoteric) set of lyrics, or the “first things first” lyrical structure that gives me Iggy Azalea flashbacks. But my biggest problem with Imagine Dragons in 2017 is that their songs seem entirely calculated to fit into trailers and commercials, and I’ve heard “Believer” in these spaces far more than anything more organic. I don’t believe that rock is inherently more valuable or authentic than pop, rap, etc., but it has no chance of being so if this is the way “rock” is represented in the mainstream.

8. “Tunnel Vision” by Kodak Black

If there is a theme to my lists this year, it’s that content doesn’t exist without context. 2017 has seen countless powerful men rightfully fall from grace as allegations of sexual assault and harassment continue to come out of the woodwork. As somebody who loves to share music, this puts me in an interesting position. Was I right to top my Best Hit Songs of 2014 with “Do What U Want,” Lady Gaga’s infamous collaboration with R. Kelly? Can I, in good conscience, still call Brand New’s Science Fiction one of the best albums on the year? Despite my own investment in this music, I have to second guess whether or not I can actively recommend any of it when such information is readily available. These are tough questions, but at least I don’t have to ask them here since I never liked Kodak Black in the first place.

Horrific legal charges aside, I never understood the appeal of Kodak’s music. Sure, he may choose solid beats once in a while, and he may speak on the gritty realities of the street life, but so many other rappers have done so by using a more intelligible and far less grating voice. So many other rappers have done so without resorting to tired, juvenile punchlines like “That money make me cum, it make me fornicate / I’m the shit, I need some toilet paper.” And so many other rappers at least know that “winning” doesn’t rhyme with “penitentiary.”

Even if you somehow liked this song and wanted badly to separate the art from the artist, you can’t really do that in this case. The edited line “I get any girl I want, any girl I want” originally ended with “I don’t gotta rape,” which is eventually followed by “I need a bitch who gon’ cooperate.” YIKES. The only reason this song is so low on this list is because the beat, provided by the ubiquitous Metro Boomin, deserves so much better. Metro, please stick to working with Future and Migos and stay away from this little shit.

7. “Bad Things” by Machine Gun Kelly feat. Camila Cabello

Overall, I considered 2016 to be a pretty weak year for the pop charts. It’s not that everything was terrible that year, but I remember struggling to put together both of these lists because I was so indifferent to most of the hits. Still, one of the most damning trends to dominate the year was the rise of mediocre white rappers. Both Gnash and Post Malone ranked high on my Worst list, and I probably should have included G-Eazy’s tedious “Me, Myself & I” as a dishonorable mention. This trend hasn’t entirely disappeared, as Malone had a surprisingly successful 2017, but it really should have ended with Machine Gun Kelly.

The first of the many bad things about “Bad Things” is the generous sample of Fastball’s 1999 hit song “Out of My Head.” I already have reservations about songs with such recognizable samples - even in songs like “Anaconda” that I otherwise like - and this is no exception, since the sample doesn’t really add any personality or texture to the song. The chorus just gets witlessly rewritten and clumsily regurgitated by Camila Cabello, who only sounds slightly less like a goat than she did on “Work From Home.” Of course, the song also borrows Fastball’s chord progression, which sounds like ass when paired with this Marshmello-lite production.

Even worse is MGK, who’s trying his damnedest to sound like the personification of white alpha male posturing. The only time his delivery suits the track is when he attempts to add a melody in the pre-chorus, and even then it results in serious tonal whiplash. There’s also a baffling R.E.M. reference in his second verse, as if desecrating one 90’s alternative rock band wasn’t enough. I would call the title of the song truth in advertising, but it’s more of an understatement.

6. “Swang” by Rae Sremmurd

I first discussed Rae Sremmurd in 2015 when “No Type” made the #9 spot on my Worst list. And while I still stand by the song’s inclusion, I don’t have much against these guys. Sure, SremmLife had more misses than hits - including the milk-aged, deeply regrettable “Up Like Trump” - but I can take solace in that they earned their biggest success with “Black Beatles,” their best song. On top of that, collaborations with French Montana and Jhene Aiko could position Swae Lee as a breakout solo star with a charismatic (if amateurish) vocal presence.

It’s for that exact reason why “Swang” is such a failure. Critics have routinely praised the duo for their infectious energy, but for the duration of the song, very little of that energy really translates. The production from P-Nazty trades the thunderous, off-kilter synths that made “Black Beatles” so invigorating for something much more warbly, cheap and lifeless. Swae Lee spends the majority of his time droning on words like Alaska Thunderfuck on quaaludes, and by the time Slim Jxmmi attempts to liven things up, it’s too little too late.

“Swang” isn’t an entirely sleepy affair, however. The track has one truly memorable trick up its sleeve - and that’s when Swae leaps into his falsetto during the hook. And it sounds hideous. It’s not quite as ear-splittingly awful as the drop on “Starving” last year, but it doesn’t even have that song’s sense of momentum. It almost sounds like the shower scene from Psycho, only without any real buildup leading to the aural carnage.

5. “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran

Overplay doesn’t tend to factor into my selections for these lists, a fact which is evident when you see that my Best list for 2015 included songs like “Hello” and “Shut Up and Dance.” This is because I don’t listen to the radio or randomized pop playlists very frequently. I’ll seek out the most popular songs once, and whether or not I keep hearing the song usually depends on how much I like it. That said, sometimes a song becomes inescapable, and the more you hear it, you notice more and more problems with it.

This takes us conveniently to “Shape of You,” Ed Sheeran’s first ever #1 single on the Hot 100. Admittedly, I thought this song was decent at first, and so I’d listen to it once in a while when I needed to scratch the itch. But when I decided I was done with it after a few weeks, I started hearing it pretty much everywhere, and then it clicked: this song is incredibly stupid.

First of all, Ed Sheeran is somewhere among the final few names on my hypothetical list of people I want to hear making songs about sex. “Shape of You” is certainly more competent than I’d imagine a sex song would be coming from Danny DeVito, but it’s also weirdly lacking in personality, which makes sense since he didn’t write this with himself in mind. Like “Cheap Thrills” last year, “Shape of You” was originally intended for Rihanna, who’s probably getting annoyed by all these white songwriters trying to pitch her such watered-down, vaguely Caribbean sounding pop tunes.

Of course, I could just be wishing that the song lacked personality, because Ed can’t resist using his same Sheeranisms that have soiled so many of his stabs at pop. In addition to an out-of-place Van Morrison shoutout (which he couldn’t even confine to one song), the song has a host of clumsy, overwritten lyrics. “Your love was handmade for somebody like me.” “We talk for hours and hours about the sweet and the sour.” That whole chorus. “Shape of You” scans as an OkCupid message from a dude with no social skills. Now imagine getting that same message about 500 more times, and you’ve got one of the most overplayed trainwrecks in recent memory.

4. “Don’t Wanna Know” by Maroon 5 feat. Kendrick Lamar / “Cold” by Maroon 5 feat. Future

For this entry on the list, I’ll be doing something different - I’m giving it to two songs. Sure, this is occasionally done as an excuse to avoid making a concrete decision, but there’s a genuine reason this time. The songs in question are “Don’t Wanna Know” and “Cold,” both by rock band-turned-space-wasters Maroon 5. These two songs are essentially minor variations on each other, and all the more evidence that Adam Levine and his producers band need to go away.

“Don’t Wanna Know” was released late last year, while the charts were still saturated with so much half-assed tropical house. The lyrics feature Levine at his most petulant and unlikeable, harping on an ex so much that the characteristically repetitive chorus just sounds more like a failed defense mechanism. As awful as all this is, it’s nothing compared to the fact that these guys managed to rope in Kendrick Lamar - arguably one of the most important and talented artists of this decade - and make him suck. It’s a brief 8-bar verse, and yet half of the bars feature words rhyming with each other. There’s one thing I do wanna know after hearing this dreck - what Kendrick’s paycheck looked like.

Oh-so-cleverly released on Valentine’s Day this year, “Cold” effectively treads the same water as the other song. It’s more turgid tropical bullshit, only at a slighter quicker tempo. The lyrics are even more bitter, bordering on misogynistic at points. Another A-list rapper features, but this time, it’s Future, and while his verse is pretty average by his own standards, he sounds incredibly uncomfortable over this beat. Nothing about this song disappoints me as much Kendrick’s verse on “Don’t Wanna Know,” but it might be slightly worse by virtue of being more of the same.

Both of these songs were released well before their cluelessly titled album Red Pill Blues was even announced, and they were formally left off the standard track listing. Still, because of their chart success, they were included on the deluxe edition of the album, if only to represent the death of tropical house as a viable trend and an enjoyable sound in pop. And, of course, the death of Maroon 5 as anything resembling an actual band.

3. “JuJu on that Beat (TZ Anthem)” by Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall

Since Billboard first put a greater emphasis on streaming in their calculations, it’s been interesting to see how songs perform on the charts. As a whole, album tracks chart longer than ever, and the last two years have seen such unexpected chart-toppers like “Panda” and “Bodak Yellow” thanks to the popularity of hip-hop on streaming services. Unfortunately, this also means that songs are also more likely to become genuine hits off of viral novelty than quality. It happened with the execrable “Watch Me” in 2015, and it nearly two years later, it happened with “Juju on That Beat.”

In retrospect, I may have been a little too hard on “Watch Me” when I named it the second worst song of 2015. I mean, we were still in the middle of Meghan Trainor’s window of relevance when it came out, and 2017 has seen rappers draw even more attention to their distinctive ad-libs. “Watch Me,” while still pretty grating, seems quaint and harmless now. The same can’t be said about “Juju on That Beat,” which is just as annoying and insulting to the intelligence as it was a year ago.

Let’s start with “That Beat,” which is lifted wholesale from Crime Mob’s crunk staple “Knuck If You Buck.” Forget what I said about the “Out of My Head” sample in “Bad Things,” this is particularly lazy. While rappers have used pre-existing beats in the past, this is clearly a dance song. Aren’t dance songs were supposed to have a unique musical identity to make up for inconsequential lyrics? The only audible difference is that the beat is transposed to a higher key, which makes sense if it’s meant to suit aspiring one hit wonders Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall’s more youthful voices.

It’s too bad that their voices still don’t sound remotely good. Hilfigerrr (not that the name matters) is particularly irritating, his out-of-breath yelps cracking like his balls just dropped mid-recording. And while I may have critiqued “Watch Me” for lacking actual rap verses, maybe it was for the better, as the other guy attempts to freestyle, only rhyming the first two of his eight bars and dropping such gems as “if I compared me and you, there wouldn’t be no comparings.” The only good thing about this song is that it’s mercifully short, perhaps the shortest hit song of 2017 that wasn’t by XXXTentacion or Lil Pump. By comparison, “Watch Me” is a masterpiece in minimalism.

2. “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur

I’m pretty sure my decision to name “Treat You Better” the worst song of 2016 might have been strange for some. Sure, I’ve seen the song on several similar lists (including one that has it in the same position), but the general public actually seems to enjoy the song a lot. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the music is so blandly inoffensive that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at the content. But apart from the patronizing lyrics and the laughable singing, that was part of my problem. White-guy-with-acoustic-guitar songs tend to piss me off because they’re churned out by dudes with aspirations to Real Musicianship whose compositional skills are limited, so the lyrics tend to be transparent in their douchebaggery. And while very, very few things are as bad as “Treat You Better,” James Arthur’s “Say You Won’t Let Go” fits this mold to a T.

As with seemingly all music this year, some context is necessary. James Arthur won The X Factor in 2012 (which should tell you everything about this guy’s musical persona) before signing to Simon Cowell’s Syco Records imprint and eventually releasing songs in which he used homophobic and Islamophobic insults and compared himself to a terrorist. He left Syco in 2014, but two years later, he released Back from the Edge, an album whose title practically begs for sympathy for his lack of a filter. “Say You Won’t Let Go” was the immensely successful lead single, which somehow lasted on the Hot 100 for a full year.

Perhaps knowing all this before hearing the song colored my distaste for “Say You Won’t Let Go” from the jump, but I think this song is fucking terrible. Over acoustic strumming and an infinitely recycled chord progression, Arthur recounts when he first met the love of his life, including a deeply unflattering line where she vomits (again with that filter!). The rest of the song delves into the same territory that Ed Sheeran already exhausted with “Thinking Out Loud,” and the whole thing just scans as incredibly disingenuous coming from him. Hell, he even describes the song as “really calculated” in his annotations on Genius.

Truthfully, the content and the context are the least unpleasant things about this song. James Arthur nearly mumbles through the verses before bringing his voice up another octave for the chorus, which sounds like a drunken bro singing “You’re Beautiful” at Karaoke. A lot of people have praised his vocals, but I might just hate them even more than “Swang” because at least Swae Lee sounded like he was enjoying himself. James just sounds ready to throw up, which is probably karma at work after that lyric in the first verse (not to mention pretty much anything this guy has said that put him at the edge in the first place).

Before I unveil my pick for the worst hit song of 2017, here are eight dishonorable mentions:

“Chained to the Rhythm” by Katy Perry feat. Skip Marley: 2017 was not a good year for Katy Perry, whose self-awareness seems to be diminishing with each album cycle. “Chained to the Rhythm” was the ever-so-obviously co-written by Sia lead single, which boasts an extremely out-of-place guest verse from Bob Marley’s grandson and perhaps one of the clumsiest hooks of the entire year.

“Thunder” by Imagine Dragons: At least “Chained to the Rhythm” had an actual hook, not just chipmunked repetitions of a single word. Because it’s an Imagine Dragons song in 2017, it’s also padded out a with a trap beat, more vague nothings in the verses and grossly manipulated vocals in place of any actual instrumental tones.

“Mercy” by Shawn Mendes: It’s nowhere near as condescending and misogynistic as “Treat You Better,” but it’s every bit as whiny and overwrought, even sharing the same warbled vocals incessant drum beat. Really, it’s a damn shame he didn’t actually drown in the music video.

“Drowning” by A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie feat. Kodak Black: Speaking of drowning, isn’t a song with this title and these piano chords supposed to be about something more interesting than bragging about jewelry? Also, an accused rapist shows up to mumble and make awful jokes about farts. Let’s move on.

“Look at Me!” by XXXTentacion: Oh yeah, there was also this guy, who’s been accused of some extremely disturbing stuff (seriously, trigger warning). I can appreciate some more aggression in the beat and even X’s flow, but the distortion makes everything nearly incomprehensible, which is probably alright since the lyrics amount to little more than edgelord crap. Fuck this.

“Down” by Marian Hill: “Down” doesn’t really have any personality to speak of, driven almost entirely by a woman’s breathy voice, which later gets manipulated into a boilerplate trap beat. Seriously, what is it about this kind of pretentious “indie” pop wallpaper that attracts such an audience?

“Issues” by Julia Michaels: I’ve talked a lot of shit about Julia Michaels and her frequent collaborator Justin Tranter in the past, but “Issues” is actually a pretty compelling exploration of mental health and relationships, and Julia is a distinctive vocalist in her own right. Unfortunately, the song does have issues, and one of them is how bad it needs to pick up the goddamn pace.

“All Time Low” by Jon Bellion: Jon Bellion has a lot of potential as a songwriter and producer, but his vocals sound a lot like Adam Young with slightly more testosterone. The lyric about masturbation is questionable too, but I simply can’t hear that chorus without thinking of this video.

And now, for what I consider worst hit song of 2017:

1. “Body Like a Back Road” by Sam Hunt

Choosing between this and “Say You Won’t Let Go” for the bottom slot on my list was admittedly much harder than usual, but the decision ultimately came down to one thing. Sure, James Arthur’s song disgusts me on a very primal level, to a point where I can’t really listen to the chorus without wincing. But would the song really bother me that much if Arthur weren’t a total dick with a horrific voice? Probably not. Thus, I had to choose a song that was so unequivocally bad that literally nobody could make it work. I had to choose a song in which the awfulness was spelled out right in the title: “Body Like a Back Road.”

Before we open the can of worms that is this song, one thing needs to be addressed. Yes, this is a bro-country song. In 2017. I could maybe see the appeal if this were released in 2014, which was not only the saturation point for this embarrassing subgenre, but also for the DJ Mustard production style that this song clearly takes its influence from. But in 2017, country music has thankfully been working back towards a more organic sound, and DJ Mustard has been replaced by guys like Metro Boomin and Mike Will Made It as hip-hop’s guiding hand. From the word “go,” this song is dated and lame.

Of course, lame is a huge understatement for the lyrical content. You can infer a lot of things from the title alone, and it’s even worse than you might expect. Sam Hunt seems to dedicate this song to his fiancee, which is perhaps one of the most misconceived gifts imaginable. For fuck’s sake, Sam, you’re a country singer. It’s par the course that you’ve been on a back road before, you should know damn well that this comparison is insulting. As if that weren’t bad enough, he attempts to elaborate, waxing unpoetic about her “curves” (a word he draws out in a particularly grating manner) and how the two of them “go way back like Cadillac seats.” While the imagery is more consistent than Train’s abominable “Drive By,” it’s just as gross.

But really, the most egregious crime “Body Like a Back Road” commits is just flat-out sounding like ass. Hip-hop and country don’t exactly have a lot of aesthetic common ground to begin with, so when the rap producer this guy attempts to emulate is DJ Mustard, the whole track ends up sounding as cheap and awkward as his early abortions like “Rack City.” There’s also the weirdly lightweight live drums, not to mention whatever the hell is playing that melody in the intro and bridge. The whole song is so out of touch with the times that I’m convinced it wasn’t just a Montevallo demo. Sadly, it seems the bro-country trend never really went away, and maybe it still has legs to stand on (legs that, at some point, it’ll probably try to compare to the confederate flag or something). But last year proved that mainstream country can be so much better than this, so let’s just hope that this subgenre finally dies for real this time.

Thanks for reading my list, I should be uploading the Best Hit Songs of 2017 later this week!

[pvpxrswvg]

Top 25 Albums of 2018

Two and a half years and over a hundred albums later I have finally completed my top albums of 2018 list. It was an interesting exercise doing this list two and a half years later, as the method of completing this list felt completely different to 2017 and 2016. In those years the lists practically made themselves, as I was limited to what I had been listening to at the time. A lot of which hasn’t held up. 

In a weird way it feels like those lists had a lot more personality. While I can look back with some degree of confusion at artists like 2 Chainz making my top 25, I can at least associate those albums with the memory of listening to them at the time. With this list it felt like I was forced to be biased towards albums that received critical acclaim or that are still relevant today. So in some ways this is a more objective take on a top 25 albums list.

This list will be the same format as always, which is 25-11 in alphabetical order and then the final 10 counted down.

21 Savage - I Am > I Was

While not my personal favorite, I Am > I Was is undeniably 21 Savage’s biggest and most successful album to date. While this album has a lot of the same drawbacks as a lot of major label rap albums (i.e being bloated and lacking a lot of the artist’s personality) this album was still a step forward from Issa Album and contained some great tracks such as a lot, monster and 4L. It’s also getting to the point where almost anything 21 Savage released would be in my top 25.

Baby Keem - The Sound of Bad Habit

I’ve noted several times on this blog how I’m a huge fan of Cardo, who might have the best beats over the past 5-10 years out of any producer. Cardo’s style of dark trap beats with noticeable west-coast influences makes this a great release and Baby Keem’s youthful energetic rapping is the perfect match for this sound. This album also has some serious highlights such as Check Please, Extra and Baby Keem.

Benny the Butcher - Tana Talk 3

Out of the millions of rap artists doing a vintage East Coast sound, Benny the Butcher might be the best. He has a great ear for vintage hardcore east coast beats and he sits over them so well with his calm menacing flow. While this isn’t my favorite sound, it’s honestly hard to imagine it being done any better than it is on this album.

Brockhampton - iridescence

This might have been the most disappointing album of all time. After having the top 3 of my 2017 list all be Brockhampton albums, I was excited as anything for this album. I remember staying up to listen to it at midnight, listening to it straight away and then just being sad. Almost immediately I had stopped liking what was probably my favorite artist at the time. Listening to this album two and a half years later and it’s not that bad honestly. The only part I really can’t get behind is that every single Joba verse is pure cringe. If you had replaced every Ameer verse on the Saturation trilogy with Joba’s autistic screeching those albums would probably be just as bad. Still I’m a huge fan of anything Kevin Abstract does and tracks like Weight, Something About Him and San Marcos hold up really well.

Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Fetti

Freddie Gibbs - Freddie

I’m going to review these albums together, as their inclusion here comes down to one thing: I am a huge fan of Freddie Gibbs and even his mediocre releases are enjoyable enough to make my top 25. These two would actually be my two least favorite releases that he has put out over the past seven years, but they still have their highlights. In particular, I loved hearing Freddie rap over Kenny Beats production on Death Row, even if the 03 Greedo feature ruins the song.

Kryptonyte - Kyrptonyte

This album is basically a love letter to both mid 90s Memphis and DJ Screw era Houston, which means that I was always going to love this album. While the rapping can be forgettable at times, the production is always on point (the standout beat would be Ride with Jade) and the hooks are usually memorable and fun. A bit amateurish overall, but still a very enjoyable release.

Maxo Kream - Punken

This album was a more serious step forward for Maxo, who went from rapping about wide bodied cars on The Persona Tape to rapping about his upbringing and family. It was more of a critical success, but personally I saw it as a step back in quality. Due to the consistent themes on Punken the production and rapping isn’t as varied compared to his previous work and that can make the album feel a bit monotonous at time. Still I love Maxo and Work is a genuine song of the year contender.

Mike - War in My Pen

Mike’s style of lo-fi lethargic rapping is so effortlessly dope on this release and the overall flow of this album makes it such an easy listen. It reminds me a lot of the Earl Sweatshirt album from this year, only a touch more amateurish and without the memorable standouts.

Migos - Culture II

This album was a very late addition to this list, but I felt like it would have been disingenuous to not include it. Looking back at Culture II on this list will give me the same feeling that I get when I look back at some of the other terrible albums that I have included in previous years. I’ll probably never listen to this album in full ever again, but I remember listening to this a ton on release and it easily would have been one of my most listened to rap releases of 2018. Tracks like Gang Gang and Narcos are still dope as ever.

Nickelus F - Stuck

Ever since Trick Dice released in 2015 I’ve been a huge fan of Nickelus F. I absolutely loved that album and if I ever get around to doing a 2015 list it would easily feature in the top 5. While I don’t think without Lil Ugly Mane production Nickelus F will ever reach those heights again, Stuck is a pretty close attempt and was probably the hardest cut from my top 10. Trill Burr in particular is a classic song and feels like it could have easily been featured on Trick Dice.

Noname - Room 25

Room 25 was the one album that I reviewed in 2018 and I still agree with pretty much everything I wrote back then. While not as good as Telefone, this was still a great release. 

Playboi Carti - Die Lit

After seeing so many artists of this new trap wave release one good album and then completely fall off, I was shocked that Playboi Carti was able to follow up his debut mixtape with such a strong release. Even on my previous AOTY list I referred to his sound as lightning in a bottle. While I slightly prefer his self titled debut, this album brings the same energy and perhaps has the better highlights of the two with tracks like Shoota, R.I.P. and Long Time. I think both this and Room 25 speak to the depth of 2018, as neither are too far off being as good as the respective artist’s earlier releases that had cracked my top 10.

Saba - Care for Me

While I was never able to get into Bucket List Project, Care For Me connected with me a lot more. Saba spitting that typical soulful, introspective, and mellow Chicago style is incredibly dope on this record and the trap influences go a long way towards making it listenable. The opener Busy / Sirens especially is an incredible beautiful track.

Vince Staples - FM!

This release being included is evidence to how much of a Vince Staples fan I am. I’m honestly not sure why this album exists or what it’s supposed to be. This weird 22-minute concept album is supposed to mimic a radio station I guess? It’s not very good, but I love Vince Staples and the Kenny Beats production is pretty good here.

10. Black Kray AKA SickboyRari - Bloodrain

While only 16 minutes long, this EP was an easy inclusion for me since Amongst the Dead is one of the best rap songs that I’ve heard in recent years. The first six tracks of this EP are okay and top 25 material, but the closer is just so incredible that I can’t leave this out of the top 10. 

9. Mac Miller - Swimming

This was the hardest album to rank for me, but only because I first listened to it about a week ago. It’s hard to compare this to albums that I’ve heard over three years ago, but in my haste to complete this list and move on to 2019 it has to be done. The production here is for the most part magnificent and Mac’s introspective mellow rapping is consistent across the whole album. What’s the Use and Self Care would be my standouts.

8. Czarface & MF DOOM - Czarface Meets Metal Face

I had the previous Czarface album in my top 10 and it’s mostly for the same reason. I feel like 7L has become so comfortable in this setting and has quietly been one of the best producers of the past five years. When you have legendary rappers like Inspectah Deck and MF Doom rapping (Esoteric is no slouch either) over those beats it becomes a very easy inclusion in my top 10.

7. J.I.D - DiCaprio 2

Described sometimes as a southern Kendrick Lamar, it’s easy to see when listening to this album why these comparisons are made. JID is clearly heavily influenced by the Compton rapper and borrows a lot of his iconic flows. It’s easy to forgive as the end product here is so strong and songs such as Slick Talk, 151 Rum, Off Deez and Off Da Zoinkys are all incredible. While a lack of consistency holds this back from featuring higher, this is still a great album and I’m excited to see what JID does in the future.

6. Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts

When I was making this list, I felt like there was a clear gap between these top six albums and the rest of this list. All of these albums are incredibly strong and indicative of the strength of this year. Kids See Ghosts arguably has Kanye’s best production since MBDTF, as he creates these melancholic atmospheric beats that perfectly match Kid Cudi who is rightly the star of this record. For Cudi, this is easily the best thing that he has ever done and it feels like the great record that he was always destined to make. The biggest thing holding this release back is that it’s only 23 minutes long, so it doesn’t quite fulfill it’s potential. Reborn and Kids See Ghosts would by my standouts and both are absolute classics.

5. Death Grips - Year of the Snitch

This is the first time that I’ve mentioned Death Grips on this blog and it’s for the simple reason that I haven’t really enjoyed any of their work since Jenny Death. Year of the Snitch is a fantastic return to form in my opinion and is perhaps one of the strongest releases in their entire discography. As you could expect it’s a 37 minute adrenaline rush with the noisy chaotic sound that Death Grips are known for. Death Grips Is Online, Black Paint and Hahaha would also be some of my favorite Death Grips songs overall.

4. Pusha T - Daytona

These four Kanye releases in four weeks felt like such a momentous event and Daytona was the perfect way to kick it off. Within 45 seconds of If You Know You Know you could tell that Kanye had returned to form and that these releases, while short, were going to be handled with the same perfectionist mindset that had led to Kanye releasing so many classic albums. Similar to Kids See Ghosts, Kanye perfectly blended in to match his guest and was able to create beats that were absolutely perfect for Pusha T’s aggressive boastful raps. Pusha T also raps on this record like he had something to prove and it ended up being a defining performance for the legendary rapper. When thinking back to 2018 my mind will always go to Kanye releasing four albums in four weeks. Especially since in the case of Daytona and Kids See Ghosts the end product was so strong.

3. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs

Some Rap Songs is perhaps the release that has benefited the most from this list being made two and a half years late. While unnassuming at first, I found myself repeatedly going back to this one over and over. Earl’s lo-fi production on this album is incredibly hypnotic and serves as a great backdrop for the Odd Future rapper. While it has often been masked by edgy or depressive lyrics, Earl has always been a great rapper and I feel like on Some Rap Songs he was able to reach his full potential. Overall this album is just extremely impressive as both the production and rapping here are top notch.

2. JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

I’ve gone back and forth dozens of times as to which of these next two albums would feature at number one as both would be incredibly deserving. In the case of Veteran, this angry, raw and rebellious record served as my introduction to JPEGMAFIA, who is now one of my most loved rap artists. Featuring gltich influenced beats and aggressive vocals, JPEGMAFIA has created a truly unique sound that pulls influences from every corner of the rap world. While this album has the strongest standouts of any record released this year (1539 N. Calvert, Real Nega, Baby I’m Bleeding and I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies to name a few), ultimately I was uncomfortable having it at number one due to the fact that the middle of this album is so inconsistent. Apart from that it’s an amazing album and borderline classic.

1. Denzel Curry - TA1300

As of writing this Denzel Curry is my favorite rap artist thanks to his enegetic delivery, tremendous ear for beats and unique songwriting. It should be no surprise then that I loved this album, considering that TA13OO is close to being his magnum opus while undoubetedly being the album that led to him being taken seriously. Prior to TA13OO Denzel was just the ex-RVIDXR KLVN rapper who made Ultimate, who was also dismissed by many as just being a trap artist. After this album everyone was forced to respect him as an artist, rapper and songwriter, as it’s impossible to listen to this album and not recognize the raw talent that is on display. The highlights on this album (Vengeance,  Black Balloons, Sirens and Percs) are all incredible and help this album get to borderline classic status. As of right now I’m still hesitant to call this album a classic, as there’s a few hiccups on this album and overall it lacks a cohesiveness when listening to it front to back. Perhaps I’m being a little harsh, but considering the talent of Denzel I know that he has a genuine classic in him. I’d be surprised if when it’s all said and done TA13OO is still remembered as the highlight of his discography.

[beatsavenueblog-blog]

Finding Quality Hip Hop Beats For Sale

The Advantages You Will Take pleasure in when You Purchase Beats Online

There are certain things that experienced artists know higher than newbies. One in all them is that it is higher to buy beats online than to wait for the moment when it is possible for you to to create a musical piece from begin to finish with none assist from the surface world. When you may must study a few issues extra about making music before you really begin earning money, beginning with a few easy issues like to purchase beats online, can deliver you lots of advantages.

Inspiration

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Nice High quality Beats Avenue download at a Nice Price

If you determine to purchase beats online, you do not essentially must spend a small fortune on every beat that comes your manner. While essential producers and consecrated artists might have more expensive prices for their beats, the overwhelming majority sells beats at costs as little as 20 dollars. As you possibly can see, you don't have to interrupt the bank to be able to afford more information on wikipedia to purchase beats online. Furthermore, you'll be able to settle for a funds and purchase solely the beats you will actually use to your own creations, without throwing money off the window on stuff you will by no means use. One of the best solution is to seek out some free beats, however these should not the norm, so simply contemplate shopping for great stuff for cheap.

Making Great https://beatsavenue.com Music

The greatest benefit that you will get hold of when you purchase beats on-line is that you'll capable of make some really nice music. There are many superb artists that know learn how to rap, know tips on how to sing, know how one can create verses, however without having the data to make beats on their very own. While it is not really unattainable to make your individual beats, it is a cleverer thought beatsavenue to purchase beats on-line, because you will save a whole lot of time, and you will enable your self to be extra artistic in areas that you're already good at. You possibly can acquire an incredible edge when buying online beats, as a result of you will be able to provide plenty of songs in a short time period, with out having to fret that you will not find the proper musical background on your songs.

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Beats Avenue

There are so many web sites online offering beats online that generally it might appear overwhelming. Before buying beats (instrumentals) online there are a few key issues it's essential consider that will help filter and narrow your search for beats on-line.

One important facet that plenty of the time will get ignored by artists searching for beats on-line is the blending quality of the beat. For those who're severe about introducing your music to the market you should be severe about the quality of your production. You need your music to sound nice in every platform from your automobile radio and your mp3 participant all the way pop beat music in which to the clubs. An ingredient to success on this music trade is the way you current yourself. Using a beat of low quality or with a poor combine can have you coming off amateurish. By purchasing a beat online that has been mixed nicely people will acknowledge you took the time to concentrate to sound quality and will in flip take you extra critically as an artist.

One other necessary side when shopping for beats on-line is making the process value-efficient as attainable. Most up and coming artists are typically working with a good finances and don't necessarily have the cash to shell out for instrumentals. You must look for beat web sites that offer non-exclusive beats or beats you may lease. Give it some thought. In the event you're placing collectively beatsavenue a mission whether or not it's an album, mixtape, or demo you will wish to report quite a lot of material after which have the opportunity to selected the perfect out of the bunch. Most high quality beat web sites lease their music for only $30-$50. Most producers or beat websites promote their beats solely as well nonetheless most can range from lots of to hundreds of dollars.

An essential factor that a number of artists overlook is whether the beat they have purchased accommodates any un-cleared samples. Most producers leave the duty of clearing samples contained of their beats solely up to the artist. Clearing samples is a problem and might be costly so most artists do not trouble when including these sampled beats on their music projects. This could cause critical legal problems for you further down the road. Save your self the headache and search for authentic compositions online.

This leads me to one of the vital facets of your on-line beat selection process, the music itself. It's possible you'll be searching by means of beat libraries searching for a beat that sounds like that new Younger Jeezy track or that new Chris Brown for example. Whereas there may be nothing my sources unsuitable with these artists and their respective music there IS something fallacious with this sort of method to choosing the proper beats. It might work to your disadvantage to select beats which are stylish and sound like the identical previous songs you hear on the radio.

If you happen to actually wish to make it within the music enterprise it's a must to develop your individual sound. Right now the music business could be very saturated. If you wish to have a shot at any tangible success you will need to stand out and aside from the crowd. Folks reply to music that's refreshing and interesting to the ears. You could be a superb lyricist or tune author but keep in mind that means little when you do not need the instrumental to again it. Sometimes the instrumental is what begins the music off so it has to catch the listener's consideration and provides folks reason to proceed to listen to the rest of your music. Discover an instrumental that compliments you as an artist whereas giving you a singular sound that separates you from the pack. Take the steps necessary to get heard and end up authentic music manufacturing online.

If, after considering all the things mentioned so far, you may have chosen a beat on-line before continuing on and buying this beat ask your self a few questions. Along with knowledgeable sound quality you should make sure the beat web site carries their enterprise in a professional method. Are the terms of purchase clearly stated? Are there any grey areas that go away you with an uneasy feeling about purchasing a beat on-line? Understand the terms of settlement when buying a beat on-line as some producers might try and take advantage of you. Also make certain there may be a simple and protected beat delivery course of after you have bought the instrumental. Ensure that the producer takes themselves and their craft critically and professionally.

I additionally ought to emphasize that the top 10 beat websites or producers that show up in your Google searches or on the soundclick charts are not all the time the perfect of options. They may comprise among the features that have been mentioned to this point but they rarely maintain the full package. You're searching for websites that offer leases with the least quantity of limitations, highest skilled high quality, most affordable costs, and a authentic and straightforward buying process for getting beats on-line. Discovering an internet site that provides all of elements is tough to return by, but they do exist.

If you are a starting-up rapper or artist and don't have any beat making applications, then it's important to discover another person to create your beats. Which is ok! Not everyone writes their very own music and lyrics, so do not feel down. There are numerous options with the entry of the internet. With these websites, you are able to select any of them and you then buy beats! Plain and easy. There are a few categories with regards to buying beats: social, membership social and entrepreneurial.

Social is what it appears like. Producers who are on a limited budget use price pleasant means to promote their beats which is: social media. One of the crucial used is SoundCloud. SoundCloud has a free plan for musicians and artists to upload music to and share. I've seen various producers present their beats this fashion. A superb and efficient and an effective way for a simple option to share to other social media platforms. It is simple to reach out to these producers and ask to purchase beats on-line from them. I am certain they won't flip you down!

Another place to search for to buy beats online is MyFlashStore. MyFlashStore is a website that provides the instruments for producers to sell and promote their beats while tracking gross sales and providing coupons and discounts. It is a terrific all-in-one solution for the low-price range artist and producer. Their web site is about up like a social network however gives you the chance to buy beats from producers. It is a great option to acquire relations with different producers and see what sort of beats are available out there.

The final possibility on the checklist goes the independent route. There are a lot of producers out on the internet which have built and pursue their very own beat businesses online. Looking out the web for these websites are quite easy and there are fairly just a few to select from! Some use MyFlashStore or Soundclick (one other social media download beats beat selling site) but there are a few who've their very own domain names and internet hosting plans. These are the beat makers who work laborious on daily basis and earn what they make regardless of the quantity they sell them for. If I had been to choose any, I might select this feature. I believe in the mantra of staying "native".

Although the previous few years the internet world has changed quickly. Web speeds have elevated and the audience and market is rising like crazy. That is bringing increasingly more rappers and singers to the web to Social Profile here buy beats on-line for their music manufacturing wants. There are lots of benefits to this approach of buying instrumentals. It is inexpensive, the styles and genre's out there are endless, and its simple and handy.

An artist might choose to buy instrumentals on-line as a result of it's by far the least costly choice. Producers make their beats out there on-line to leverage time. As a result of anybody can access their website 24 hours a day, that is time that can be spent doing other things similar to making more beats, hip hop soul beats for sale mixing and mastering, or sleeping, thus producers don't have any drawback selling beats for cheap. Even super producer Rocwilder has a beat web site the place artists come to buy beats. If an artist is working on a small funds, it is most definitely a greater possibility to buy their instrumentals on-line.

The online beat market is expanding day by day, and there are literally hundreds of hundreds of producers making an attempt to promote their beats. This is dangerous for producers, but nice for artists. There's such a wide variety download beats 1 shows of expertise and possibility to choose from, the types are countless. While there may be plenty of saturation when trying to shop for instrumentals within the online environment, it isn't onerous to discover a gifted producer.

Buying beats online can be probably the most handy strategy when purchasing for instrumentals for a launch. Good producers are hard to get involved with, and superb producers are inconceivable additional hints to contact and for good cause. A producer with beats on the market on-line will be accessed 24 hours a day. You may store by yourself schedule, even at two in the morning.

Producers making their beats available online opens up endless collaboration prospects for artists on a funds. The sounds accessible are countless and there are various new beats on the market on a regular basis out there place. In case you are in the market to purchase beats, research your web producer and hearken to their merchandise. You possibly can Google or Bing terms akin to "internet producers" or "purchase beats online" and lots of respected producer web sites will generate. You may also visit area of interest beat websites akin to Sounclick, Rocbattle, Or Beatswagger to search out many on-line producers who have been within the business for years.

[theworstbob]

yellin’ at songs, 5.19.2007 & 5.20.2017

the songs that debuted on the billboard chart this week and last year this week.

5.19.2007

27) "(You Want To) Make a Memory," Bon Jovi

I was so fucking stoked for a real-ass power ballad before I remembered that Bon Jovi was country in 2007. This song was boring. It's kind of weird, though, like, a couple weeks ago, I argued that, if you're gonna name your song something like "Johnny Cash" or "Marvin Gaye," you need to produce something on par with your song's namesake's catalogue so that people can justify listening to your nonsense instead of their works. This is a spin on that idea: how rough is it to be Bon Jovi and have to justify your continued existence when people liked the things you already made? Like imagine trying to tell people that this pop/country ballad deserves a place on your shelf alongside "You Give Love a Bad Name." The burden of expectation is rough, and I try to evaluate songs based on what they are and not what they could be but like I could have listened to "You Give Love a Bad Name."

53) "Working Class Hero," Green Day

Socialism is so hot right now. Look at all these Johnny-come-lefties hopping on the bandwagon now that the cool grandpa from the election made socialism palatable for a mass audience. Fucking poseurs. REAL socialists have been on board ever since they heard that one Green Day cover when they were 17.

77) "Do it Just Like a Rockstar," Freak Nasty ft./Crazy Mike

My first thought upon seeing this song was, wow, the turnaround time on this ripoff is outstanding! I'm glad they could get Saunter the Jewels to collaborate on this, impressive work! And then I sat down to listen to this song, and it was... this? To call the production quality of this track amateurish would be an insult to amateurs. This was fucking awful. But not only that, when I tried to FIND this song on The Youtube, dot com, I was directed to the Freak Nasty - Topic page I am used to seeing for the bar bands I enjoyed as a teen, the - Topic page for the songs no one remembered. YouTube thought I was searching for "Party Like a Rockstar," and that is fair. This is all the research I cared to do: according to Wikipedia, this was indexed on iTunes as "Party Like a Rockstar," and it was indexed as such for two weeks before the Shop Boyz released "Party Like a Rockstar" digitally. 30,000 people bought this song thinking it was a GOOD shitty song, and they ended up with this nonsense because this song so shitty the people in charge of putting it onto the internet didn't even bother to get the title right. This song just randomly made $30,000 one day. I don't know what Freak Nasty's cut of the profits was, but I hope he bought something fun with his bonus. I want an oral history of this song immediately.

93) "Lean Like a Cholo," Down AKA Kilo

I don't have a lot of things to say about this one. After listening to Freak Nasty, I was excited to hear something akin to production values, and hey: rapper of Mexican heritage! Always interesting! This song is bad? But, hey, sometimes debut singles are safe, they aim to do nothing more than get someone to dance so you associate the artist with something that made you feel good and thus come to associate that artist with a good feeling, and as the artist builds that trust with their audience that they will supply the good feeling, they will create more complex and more satisfying works. I electing not to find out of Down AKA Kilo has created the Mexican To Pimp a Butterfly, because this song is bad, but I am not ruling out the possibility that he has created works of some worth.

You’ll never guess what the 2007 Top 20 looks like: 20) "When I See U," by Fantasia (4.21.2007) 19) "Movin' On," by Elliott Yamin (3.17.2007) 18) "U + Ur Hand," by P!nk (1.13.2007) 17) "Doe Boy Fresh," by Three 6 Mafia ft./Chamillionaire (1.20.2007) 16) "Breath," by Breaking Benjamin (4.14.2007) 15) "Stolen," by Dashboard Confessional (4.21.2007) 14) "Beautiful Liar," by Beyonce & Shakira (3.31.2007) 13) "Cupid's Chokehold," by Gym Class Heroes ft./Patrick Stump (1.13.2007) 12) "The River," by Good Charlotte ft./M. Shadows & Synyster Gates (2.10.2007) 11) "Say OK," by Vanessa Hudgens (2.17.2007) 10) "Alyssa Lies," by Jason Michael Carroll (1.13.2007) 9) "Never Again," by Kelly Clarkson (5.12.2007) 8) "Get Buck," by Young Buck (4.14.2007) 7) "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," by Jennifer Hudson (1.13.2007) 6) "Thnks fr th Mmrs," by Fall Out Boy (4.28.2007) 5) "Candyman," by Christina Aguilera (1.13.2007) 4) "Because of You," by Ne-Yo (3.17.2007) 3) "Umbrella," by Rihanna ft./Jay-Z (4.28.2007) 2) "Dashboard," by Modest Mouse (2.17.2007) 1) "The Story," by Brandi Carlile (4.28.2007) And next week, we get an R. Kelly song! That’ll be a fun thing to deal with!

5.20.2017

1) "I'm the One," by DJ Khaled ft./Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper & Lil Wayne

Between the Fall Out Boy disaster not making a debut and this breezy summer jam, I'ma say 2017 clinched the W right off the bat. This, like "Cake" and "Swalla" before it, is simply a fun if slightly repugnant good time. (I don't think anyone needed to hear Chance the Rapper talk about how he makes the pussy melt. Like, come on, dude.) This is a series intended on making me think about the things I listen to, and this is a song that insists you not think for five minutes, so this song and I value much different things in life, but I will not deny that this is a fun-ass beat.

61) "1-800-273-8255," by Logic ft./Alessia Cara & Khalid

This is a song by people who have never been depressed but have read several tweet threads about mental illness and decided they had to Say Something. This is the first draft of the worst Atmosphere song, a song in which someone scared of their own darkness tries to inhabit a character enveloped by it. "What's the day without a little night?" Depression is not just a little night, you stu -- and I know you're trying to help, I understand that I'm the bad guy because I'm complaining about the suicide hotline song, but depression isn't something you go through, it's something you live with. I don't think anyone on this track understands that. I don't think it earns its message, and -- fuck's sake, THIS is the beat you're gonna use to tell me life is worth living? THIS is the backing track you think is gonna convince people to call the suicide hotline? This plodding go-nowhere PBRnB bullshit? Fuck off, man. Yeah, maybe the "I'm the One" beat would be an inappropriate call here, but you've gotta do SOMETHING more dramatic. Shit, man, someone's on the phone saying they wanna end their life, and this song sounds like someone saying, "Eh. Life's cool. Y'all should keep tryin' it, iono. You sure you're not just sad that it's raining? Eh, weather. We've had some rain past few days, people need the sun."

67) "First Time," by Kygo & Ellie Goulding

"We were sippin' on emotion/Smoking and inhaling every moment." WHO THE FUCK WRITES LYRICS FOR KYGO BECAUSE THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING AND I LOVE THEM. Alright, between this and "It Ain't Me," I am all in on the Kygo bandwagon. He is the official EDMer of YAS. He makes songs about loving life that don’t feel like the saddest thing in the world, and I don’t know enough about him to know I should hate him like I do with Calvin Harris or The Chainsmokers. Good job, Kygo!

70) "Thunder," by Imagine Dragons

...You know, you guys didn't listen to "Hard Times" last week. No shade. I knew it was gonna have a short life on the chart if it had any life at all. But, uh, this has a higher debut? And it's probably gonna last longer? And also, this isn't related, but "do re mi" hung around for another week? I dunno. I just remember a time when our rock bands actually rocked, and that time was last week, because that Paramore song is great, and I would much prefer to think about "Hard Times" than whatever this was. Isn't this the same song as "Believer?" Like, that song was about how stoked Imagine Dragons is to be famous, this song is about how stoked Imagine Dragons is to be famous? Am I willfully misinterpreting things for the sake of having something to say, or do I have a legit thing to say? Who cares. Final review of “Thunder:” "Hard Times" is song of the year 2017.

76) "Bon Appetit," by Katy Perry ft./Migos

The most useful thing this song did is have the individual members of Migos say their names before their verse so that a polite audience who has been listening to "Bad & Boujee" for six months no longer had to wonder if it was OK to ask, or if they should have already known. Takeoff is the one with the deep gravel voice, Offset is the one with hella Southern drawl, and Quavo is the Good one. Thanks, "Bon Appetit!" You were otherwise worthless, oh boy just what I needed another Katy Perry song with a thuddingly stupid sexual metaphor (bob didn’t you like that jason derulo song) THAT’S JUST THUDDINGLY STUPID JASON DERULO DON’T FUCK WITH METAPHORS LET ME HAVE MY CONTRADICTIONS, but you have provided a world with a Dummies' Guide to ATL, and I will never forget you for doing this favor for me.

87) "Pirvacy," by Chris Brown

I am not going to listen to this for the obvious reasons, but I have to imagine a Chris Brown song called "Privacy" is the worst fucking thing imaginable. Is this fucknugget seriously releasing a 40-track double album? Not only is he not punished for the Riahnna thing, he's given ARTISTIC FREEDOM!?

90) "Slow Hands," by Niall Horan

90?! Yikes! If this 1D song couldn't even crack Top 80, I can't imagine how much worse it is than "Sign of the Times" or ZAYN's solo stuff. /// Oh, this was nice! Teens! This nice sweet boy made a fine song! Why are you ignoring him? This is the song Charlie Puth has been trying to make for the last three years. Which isn't to say it's good white boy soul, I think Niall Horan is a years' worth of pain away from being able to pull off solid white boy soul, but it's acceptable trash. If I saw this trash lying on the street, I wouldn't be happy to see it, but I'd be 90% sure it's compostable, and while I'm not quite sure what that means I'm pretty sure that means it won't harm the world. Bob please edit that comparison before you hit publish, love, your future self who wants to be taken seriously.

91) "Magnolia," by Playboi Carti

A'ight. This was pretty cool. Y'know what? We're gonna take a shower, we're gonna hit up another One Directioneer song, and we're gonna come back to you, but the early prognosis on Playboi Carti is that he is Not Bad.

93) "Sweet Creature," by Harry Styles

Oh. Oh, THIS is how you get me to appreciate "Sign of the Times." This. The most WGWAG-y thing I've had to listen to on the chart so far. Mind you, I had to listen to a whole Ed Sheeran album as part of this project. I did not make that statement without being abso-damn-lutely sure this was the most WGWAG nonsense of 2017 so far.

100) "wokeuplikethis," by Playboi Carti ft./Lil Uzi Vert

There's this stream that sometimes pops up in my YouTube recommendations called "lo-fi hip-hop beats to relax/study to," I'm sure it pops up for you as well, I'm sure it's an astoundingly popular stream, and with this and the other song, I'm not sure this young man really elevates above "patron saint of the lo-fi hip-ho beats stream." I didn't mind this song, but I also found other things to do when I was listening to this song, and the same is true of "Magnolia." I'm sure Carti doesn't aspire to be background noise, but whatever ambitions he may have didn't find their way into the songs I've heard so far. I have little sense of who he is, I just know I started reading a cool-seeming article about microcelebrity while he was doing his thing. It's Not Bad. It's not worth thinking about. I'm more concerned with the second bit.

HUGE changes to 2017′s Top 20 this week. 20) "First Time," by Kygo ft./Ellie Goulding (5.20) 19) "Heatstroke," by Calvin Harris ft./Young Thug, Pharrell Williams & Ariana Grande (4.22) 18) "Yeah Boy," Kelsea Ballerini (3.4) 17) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum (4.22) 16) "The Heart Part 4," by Kendrick Lamar (4.15) 15) "Selfish," by Future ft./Rihanna (3.18) 14) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18) 13) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25) 12) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 11) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4) 10) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22) 9) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4) 8) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1) 7) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18) 6) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18) 5) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 4) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4) 3) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11) 2) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14) 1) "Hard Times," by Paramore (5.13) We are almost almost at the point where I can give a glowing review to a song that doesn’t make the Top 20.

Who won? 2017. It’s really hard to argue the virtues of any of the songs 2007 gave us this week, especially when you consider that one of them debuted accidentally. Chris Brown might’ve been too much weight to carry on a good week for 2007, but 2017 manages to carry it to the top. I will remember precisely one of these songs by this time next week. Pop music is bad why am I making myself listen to so much of it I have had a bad idea what am I doing 2017: 5 2007: 3

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 7th April 2019 (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande)

We actually have a pretty busy week to cover today, with five new arrivals, one of which is in the top five, another of which is a total meme that just hit #1 in the States. There’s also a tragedy less lighthearted we’ll have to talk about, but for now, let’s discuss the top 10, because there’s been somewhat of a shake up.

Top 10

That shake-up isn’t going to affect Lewis Capaldi still at the top of the charts for a sixth week, as “Someone You Loved” continues its reign. I hope it gets overthrown pretty quickly because the song is pretty painful on its own and it does not bear well with me after the overplay.

Our shake-up starts just at the runner-up spot, however, as from her worldwide #1 album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, debuting at number-two is “bad guy”, her fourth UK Top 40 hit, second Top 10 and first ever top five. We’ll talk more about it later.

This means that Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and Calvin Harris’ “Giant” is down one space to number-three.

Tom Walker was hit with an identical loss, with “Just You and I” down to number-four...

...as was “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, also down to number-five.

Thanks to the album, “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish had a large boost up 14 positions to number-six, which is a new peak after its debut at number-seven.

Speaking of number-seven, Dave’s “Location” featuring Burna Boy is down one spot this week.

Steel Banglez’s “Fashion Week” with AJ Tracey and Mo Stack doesn’t suffer nearly as much as I thought it would this week, just moving down one position to number-eight off the debut.

Ariana Grande, the only real competition for Billie Eilish within the top 10, seems to have been hit more than anything else here, as her song “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” has been pushed down four spots to number-nine.

Finally, we have “Piece of Your Heart” by MEDUZA and Goodboys rapidly moves up the charts, up a whopping 22 spaces this week to #10, becoming each artists’ first top 10. I don’t know why, but I’m not necessarily complaining, it’s a good song, I’m just kind of confused about its incredible boost in popularity this week, maybe a commercial placement. That seems to help a lot of these EDM tracks from relative nobodies rack up chart points.

Climbers

There are literally no climbers outside of the two already discussed in the top 10.

Fallers

On the other hand... sigh, let’s sort this by genre as I try to do whenever we have a massive amount of losses.

In pop and dance, “Walk Me Home” by P!nk was walked down five hills to its home at #14, “Don’t Feel Like Crying” by Sigrid is also down five to #18, as is “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #21, while “Dancing with a Stranger” by Sam Smith and Normani is down six to #27. Ariana Grande’s “7 rings” also continues its fall down nine to #38.

In hip-hop and R&B, NSG and Tion Wayne’s “Options” is down seven to #17, “Wow.” by Post Malone exits the top 20 finally, down five to #22, “Disaster” by Dave featuring J Hus loses album release steam down eight to #23 (as does “Streatham”, also by Dave, down 11 to #33), “Keisha & Becky” by Russ splash and Tion Wayne is down six to #25 off the debut and “Please Me” by Bruno Mars and Cardi B is down seven to #32.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

“Nights Like This” by Kehlani featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #33, “Kitchen Kings” by D-Block Europe is out from #34, “Think About Us” by Little Mix featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #35, “MIDDLE CHILD” by J. Cole is out from #36 due to cuts to its streams’ importance on its chart placement, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee is out from #37 and “How it Is” by Roddy Ricch, Chip and Yxng Bane featuring the Plug is out from #40. Good riddance.

Also, Billie Eilish’s “wish you were gay” returned to #13, reaching the top 20 at a new peak. Since this is the lowest Eilish song on the chart and it was released prior, that means there is no album bomb from Eilish; this, “bury a friend” and “bad guy” are the highest-performing songs and that’s all the UK chart allows.

IN MEMORIAM

On March 31st, 2019, a man named Ermias Joseph Asghedom was shot six times in the parking lot of his own clothing store, once in the head. Approximately 30 minutes after he was transported to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. That man was Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle, murdered fresh off of the release of both his single “Racks in the Middle” with Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy as well as his album, Victory Lap, which had failed to grab the Best Rap Album Grammy Award the month prior, having his life at the peak of his career cut short unjustly by gang violence which he had since made incredible efforts to put in the past and distance himself from, making positive and charitable contributions to his hometown ever since, to the point where the Crenshaw and Slauson intersection has been named Nipsey Hussle Square in his honour. His memorial service has been held today, April 11th, and he’s since been buried, at only 33 years old, leaving two children from a long-term relationship with Lauren London behind to carry his legacy. While I was not amazed with Victory Lap, I thought I’d discuss one of my favourite tracks from his last ever record released in his lifetime.

“Dedication” – Nipsey Hussle featuring Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Mike & Keys, Rance and MyGuyMars – Peaked at #93 in the US

First off, this oily beat is pretty beautiful, with reversed and manipulated soulful vocal samples backing some really slick keys and piano loops, giving off a great West Coast vibe that was Nipsey’s signature style. Nipsey’s first verse is an intense way of introducing the listener to the subject matter, with an intricate depiction of Nipsey’s life as a youth trapped in the ghetto, with a nice beat switch-up in the last few bars. The short chorus is barely a hook, but Nipsey gives a surprisingly great singing performance on the track, and it has a drop of sorts where Alexandria Dopson and Garren Edwards show off some vocal power in the midst of Nipsey’s frustrated grunt-screams, which I like to think are representative of how he felt when he thought he could never make it out of the streets, but the chorus is about how he finally broke himself free of its chains – dedication, hard work plus patience, invoking imagery of the abolishment of slavery used as wordplay throughout Nipsey’s third verse. Kendrick’s great albeit oddly-mixed verse references his come-up as well, but also the death of his grandmother how when he was suggested to make a song with Nipsey Hussle because of how they were both Crips, he responded by emphasising how he’s not just a gang member, but a man too, and after his death and some of the negative comments I have seen about Nipsey mentioning his past, is a stronger message than ever. The best part of the track is when Kendrick’s verse is interrupted by some 808 stabs, and the instrumental transforms into a semi-chopped and screwed shell of what it was, with echoing vocals from Dopson fading out before Kenny comes and sings in a janky flow that is trippy yet also pretty elegant and makes sense considering how it transitions from Nipsey and Kendrick talking about their history in gangs and Nipsey’s final verse about how satisfied he is with how his music, or what he says are is spirituals, have brought him into fame and luxurious life after about 30 years of barely making it by. I love the line where he references not only his friend YG’s album but the popular local saying, “Stay dangerous”, as he was educated by the hood into believing that he had to be feared to be safe, as well as his bars about how him owning his own masters is his way of abolishing what had shackled him as a teenager and as a young adult. The song ends with another repetition of the anthemic hook as a book-end, as we are treated to a relaxed instrumental featuring piano melodies layered on top of each other and Nipsey laughing in joy as he’s finally “Made it out”, with sound effects of dogs barking and general civilian life surrounding the melodic finish to a fantastic song.

This the remedy, the separation / 2Pac of my generation, blue pill in the f***in’ Matrix / Red rose in the grey pavement / Young black n***a trapped and he can’t change it

RIP Nipsey Hussle, August 15th 1985 – March 31st, 2019.

Now, on a lighter note...

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “MONOPOLY” – Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét

Produced by Social House and Tim Suby – Peaked at #6 in New Zealand and #70 in the US

Why Ariana Grande seemed it fit to release this song as a non-album single on Monday, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to blag on about that as Grande released this single and its amateurish video as seemingly a joke, right? It was on April Fools, and was coined “a treat for the fans”, with a video that had a budget of less than $10, as well as being both sonically and visually meme-heavy, so I don’t think it should be taken any seriously and rather just as a fun celebration of Grande’s success, featuring rap verses from her lead songwriter and best friend for some reason. It’s Grande’s 20th Top 40 hit over here and Victoria Monét’s first ever credited appearance on the Top 40, and you can tell their level of success by just their performances on this song, as Grande gets to show off the vocal prowess and is provided with both the intro and outro as well as all the multi-layering, while Monét’s expressions of her personality are relegated to the singular actual rap verse (Which she still shares with Grande) and Auto-Tuned ad-libs that are literally just sped-up sentences, as well as a messy Nutty Professor reference. The beat is pretty lightweight, with a couple vocal samples and cloudy synths hidden behind a trap skitter, but it’s fitting to back the nonsensical lyrics here, all of which only work because of the charisma the girls ooze from their vocals, despite the imbalanced vocal production. And, yeah, the lyrics here are awful, as expected. First of all, the refrain/pre-chorus rhymes “Where you been?” with itself three times, barely fitting the lyrics into the meter by scrambling the word “GPS” into a Twista-like chopper flow for like a second until going back to the droning, saccharine delivery. Let’s look at some highlights.

Bad vibes, get off of me / Outta here with that f***ery

Sorry, I just love the visual in the music video of Monét and Grande literally swatting away the “F***ery”, it’s pretty cute.

I swerve both ways, dichotomy / I like women and men

This painful, forced reference to Monét’s bisexuality is so blunt and to the point that when Grande says it, it’s hilarious. Imagine coming out in a loosie trap single that barely counts as a song and not an interlude. I do kind of like how straightforward the line is, to be honest, it’s almost anthemic... maybe I’m thinking too much into this.

Then we hit the bank, making dumb investments, for the win

“For the win”? I didn’t expect a song saying, “For the win” to make the Top 40 ever, but, sure, let’s roll with it. What does Ari say?

And if they try come stopping me, I’ll show them my discography (Yeah, yeah)

Okay, that’s kinda clever—

Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win, go!

Nevermind, they said, “For the win”, again.

This been buildin’ up, I guess this friendship like Home Depot

Yeah, nope. Next song.

#39 – “Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X

Produced by YoungKio, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Peaked at #1 in the US

Oh, great, another meme song. Well, at least I can say this – where were you when a country-trap fusion from a former Twitter comedian turned rapper that samples a Nine Inch Nails guitar loop and was later remixed by Billy Ray Friggin’ Cyrus became the most popular song in the entirety of Northern America thanks to TikTok memes and a racism scandal? The whole situation is so loony to me, but I respect Lil Nas X and YoungKio for being so relaxed and chill about the whole fiasco, especially when it started getting bigger and bigger, becoming the shortest number-one song in America since 1963, with a runtime of only one minute and 54 seconds, disregarding the remix of course. Is it a country song? I mean, obviously, it’s a country rap song, nobody’s arguing that, and that’s got country in its name so yeah, in my opinion, if Nelly and Tim McGraw count when they released what was essentially an R&B song, this counts, even if it’s essentially just a trap song about horses. It actually paints a pretty interesting lone cowboy story inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 but, who cares? It’s a meme, alright, and for now it’s pretty funny. It’s got a really catchy hook/intro, with an effective refrain as well as verses that much like “MONOPOLY”, were probably written in less than five minutes but they work, and that’s all that really matters. I like how his voice sounds in the muffled outro, but really, there’s not much to it. It’s a fun beat with a great sample that Billy Ray Cyrus takes advantage of entirely and bodies. His flow is stiff but so is the stunted beat so it fits together quite nicely, and the additional choruses add some needed meat to the track, as does the banjo and the whistling at the tail-end of the outro... but we’re not judging the remix just yet, and on its own merits, “Old Town Road” is nothing all too special.

#26 – “Better Man” – Westlife

Produced by Steve Mac – Peaked at #2 in Scotland

Westlife released a second single in 2019, after their last single three months back debuted in the Top 20 and did insanely well in radio and sales... in 2019. This new single, produced by Steve Mac, has an orchestral version, and is set to be on their new album Spectrum which was announced to be released on 6th September, 2019. This new single is their second to reach the Top 40 in 2019. It nearly peaked at the top spot in Scotland, in 2019, and has had success all over Britain in the week of release, which may I add, was in March 2019. I refuse to believe Westlife will have a resurgence in 2019, and although I mostly believe that charts are ran by impressionable teenagers, this proves that Mom-pop is safe in the midst of the new British trap-rappers who talk about murder and drug trafficking, and of course Gothic art pop starlets that aren’t even old enough to drink yet... and I’m not here for it. No, the orchestral version is not better, get this manufactured waste of time off the charts.

#19 – “Your Mrs” – JAY1

Produced by Coolie

So, just as I was actually starting to lighten up on British trap-rap – seriously, Tion Wayne’s stuff, especially “Options”, has been growing on me immensely and I loved Dave’s debut studio album – this  comes out and debuts in the top 20, and it’s bloody awful. It’s literally one piano chord. It’s literally ONE. FREAKING. PIANO CHORD. Through the whole song. There’s a trap skitter as well after the beat doesn’t transition to the drop after its intro and instead just fades out with a cheap pitch-shift effect, until we get to a developed version of the beat, and by that I mean it has two annoying high-pitched beep sounds and a bass that clips through the mix thanks to the vocals that are louder than everything else. For the most part it feels like it’s just JAY1 rapping over a hi-hat, and to be fair, that’s what most of it is. It’s not menacing, of course, because even if it was, literally in the first bar of the song, he’s joking. He won’t actually be luxurious enough to take your missus, as he says, and would rather just let the women watch him, I guess. He’s not interesting, and although there switch-ups to the instrumental that help make it more interesting, the more stretched-out flows he uses are absolutely painful. The subject matter is nonexistent, apparently he has an Australian side chick and NAV helps transport his cocaine. Oh, but do you hear that? There’s a flute... no, seriously, can you hear it? Because I can’t, really, I mean it’s just a pathetic loop probably stolen from some Creative Commons musician that somehow ended up in an official release, and it doesn’t last long. It comes back in the third chorus, where he’s multi-tracked with a pitched-down vocal and this would actually be menacing if he wasn’t just talking about how his girl has a big butt. If that voice was whispering about cold-blooded murder, then this song would be awesome... but it’s not. It’s weak flexing and bragging with a nonexistent beat from an incredibly uninteresting dude who doesn’t know to mix his bass properly. I hope to see this gone quickly, because this is dreadful.

#2 – “bad guy” – Billie Eilish

Produced by FINNEAS – Peaked at #1 in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Norway and Slovakia, and #7 in the US

This is the big #2 debut, the one I’m supposed to care about most, but mostly I’m just feeling lukewarm on both the big single and Eilish’s album as a whole, which felt structure-less and lacking of much substance as she gets wrapped in her own metaphors. This new song has got a vivid, shocking and quirky video, but Dave Meyers stole it from an indie magazine called Toilet Paper’s photo shoot so I suppose that has helped this song increase in popularity – nothing like some good controversy. The dark, bass-heavy and reverb-drowned groove here is actually really nice, and I love Billie’s vocal melody, especially when it’s multi-tracked with the fake finger-snaps in the background that are incredibly flat, and that bassline when it hits in the chorus is insane. The lyrics are kind of funny if anything, as Eilish references her melodramatic, emo image as she claims herself to be a “make-your-momma-sad, might-seduce-your-dad type”, priding herself in the cynical bad guy personality among pop music’s cutesy stylings we’ve been accustomed to. The eerie flute-like synth melody is pretty creepy and I love how it takes itself way too seriously despite the lyrics that are basically just Eilish being an edgy teenager, even with a post-chorus where she says, “Duh”, in a deadbeat manner followed by high-pitched gliding chopped-up vocal samples, and it’s all good, right? But then there’s a beat switch that just doesn’t freaking work. The pause from the original beat lasts way too long, so the transition feels incredibly forced, and the trap breakdown/drop means the song loses all momentum, especially with that annoying bird chirping sound that starts it off. There’s no real transition here, so Eilish’s offbeat delivery isn’t interesting and endearing, just kind of janky, with the whispering not being creepy but forced and tryhard. Without the drop, this’d be pretty cool though.

Conclusion

Wow, what a mixed week. Sadly, I can’t give Best of the Week to “Dedication”, so it goes to Lil Nas X for “Old Town Road” because it’s probably the most fun song here, with Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét snatching Honourable Mention for the so-bad-it’s-good mess, “MONOPOLY”. Worst of the Week should be obvious as it goes to JAY1 for “Your Mrs”, but Dishonourable Mention is harder, so I’ll give it to Westlife for the sake of tradition. See you next week!

[pvpxrswvg]

Migos - Culture

Offset was the Migos that I was most excited about going into Culture. While he had the obvious hit in Bad and Boujee, which made sure that everyone knew that he was a force to be reckoned with, it felt for the past year that he had been building towards becoming the main guy in Migos. From having a similarly impressive verse on the group's remix of Look Alive, to becoming a must have feature and working with guys such as Young Thug, Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert, over the past year Offset has really been making a name for himself.

While it may have been due to the fact that he was in jail for part of the project's recording, Offset really doesn't have that strong of a presence on this release. Despite being on 12 of the project's 13 tracks, it's really only Bad and Boujee and Brown Paper Bag where I sit up and take notice of Offset. Perhaps I'm just being ignorant throughout my first two weeks of listening to this project, but after roughly 15 listens I'm still barely taking notice of the group’s most technical rapper.

Perhaps it was due to his heavy reliance on auto-tune on this record, which takes away some of his amateurish charm and dope triplet heavy delivery, but I really think Offset was a clear third best on this record, as his Migos family absolutely demolished him.

Quavo, also known by most of the general public as Migos, has always been the star of the group, which with his features on hits like Minnesota and Pick Up The Phone, and hooks on most of the group's most popular tracks such as Versace, T-Shirt and Handsome and Wealthy, should not be a surprise.

Perhaps the simplest reason he is most notable is that Quavo is the loudest member of Migos, in both personality and actual volume. Quavo has a larger than life presence and it heavily comes across in his music in a way that reminds me of the guys from Rae Sremmurd, especially fellow hook aficionado Swae Lee.

Quavo also takes himself the least seriously of almost any rapper out at the moment, and uses this to craft a whole bunch of fun lines that only he could get away with. While I should perhaps use an example from Culture, the most Quavo verse of all time is his contribution to Lil Yachty's Minnesota, where he has one of the hypest verses of last year proclaiming his love for his Motorola.

Quavo may not be the best rapper out at the moment, but he is definitely one of the most likeable, which makes him work so well as the spiritual leader of Migos. When you listen to a Migos project like Culture, one of the most compelling things is how much fun the group seems to be having while recording, which includes them having perhaps the most adlibs of any group in history. Apart from the rapping ability, it's this fun atmosphere that really separates Migos from the rest of the trap pack. This I believe can fairly be attributed to Quavo.  

Takeoff is the unknown to the casual fan, however the more I listen to Migos projects the more I feel he is their backbone, as his hoarse, deep and energetic style brings to life a lot of the group’s quieter moments. If Quavo is the QB and Offset is the young athletic WR, Takeoff is the group's workhorse running back, getting the group the hard yards and making the case for being their most important member.

There's usually a pattern of Migos releases where Takeoff will be subdued on the project's hit singles, which for the longest time would be all anyone would listen to, then when you get to your full listen of their mixtape/album you realize that he is holding them up.

The same thing happens to an extent on Culture, as he isn't on Bad and Boujee and his role on T-Shirt is outshined by frequent outshiner Quavo. Yet for the rest of this album Takeoff is the MVP. The clearest example is his absolutely stunning verse on the track Deadz, which is one of the album’s high points. Takeoff's energetic rapping sits perfectly on the epic sounding Cardo beat, as the beat shifts by bringing in a ghostly synth that perfectly matches the occasion of Takeoff's album stealing verse.

Speaking of Deadz, I guess that's as good a segue as any to discuss how on point all of the features on this release are. While a solid defining release still escapes him, 2 Chainz is rightly recognized for his ability to slay a feature and I think his verse here may be one of his strongest to date. The opening lines “Gang bang slang 'caine/Heroin, half a ton, Purple Haze, Cam'ron/Plays off a Samsung, get the job done” is one of the hardest hitting openings to a verse in recent memory. While the rest of the verse is average guest appearance 2 Chainz, everything from the 2 Chainz adlib to the “get the job done” lyric is gold, and does a great job building hype for the ensuing Takeoff verse.

The other two new features on this release, Gucci Mane and Travis Scott, are expectedly dope and do a great job making sure the constant Migos verses don't start feeling monotonous. It's that freshness that on my first few listens really made Slippery and Kelly Price such memorable tracks, as it took a while for some of the other songs to stand out on their own.

There's also the critically maligned Lil Uzi Vert verse on Bad and Boujee, which is, fuck what anyone else thinks, really good. While a lot of people wanted Bad and Boujee to be somewhat of a rapper's rap classic, Uzi came in with an ignorant hype as fuck verse. While it's incredibly corny and has nothing that you'd describe as traditionally good from a rapping point of view, it fits the track perfectly and you can't help but rap along as Uzi spits one of the simplest verses of the year.

Overall the final product on Culture is absolutely phenomenal and one of the best trap albums that I've heard period. The Migos are all incredible rappers who brought their A game to their breakout momentous release and the cast of producers all did a great job at making an array of memorable hard hitting beats. This is an album that I'll be playing all year as it has barely a dull moment and is nothing but non stop head banging hard hitting trap classics.