Bodak Yellow is:

the song is fine, the thread is a lot of frustration about the music industry and music journalism, some of it unexamined (when you could splice salty reddit posts from the pitchfork AMA into a thread and have them fit right in, there's a problem) let to seep into a song that is fine.

wait how is this song supposed to be"woke"??

the "promotional muscle" argument is also a bit dubious because it tends to be deployed selectively, a convenient scapegoat for not liking a song for other reasons.

(see: the Charli XCX album, which I liked! but every single guest on that album has tons of promotional muscle behind their presence -- one of them is a Dr. Luke protegee, even! -- yet the consensus seems to be "these guests are great and defy The Algorithms telling us what to listen to." I like the guest spots a lot, but they were brought to you by major-label PR.)
(also see: the pushback to social media stars and the like making records. not to say that there isn't PR muscle there as well [although sometimes via different companies] but generally when the labels get involved it's trying to scramble to get out in front of a pre-existing fanbase.)

decent song from a decent stripper

camaraderie at arms length, i know, i’m just trying to recontextualize my comment that was floated as a dissent earlier because i’ve been getting “why don’t you say the same thing about other songs” pushback. (i do often think it! but whatever.)

the "most woke song ever" stuff I'd guess is about its accompanying blurbs on year-end lists

it is.

the most woke song of any given year is released by macklemore

lol

Things I never want to read again:

1. How “woke” a piece of music is
2. How Cardi B used to be a stripper and what that “means”

Bodak Yellow is a good song

To mention what D-40 mentioned, it's a "good" song in the same way that "This Is Why I'm Hot" or "Hot N*gga" or "All Gold Everything" or whatever is a good song, where there's nothing particularly original or life-changing or radical about it musically, but it obviously hits the right feeling of the times and is fun and everyone likes it enough. It doesn't take some "actually starland vocal band is bae" poptimism wizard magic to accept and embrace the **scorpions voice** winds of change and the Trendz of Culture that made this song hot. She's a good rapper, she has right amount of sliced dej loaf swagu, a flow that was already established by Kodak, it's fine. If Ego Trip was still putting out lists, it would get the, like, 30th-to-40th best song of the year spot reserved for shit like "Getto Jam" or "Regulate" or "Da Dip" or "Baby Got Back" or w/e. I cannot imagine the backbends you would have to do to actively DISLIKE this song

That being said, more to Katherine's point, yes, the way we write about these songs is incredibly broken. I mean, was there really a "great" song released this year? Maybe Margo Price's "Pay Gap" or Kendrick's "Humble"? But those also seemed very formalist in their approach to rebellion?

It feels like we're in that post-Sopranos/Wire era of TV where everyone just wants to believe something is the new Thriller or the new "Hey Ya" ("Migos is better than the Beatles") even though internet exploding the monoculture makes that almost a statistical improbability.

my concern about promotional muscle is not that the song is succeeding because of it, but that other artists i like more dont get the same opportunity a social media celeb will, and this tempers my 'excitement' for the success of a record by an artist conservative labels saw as a sure bet while acts which could easily be in a position of equal or greater success dont have that leg up

this is not a criticism of the song, or of the artist, but of the industry, and then by critics whose approach to music is to assume the status quo is the way it is bc the 'cream rises to the top' in some kind of poptimist natural selection

personally for me, this makes it hard to be extra super excited about this record

i mean, she says right in the the song she's making money moves

chris' post is good also although the last line i'd have to think abt how much i agree with

I mean, also, regarding the industry machine, it is really ... interesting... that the same culture of "no filter social media celebrity" spawned both this critically acclaimed number one song and the least popular president of all time

which also makes Pitchfork framing it as "an unignorable antithesis to a political landscape built around xenophobia, racism, and sexism" not exactly scan to me.

Like Ivanka doesn't rock Loubotins?

imagine the think pieces if "my neck my back" by khia came out now

I'm somewhat amazed by "Was there really a 'great' song released this year?" and don't understand the quotes around great.

Can we not post tweets anymore?

I want to respond to upper mississippi sh@kedown with the goop on ya grinch tweet

I think editors and designers look for great songs more than writers do. Proclaiming "Bodak Yellow" as great as "Hey Ya" or whatever works for SEO. Me, I'm happy to listen to just good songs.

Weird discussion! I would think that people would, generally speaking, be somewhat happy to listen to just good songs, happier to listen to great ones.

imagine the think pieces if "my neck my back" by khia came out now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_RfFrkkD6U

wish I read a good thinkpiece on this when it was released yesteryear

precisely xpost to Tim

but it's also the post-Xmas/pre-NYE interzone, we need something to do w/our time

the goop on ya grinch that stole post-xmas

the thing about promotional muscle -- I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, so apologies -- is that it isn't foolproof. this, for instance, is a list of a lot of tracks Clear Channel has thrust promotional muscle behind. if promotional muscle alone was enough then all of these people would be megastars, or at least stars. (from another poster: "It's been over a year since an OTV song cracked the Top 10 at pop.") http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/thread/149246/iheartradio-on-verge-artists

"other artists I like more" is also selective. we all like SZA, right? she's one of the current benefactors.

pressed enter too soon; where I was going with that was "Bodak Yellow" reached No. 1 where other equally PR'd songs did not because a lot of people genuinely like it a lot. and the argument that aforementioned fans (particularly women of color) latched onto the song because the big bad PR machine told them to and they're just virtue signaling is very dubious to me, especially since I've read about 10 versions of it from reddit

Again though I don’t think anyone is arguing there’s a conspiracy to make this song a hit just that it’s such a low stakes “win”

lol i hadn't seen goop on ya grinch that's hilarious

Like, Katherine, did you actually read my post or is someone else saying this is only popular bc of the industry? I know lots of people genuinely like the song. I also know lots of artists never get the opportunity to be heard, because I do the work to hear them myself, and it’s hard for me to hear her “good” song out of this context; for the casual listener unaware of this, she seems special, but I’ve written about and covered lots of rappers who are women of color never given these opportunities. I’m not saying her song didn’t earn it’s place, and social media celeb is as legitimate a path as any other. But I’m a MUSIC critic not a “who games the industry best” critic and her music is pretty mid

Like, how many ppl I heard crowing about bodak yellow spent even a minute listening to or writing about rico nasty / Asian Doll / Cupcakke / queen key /Molly Brazy / saweetie etc?

We can make fun of the lexian nature of this song going number one but at least you can’t say that about him

yeah whiney that’s what sat oddly with me too.

also david otm about celebrity breeding celebrity and pushing less synergized types further to the margins. “brands” are all around good for business - music and media alike.

off the top of my head, very, very, VERY many people have written about cupcakke

(I mentioned the Charli XCX record upthread; she's on it. on the last one too)

also, "listening to" sure, but a) for all you know, people have listened to those artists, and just don't like them as much as you do; and b) I don't think it's fair to criticize a writer for writing about the artists they were commissioned to write about, especially when that commission came as part of a consensus list. these are editorial decisions. there are plenty of artists I love that I will probably never be able to write about for anything but my own blog.

katherine i’m saying that oftentimes the situation that media is in results in editors being somewhat blinkered / more laser focused than in previous years, which is why you are so much groupthink, which is especially off putting in a year that was filled with music. i know how the media works. i’m not indicting you personally.

also, "listening to" sure, but a) for all you know, people have listened to those artists, and just don't like them as much as you do; and

And this is exactly the kind of argument you’d probably call bullsht on if it was used to rationalize post Malone’s place at the top of the billboard hierarchy

And yes Cupcakke has gained a degree of traction in the press but only bc of a small enthusiastic minority who pushed for her against a fair amount of resistance. I don’t think Cupcakke has a song as broadly appealing as bodak yellow, and I don’t think Asian doll’s bodak yellow freestyle is as broadly appealing as cardi’s either. But that’s a product of Industry investment and a&r those artists haven’t received

Cupcakke is literally a self-managed, self-a&r’d unsigned phenomenon. It’s a lot harder to manufacture a top 40 hit for yourself in 2017 given those circumstances. Look at how playlisting works at Spotify & Apple.

I'm not sure how that argument is applicable to Post Malone, given that he's neither obscure nor a critical favorite

Ugh that logic frustrates me so so much

“Maybe they have heard all the female rappers but the only good one is the one with the million dollar Atlantic deal who was already famous before she recorded a note of music”

not as frustrating as "I love this relatively obscure artist, so anyone who doesn't mirror my infallible taste is a deluded corporate shill." I mean, I've done it too -- probably anyone who writes about music has -- but it isn't a defensible position

you *see so much groupthink. not are

If you don’t think critical views of rap are mainly shaped by industry forces which reward scalability at its most extreme you’re not paying attention

Rap is a living breathing art form where a multiplicity of voices are in conversation with each other, where innovation is a product of culture. but that doesn’t matter because if cardi just does a really easy to understand version we can bypass all that and just say yasss bodak yellow

i don’t think david is arguing that at all. i do think that when you see outliers on the pop chart it’s worth interrogating how they “happened.” we could also do the same with portugal. the man, who went top ten in a year largely allergic to rock. or khalid. or etc

not as frustrating as "I love this relatively obscure artist, so anyone who doesn't mirror my infallible taste is a deluded corporate shill." I mean, I've done it too -- probably anyone who writes about music has -- but it isn't a defensible position

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, December 28, 2017 2:36 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The idea that these artists are “obscure” comes from such an insane myopic vantage point. We’re talking about the artists who literally informed the sound of the music she makes, who are major names within a musical tradition that you mainly ignore

xp - I'm aware of how playlisting works (can't say *how* aware because of NDAs) but the thing about metrics-based playlisting is that the metrics come from actual people*. the result of adding your obscure, or at least not widely beloved, faves to those playlists is generally large amounts of skips and dislikes -- i.e. forcing people to work around listening to artists they don't want to listen to. with Cupcakke in particular there's also a respectability politics component, which sucks but exists. it's going to be difficult to get a song called "Vagina" onto most playlists, let alone convince people not to skip it immediately when it comes on at work or whatever, and given that that's largely her thing, there is going to be a barrier there. (I can't talk about the other artists because I haven't heard them, nor do they particularly seem like my thing.)

TBC not saying your insane but that the vantage point is insanely myopic (sorry if that came across as personal)

the key word here is "relatively"

Katherine what the people want isn’t some biological imperative it’s informed by discourse / marketing

And I agree “vagina” wouldn’t make sense on rap caviar (ahh corporations) but the whole point is if a label invests in her career they ideally help protect her vision while giving her the tools to make it onto rap caviar which is exactly what happened with cardi b, who literally was not a recording artist two years ago

Or I should say it’s not *wholly* a biological imperative e