Essays
This past Sunday (Sept. 8), Kendrick dropped news that sent the rap community into a frenzy. Standing at the 50-yard line as he worked a football throwing machine with a huge American flag behind him, the Compton MC announced that he will be headlining next year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. He also made sure to throw a subtle shot at his 2024 rival: “You know there’s only one opportunity to win a championship,” he said before loading another football into the machine. “No round twos.” Two weeks ago, Drake took to his finsta account, @plottttwistttttt, and posted an old video clip of NBA All-Star Rasheed Wallace telling reporters that his Detroit Pistons “will win Game Two” after dropping the first game of the 2004 NBA Eastern Conference Finals. Many believed that was Drake’s not-so-subtle way of telling fans that he’s not yet done with the battle. And despite talking heads like DJ Akademiks saying the Toronto rapper has no intention of continuing the back-and-forth, Drake alluded to a continuation on the song “No Face” (probably his best post-battle release) when he rapped lines like, “How you get lit off the n—a you hatin’ on?,” “This is the moment I know they been prayin’ on,” and “I’m just so happy that n—as who envied and held that s–t in got to finally show it/ I’m over the moon, yeah, we’ll see you boys soon.”
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Those lines don’t really hit the same post “round one,” but I get the sentiment. In boxing and pro wrestling, when the title holder loses their belt, they’re usually entitled to a rematch. He’s seemingly expressing that he doesn’t feel or want this battle for rap’s heavyweight title to be over. However, even after all that’s gone down, I’m still not sure he realizes who he’s dealing with. Lamar seems to have a darker side to him; a side he struggles to keep at bay, especially when he appears to despise his opponent so much.
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Enter last night’s loosie Lamar posted on his Instagram account. He’s not necessarily “dissing” Drake, but he’s indeed talking to him — and the rest of the mainstream rap community that promotes nonsense over substance. The song works as an exposé on the modern mainstream rap industry, and Drake serves as a symbol of both rap’s massive popularity and its devolving cultural significance in the eyes of fans familiar with the genre’s roots. To them, he has always been seen as a visitor, never to be taken too seriously. Yet, he’s proven that he’s willing to battle when tested. That coupled with his hit-making ability was able to buy him more cultural currency a little bit at a time. T
hat party seems to be coming to an end, though, considering Drake’s chart dominance has stalled since losing the battle. None of his recent releases have charted particularly well, at least judging by his own standards. The club just turned the lights on, and the DJ is playing “Poison.” The bar’s closing, where we going to for breakfast?
Dot starts off his latest with the lines, “I think it’s time to watch the party die/ This s–t done got too wicked to apologize,” before saying, “Just walk that man down, that’ll do everyone a solid/ It’s love, but tough love sometimes gotta result in violence.” In his mind, he did the hip-hop world a favor by exposing Drake and his so-called selfish, dirty mackin’, colonizing ways. He also takes aim at social media pundits who have served as mouthpieces for Drake, or at least claim to, throughout this battle.
Bars like, “Influencers talked down ’cause I’m not with the basic s–t/ But they don’t hate me, they hate the man that I represent/The type of man that never d–kride ’cause I want a favor” and “The radio personality pushin’ propaganda for salary/ Let me know when they turn up as a casualty, I want agony, assault, and battery,” are directed at them. At times, Kendrick comes across as someone who believes he has a moral superiority — but on this track, you can hear him wrestling with the angel and the devil on his shoulder on the chorus, as he pleads with God to give him peace, while also keeping the lames at bay.
Many fans and critics have described Drake as Thanos, because Rap Game Sinister Six had to team up to finally knock him off his pedestal. However, Kendrick has been Thanos this entire time: The Marvel supervillain’s whole philosophy was based on destroying and rebuilding, a philosophy Lamar mentions in this new song. He talks of burning down villages to start over and said one of his friends told him he must “burn it down to build it back up.” Lamar is grappling with the rationalization of what he’s done to Drake, so far, and he sounds like he doesn’t think the job is done just yet.
“Watch the Party Die” is essentially the scene from Avengers: Endgame where Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man try to walk Thanos down, and he spits some of the greatest dialogue a villain has ever spat. He looked them in the eyes and said: “You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought that by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive. But you’ve shown me that’s impossible. And as long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist. I’m thankful, because now, I know what I must do. I will shred this universe down to its last atom and then, with the stones you collected for me, create a new one, teaming with life that knows not what it has lost, but what it has been given. A grateful universe.”
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The rap world stops when K. Dot drops. He doesn’t have to use streamers with questionable ties to the community to leak information. He simply tweets a link out or posts a song on Instagram with no title, and a picture of gnarled black Air Force One’s, and everything comes to a halt. Almost like a snap of the finger.
We witnessed a coronation last night.
Kendrick Lamar is now unequivocally the King of Rap, and has officially entered god status on the West Coast.
He walked on stage dressed in a red hoodie with a white tee underneath and an iced-out crucifix draped over it, blue jeans, white, silver and red Nike Shox, and a red baseball hat. Why is this significant? The outfit was eerily similar to the one 2Pac wore during the 1994 Source Awards when he performed “Out on Bail” with his rap group Thug Life.
Pac, who at the time was dealing with a bunch of legal issues in his personal life, hijacked the Source stage while A Tribe Called Quest were accepting their award for Rap Group of the Year. As the story goes, this performance wasn’t planned: Members of Pac’s entourage pressed the person in charge of sound and made him play the track. The rapper and the rest of Thug Life then went on stage, snatched the microphone from Q-Tip and started performing the song, which caused a brief rift between 2Pac and Tribe. Whether the outfit was intentional or not, we quickly understood the message Kendrick was trying to send.
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The Compton emcee rose up from underneath the stage draped in red light and started his set with “Euphoria” — a song some said held little replay value. However, the lie detector determined that untrue, because the crowd at the Forum knew every single word and went bar-for-bar for the entire six-minute song. And, to circle back to the outfit he was wearing on stage, Kendrick added a new line to the song’s last verse: “Give me Tupac ring back and I might give you a little respect.” As if to say, “Hey, man, we can start to resolve this situation if you just return this West Coast artifact” — like a plot to an Indiana Jones movie. He also snuck in the first verse of “6:16 in LA”, and performed his “Like That” verse, adding insult to injury.
However, the highlight of the night wasn’t Black Hippy reuniting onstage or Dr. Dre whispering “I see dead people” after performing “California Love.” It was when Kendrick performed “Not Like Us” not once, not twice, but six times in a row. He held the crowd in the palm of his hand, like only a true MC could. They hung onto every word, even doing the rapping for him and finishing his verses at times.
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A crowd of people screaming “OV-Hoe” and calling you a “certified pedophile” already can’t be a good thing. But every time you thought things couldn’t get worse for Drake last night, they did.
When Dot and Mustard were in the middle of the third or fourth replay of the song, and NBA stars (and fellow L.A. legends) DeMar DeRozan and Russell Westbrook went onstage and started doing their dance, that’s when I realized just how bad things have gotten for Drake. Every artist, celebrity and friend of Kendrick’s in attendance danced on the Toronto rapper’s proverbial grave in the name of West Coast solidarity. It seemed as if a big chunk of the culture chose a side.
I think some are underestimating the impact this can have on Drake’s overall appeal within the hip-hop community. I’m not talking about some kid in some suburban cul-de-sac, I’m talking about the kids in the streets. They’re the real tastemakers, and a lot of them who hold influence in Los Angeles were on that stage last night.
After the back-and-forth ended and Kendrick was crowned the de facto winner of the battle, many wondered how this would affect both artists’ careers. Would Drake still have the golden touch that he’s enjoyed for the past decade or so? Would he shake off this loss, much like he did with the Pusha T beef, and drop an undeniable hit like “God’s Plan?” Would he still be the top guy in rap? Would Kendrick take the W, but refuse the crown, and retreat back into his fortress of solitude until it was time to drop his next album?
Well, now we seem to have some answers: It’s too early to tell if The Drake Effect is truly a thing of the past, but his collaboration with Sexyy Red debuting at No. 44 on the Hot 100 and sliding from there is not a great look. Neither was the parody redo of “Hey There Delilah” that he hopped on for some reason.
Meanwhile, Kendrick has continued to do the opposite of what everyone, including Drake, thought he would do: Instead of vanishing, he stayed put and threw one of L.A.’s biggest rap shows in recent memory. Dot’s appeal in the hip-hop community was always A1, but after last night, it’s safe to say he’s now occupying the top spot in rap. Kendrick is the king. And he’s not the king because some critics and talking heads or kids tweeting from a suburban cul-de-sac said he’s the king. He’s the king because last night everyone — the streets, the music industry, the fans, the athletes — showed us that he is. They all popped out for their friend, their peer, their idol, their king.
“F—k that, this s—t making me emotional, man. F—k that, we been f—d up since Nipsey died, hold up. We’ve been f—d up since Kobe died, hold up,” he told the crowd as he wrangled everybody for a family picture. “Let the world see this. You ain’t seen this many sections on one stage keeping it together and having peace, hold up.”
Drake will be fine mainstream-wise, but he’s always wanted to be accepted by hip-hop, and right now he’s on the outside looking in. Last night proved Kendrick has more respect and cultural cachet than Drake can ever imagine having, and the must sting to an artist as massive and influential as Drake is.
Meanwhile, there’s not another artist in his generation that would be able to pull off what Kendrick pulled off last night. He had rival gangs on stage for L.A., for California, for Hip-Hop. Kendrick was running around like he was Pac fresh out on bail last night, and showed the rest of the rap game that no region is quite like the West.
We very well may be nearing the end of basketball’s most legendary studio show, Inside the NBA — and what a ride it’s been.
The 2024-2025 NBA season will likely be the last for hosts Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal together on TNT, with all signs pointing to NBC replacing Turner Sports as the league’s primary TV partner starting with the 2025-26 season. Barkley was on The Dan Patrick Show and revealed that “morale sucks, plain and simple,” when asked how the vibe was on the set.
Charles Barkley says morale sucks amid the uncertainty of “Inside the NBA” moving forward. And discusses the possibility of hiring the crew to his production company, continuing to do the show, and selling it. pic.twitter.com/gLoiKm7SM3— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) May 23, 2024
And after last night’s series-clinching win by the Dallas Mavericks, eliminating the Minnesota Timberwolves and punching Dallas’ ticket to the NBA Finals, Mavs guard Luka Dončić brought the drama up — telling the guys they have to figure something out, to which Ernie confirmed they don’t know their fate past the next season.
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“We’re gonna miss you. We’re done after tonight.” – Charles Barkley “You ain’t done yet. We gotta figure out something.” – Luka Dončić”We got all next year too. And then who knows after that.” – Ernie Johnson 🏀🎙️📺😂 pic.twitter.com/neHy0NpqI8— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 31, 2024
The winner of 19 Emmys, Inside the NBA is like family to most basketball-obsessed households; especially for those who came of age during the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. This was a time when rap, basketball and sneakers were exploding. We watched and played whenever we could. We read SLAM magazine, tried to buy the latest basketball sneakers, listened to rap music, and stayed up late on Thursday nights during the NBA season to watch Inside the NBA.
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To keep it a buck, to us basketball is just as much a part of hip-hop as rapping and graffiti. So, when we got a show starring an NYC basketball great like Smith and NBA and sneaker legend like Barkley, we had to tune in. And while shaky at first, Shaq’s addition at the start of the 2011-2012 season further ingratiated the crew to a generation that grew up buying his rap albums and signature Reeboks, watching his movies, and playing Shaq Fu on Sega Genesis. Inside the NBA is so hip-hop, its hosts were known to kick a few flows. Kenny Smith kicked a freestyle on BET’s Rap City back in 2001.
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And Shaq was recently featured on a Rick Ross and Meek Mill song with Damian Lillard, and had arguably the best verse in the whole song.
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I have to also acknowledge the show’s music selection. They’ve always seemed to be tapped into rap music, new and old. I remember hearing A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” instrumental during breaks — and there’s this medley of rap songs Street Cred EJ knew off top.
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Shaq, Kenny and Chuck come from the hip-hop generation and helped take the culture mainstream. Even Kenny would sometimes find himself impressed and surprised with a producer’s music picks. When they first played Kendrick’s recent Drake diss tracks, he was saying they shouldn’t pick sides, that they should play Drake’s songs too. They may be older, but the three former players are tapped in. They took what the late, great Stuart Scott was doing at ESPN in the early ‘90s and perfected it, carrying on his legacy of bringing hip-hop culture into households across the country.
During these playoffs. The producers have been in their bag playing the hits. “Like That” and “Not Like Us” have been TNT favorites during the Kendrick and Drake beef. They also played the “No Vaseline” instrumental — an absolutely insane thing to hear during a national sports broadcast. And just last night they played Don Toliver’s “Attitude” featuring Cash Cobain and Uncle Charlie Wilson faintly in the background. It doesn’t get more tapped-in than that.
A friend and I had a routine back in the early 2000s. We were fresh out of high school, and worked the same part-time job while taking classes at local colleges in North Jersey. After we got off work, we would cop some trees on the way home and link up later that night to watch the NBA on TNT. We did this every Thursday night during the NBA season. Sometimes we would catch both the 8 p.m. game and the 10:30 p.m. game — but we always made sure to watch Inside the NBA afterwards, even if it meant staying up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
Now that I’m older, whenever I’m able to stay up to watch the best sports show on TV, I think about those days. Appointment television is a rarity in the age of streaming, and for 24 years, the guys over at Inside the NBA have made you regret falling asleep and missing not only their veteran basketball analysis and arguments with one another, but also all the jokes and shenanigans. “Elevator” Ernie Johnson deserves some love as well. He brings it all together by controlling the chaos while also letting Kenny, Chuck, and Shaq be themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=47jriBjlxT_WXAYc&v=G1ZMviEik3U&feature=youtu.be
If next season really is their last, they deserve to have a legit farewell tour. Bringing back John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” isn’t worth losing these four family members. Prime Bob Costas isn’t walking through that door. The only way NBC can get back into our good graces after forcing Inside the NBA to hang it up early, is to bring back NBA Inside Stuff without making it corny.
BREAKING: NBC has contacted John Tesh about reviving the iconic NBA on NBC theme song ‘Roundball Rock’ amid NBA rights dealnegotiations. “At the end of June, we’re heading to Nashville, we’ve got a full orchestra on hold & we’re going to re-record it.”https://t.co/J2Tb1XxPY9 pic.twitter.com/F6YUXSRpk4— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) May 21, 2024
Inside the NBA had one of the greatest runs in sports TV history these past 24 years. I’m looking forward to having one last NBA season with my guys. Now that I think about it, ending things at 25 just sounds right.
Now I leave you with some Yo Momma jokes from the crew.
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Around this time two years ago at Billboard, we were all asking: Where are the new hits?
Through the first few months of 2022, the Billboard Hot 100 was stocked almost exclusively with holdovers from 2021 and even 2020 or earlier, with totally new music in precious short supply in the chart’s top tiers. Relief eventually came that month in the form of Harry Styles’ instant runaway smash “As It Was,” and then as April turned to May, via new albums by Future, Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar. But it still felt like the year was playing catch-up, like at midyear 2022 was still only just properly getting started.
Suffice to say, we will be having no such problems in 2024. Just over four months into the year, we already have so many big-ticket releases, breakout hits of all sizes, and off-court drama from many of pop music’s primaries, that it feels like we might need the rest of the calendar this year just to catch our breath.
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Whereas in past years this decade — 2022 was the most extreme example, but ’20, ’21 and ’23 certainly had doldrums of their own for pop fans to weather — it felt like pop’s best and brightest mostly spent the early months biding their time, feeling out the year before joining the fray, this year feels like everyone jumping in the pool at once. It’s an exciting (if occasionally overwhelming) time to be a music fan, easily the most exciting we’ve seen yet this decade.
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Let’s start with the list of A-list artists who have already released entirely new albums by May 9: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Ye & Ty Dolla $ign, Future & Metro Boomin (twice!), J. Cole and Dua Lipa. (Depending on your “A-list” definition, you could also potentially throw Usher, Justin Timberlake and Kacey Musgraves on that list as well.) Hell, you could probably cut the list after the second name and the point would still stand: Any year where you get new sets by Beyoncé (Cowboy Carter) and Taylor Swift (The Tortured Poets Department) — the two most celebrated pop stars in the world right now — before Memorial Day, you’re probably off to a pretty fast start. And both sets have been enormous, world-building, culture-conquering affairs, with huge Hot 100-topping lead singles and no shortage of critical and fan discourse over their deeper implications.
But Bey and Taylor weren’t the only superstars on that list to come correct so far in 2024. In a slower year, Grande’s Eternal Sunshine and its Hot 100-topping singles “Yes, And?” and “We Can’t Be Friends” might still be dominating the culture following its early March release, with the set drawing some of her strongest reviews to date and her best first-week numbers of the decade so far. Ye re-emerged following deserved backlash to his anti-semitic comments (among other controversies) with Vultures 1, his most fan-celebrated album since 2016’s The Life of Pablo, and its lead single “Carnival,” which was his biggest pop hit in even longer. And of course, Future and Metro have topped the Billboard 200 and owned the weekend twice already this year with their We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You partner sets, also spawning a three-week Hot 100 No. 1 in the former set’s lead single “Like That.”
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Speaking of “Like That”: That Kendrick Lamar-assisted chart-topper essentially knocked the hip-hop world off its usual axis, kicking off the back-and-forth with Drake that has somehow managed to overshadow everything else that’s gone on in popular music so far this year. J. Cole responded first to Lamar’s pot-stirring “Like That” verse, on his lukewarmly received Might Delete Later mixtape and its closing “7 Minute Drill,” before publicly bowing out of the beef and deleting “Drill” from streaming services. But Drake was determined to get his money’s worth: He responded with both the leaked “Push Ups” and the social media-released “Taylor Made Freestyle” — which featured unlicensed, AI-generated guest verses “from” West Coast legends Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac Shakur, and was eventually taken down upon threat of legal action from the Shakur estate.
The beef has naturally only escalated from there, also roping in hitmakers ranging from Rick Ross to The Weeknd, and eventually being taken to the next level by Lamar. He dropped the excoriating “Euphoria” last Tuesday (Apr. 30), and then followed that with a trio of Drake disses over the weekend (May 3-5): “6:16 in L.A.,” “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” the last of which is now on its way to not only being the biggest song from the feud, but one of the biggest songs of the year, or of either rapper’s career. Drake dropped two songs of his own over that period, in the officially released “Family Matters” and the YouTube-only “The Heart Part 6” — though with Lamar’s anthems now essentially smothering him from all sides, the battle has largely been decided for Kendrick in the court of public opinion. Nonetheless, debate over the particulars of the beef (and who had taken the lead and/or fallen behind) absolutely dominated discussion for the last month and a half following “Like That,” not just for hip-hop or pop fans, but across all of popular culture, while also producing a handful of instant-classic tracks.
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The Kendrick-Drake feud has been the biggest in music this year, but it wasn’t the first. The stage was set for that blockbuster beef by the January back-and-forth between Megan Thee Stallion, whose “Hiss” was thought to have subliminals aimed at rap rival Nicki Minaj (as well as additional lyrics assumed to be shots at Drake and other rap-world figures), and which inspired a response track (in addition to a lot of social media talk) from Minaj in the form of “Big Foot.” The fallout from that beef was mostly contained to the release week of the two tracks, but it helped Megan secure her first-ever entirely solo Hot 100 No. 1 for “Hiss,” and generally established the competitive tone for hip-hop among its biggest 2024 artists.
“Hiss” and “Not Like Us” are also examples of how popular music’s biggest artists haven’t necessarily needed full releases to make an impact so far in 2024. SZA, our staff’s No. 2 Greatest Pop Star of 2023, also poked her head back out with her new single “Saturn” — supposedly a preview of her upcoming Lana project, whose release date remains TBD — which debuted in the Hot 100’s top 10 in March and is still hanging around the region months later. Olivia Rodrigo kicked off one of the year’s most-anticipated tours with the Guts World Tour, her first-ever arena trek, making news both for some of the tour’s special guests and for the new (Spilled) deluxe edition of her 2023 Guts album, which has already spawned another top 20 hit for her in live favorite “Obsessed.” Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat all headlined Coachella for the first time. Luke Combs had a major Grammy moment with Tracy Chapman. Zach Bryan is bringing out everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Sexyy Red for his live encores. Pretty much all the artists who have defined the ’20s thus far have been in the mix one way or the other in 2024.
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But the real reason 2024 has been so exciting, even beyond all these recognizable names showing up and showing out, is the equally impressive list of rising stars who have made their mark on the year so far.
Música Mexicana phenom Xavi began the year with two songs already climbing the top 100, and plenty more seemingly to come. Teddy Swims and Benson Boone have forced top 40 to make room for big soulful vocals and even bigger screaming guitar, with their crossover smashes “Lose Control” and “Beautiful Things,” respectively. Alt-rock has seen its fortunes revived on the chart through Djo’s psych-leaning “End of Beginning” and Artemas’ darkwave-inspired “I Like It When You Kiss Me,” both surprise top 20 Hot 100 hits. Even longtime cult favorite Hozier, a decade removed from his breakout hit “Take Me to Church,” is now back with a somehow-even-bigger hit: “Too Sweet,” lifted to No. 1 by good TikTok buzz and the currently rising tides of alt-folk and soul-pop.
Even in the midst of the Taylor and Drake/Kendrick takeovers, Shaboozey and Tommy Richman have seemingly come out of nowhere to score breakthrough hits that are genuinely competing with the superstars’ new singles, in country anthem “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and hip-hop/R&B singalong “Million Dollar Baby,” respectively, both already top five Hot 100 hits. Meanwhile, more regional hits from the likes of Cash Cobain and J.P. have not yet crossed over enough to make much of a national chart impact, but are helping to define the sound of the clubs and the culture on the level just below the mainstream.
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For a few of these breakout artists, the success has been a long time coming. Sexyy Redd built up momentum for most of 2023 with viral hits “Pound Town” and “SkeeYee” — culminating in a feature appearance on Drake’s For All the Dogs No. 11 hit “Rich Baby Daddy” — but she’s taken it to a new level this year with her first solo top 20 hit, the dancefloor shout-along “Get It Sexyy.” Glorilla has taken a similar path to solo success with her own self-referencing smash “Yeah Glo!,” while also joining forces with Megan Thee Stallion for the chart-storming “Wanna Be.” Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan were pop favorites with critical acclaim disproportionate to their actual top 40 presence — but following opening slots on Taylor Swift’s and Olivia Rodrigo’s recent tours, they’ve both seen raised profiles and higher levels of crossover stardom with new singles “Espresso,” and “Good Luck Babe!,” respectively, both all but sure to keep growing into the warm-weather months.
The sheer volume of impressive hits so far this year can be seen in the amount of turnover on the Hot 100 — particularly in the top spot, where no one song has reigned for more than three consecutive weeks (“Like That,” again). We’ve already seen 11 different songs top the Hot 100 across the first 19 chart weeks, compared to seven last year and just six in 2022. Both of those years saw a No. 1 hit reign for 15+ weeks seemingly almost by default: “As It Was” and Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” didn’t dominate because they kept finding new ways to infiltrate pop culture (a la Lil Nas X with “Old Town Road”), but simply because the competition usually just wasn’t strong enough across the board to consistently threaten their supremacy. This year, with everything that’s been happening, it seems unlikely that either song would even get to double-digit weeks on top.
It’s hard to say why so much is happening right now, as the reasons behind nearly every breakout story are different. And it’d probably be facile to simply attribute it to pop music once again being Fully Outside, breaking out of its post-shutdown slump and roaring back with a number of artists who were hesitant to rejoin a compromised music world now once again fully engaged. But certainly, it feels like the 2020s are discovering their own distinct musical identity a little — after a first few year largely filled with callback hits and sonic leftovers from past eras — and 2024 is arguably the first year of the decade that feels entirely like its own thing, without being stuck in the hangover of the first major streaming boom of the 2010s, or still mired in the COVID quicksand. TikTok is still the greatest promotional accelerant in music, but increasingly it feels like the app is pouring gasoline on fires that artists have already started, simply offering well-liked songs additional exposure through word-of-mouth spreading, rather than spawning self-made hits through viral dance challenges and influencer button-pushing. For lack of a better word, all the hits feel real.
Regardless of the reasons, it’s been a transfixing start to the year in popular music, with major contributions seemingly coming from all different corners of the music world, and from all different levels of artists. And what’s more, it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon: This Friday brings with it a new album from Gunna, a new mixtape from Future and a new single from Post Malone and Morgan Wallen, the latter being arguably the biggest remaining recording artist in contemporary music who we haven’t heard much new from this year. And then the week after, it’s time for Billie Eilish’s much-hyped Hit Me Hard and Soft album, her first full-length set to arrive with no advance singles. Get your rest days in where you can and maybe hope for a bit of a summer vacation in a couple months, because it doesn’t look like pop is going to be taking it easy on us anytime in the near future — we’re exhausted, but elated.
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