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When we think about the first Woodstock Music and Art Fair we think about the hippies. The mud. The brown acid. The helicopters. The chaos that became a utopia and a definitive statement for the ideals of the 60s counterculture.
And, oh yeah, the music.
The artists — three days of ’em — were, of course, the primary draw to the festival, and Woodstock boasted a lineup of formidable names, some of which were already historic, others that were on their way there and some who would use the festival to launch their careers. “We wanted the biggest and the best, and we worked hard to get them,” the late Woodstock producer Michael Lang told us in 2009, while preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary. He acknowledged that it took a minute for the festival to be viewed seriously by booking agents and managers, but once Creedence Clearwater Revival signed on, interest was stoked and the gets became easier.
Thirty-three bands played in total, and there was even an impressive list of could’ve-beens: Lang made a run at the Beatles, for instance, but could only get John Lennon to offer a basically non-existent Plastic Ono Band, which wound up making its debut a month later at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. Bob Dylan was invited but never showed. The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors, The Moody Blues, The Guess Who, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Love were among acts that turned down offers. The Jeff Beck Group canceled its slated performance after breaking up shortly before it. Iron Butterfly attempted to change the day it would perform at the last minute and never made it to the site.
But nobody at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. was complaining about what they did get to hear.
“I guess by Saturday, when everybody had arrived or everybody who was gonna get there arrived, we knew that this was gonna be a historic moment,” Lang said. “Nobody ever thought about or how it would resonate, but we knew that this was extraordinary. I knew that we were all freaks and there were many of us out there and we were disbursed around the country and around the world really, so it was like a gathering of the tribes if you will.”
Through the Academy Award-winning 1970 documentary and an array of music releases — both individual titles and multi-disc compilations, including the Woodstock Back to the Garden — 50th Anniversary Experience in 2019 — we’ve come to know their sets well, which has kept a little whiff of The Garden fresh during the ensuing decades. They demonstrate that even amidst turbulent conditions, there were amazing — and also, again, historic — performances all the way through the extra, unplanned Monday morning.
With Woodstock turning 55 on Aug. 15, these are our picks for the 20 most iconic sets on that fateful weekend…
John Sebastian
Just under a week after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance – and one day before Independence Day – a “fancam” compiling Vice President Kamala Harris’ most memeable moments to Charli XCX’s brash electropop banger “Von Dutch.” Created by X user @ryanlong03, the clip combines clips of Harris proclaiming her love for Venn diagrams, quoting her mother’s idioms and dancing and laughing while Charli’s neon-green Brat filter flashes across the screen. “It’s so obvious I’m your number one,” Charli bellows across Easyfun’s blaring synths.
Unwittingly, the clip kicked off one of the most drastic shifts in public perception of a politician in recent memory. It also cemented a clear restructuring of the contemporary pop music hierarchy.
While Harris may not have always been people’s “number one” choice for the top of the Democratic ticket, pop music-driven memes have helped her ascend to that position in the minds of left-leaning online communities as she prepares to officially become the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, IL (Aug. 19-22). Along the road to the convention, the Harris campaign has tapped Megan Thee Stallion and Bon Iver for rally performances, used Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s “Freedom” as their official campaign song, and adopted the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s Brat album – which prompted a hilarious explainer segment on CNN. Pop music has never been more ingrained in U.S. politics – and it’s giving real weight to the voices of America’s youngest and newest voters.
Amid several ongoing global catastrophes, the climate crisis and the fight to codify a woman’s right to choose, the country has been understandably shrouded in a dark cloud of tension and anxiety going into November. Add an assassination attempt on former President Trump on a Sunday afternoon and President Biden shockingly ending his re-election bid on the one that followed, and you’re left with an electorate that exists in the context of reality’s best attempt at recreating Shonda Rhimes’ most ridiculous Scandal storylines.
According to an October 2023 study from Tuft’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Gen Z (ages 18-27 in 2024) boasts 41 million eligible voters, including 8.3 million newly eligible voters who have aged into the electorate since the 2022 midterm election. Those are election-shifting numbers, especially in a race as close as this year’s seems headed for. The youth vote is vital – it’s an area where Biden was significantly lagging – and those young voters have completely shifted the election landscape by processing their fears, anxiety and general amusement at the sheer absurdity of the times through this summer’s most culturally resonant pop releases.
How’d they do it? In part because, if music is the universal language, memes – especially music-driven memes – are the Gen Z language.
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As much as Brat revels in cheeky self-aggrandizement and party-girl reflections, Charli’s latest LP also grapples with some intensely personal ponderings. While her ruminations on potential motherhood, her position in the music industry and her personal grief aren’t necessarily the things causing the American electorate anxiety, her songs provide younger listeners a way to work through their own emotional anguish as it relates to their futures. Chappell Roan’s breakout album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess has allowed for similar impact on its young fans. Roan’s debut album explores myriad moods, but the emotional turmoil of growing up as a lesbian in a small Midwestern town looms over the entire record – perhaps a much more real analog to the way Gen Z feels heading into November, as they chart paths for themselves in a country that feels increasingly detached from their concerns, from abortion rights to gun control.
Not only are Brat and Midwest Princess driven by anxiety, but they’re also arguably pop culture’s two defining albums of the summer of 2024. With constantly recirculated lyrics like “Bumpin that” and “Should we do a little line/ Should we do a little key,” Brat finds Charli XCX at the peak of her cultural pull. The album cover’s funky shade of green has become the unofficial hue of the year, Pantone be damned. In the same week Brat became the highest-peaking album of Charli’s career, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Chappell’s record reached the chart’s top 10 for the first time, eight months after its October 2023 release. Assisted by a coveted opening slot on Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour and a stage show that effortlessly converted fans at every festival she appeared at, Chappell launched six Billboard Hot 100 hits off Midwest Princess – nearly half of the album! — from “My Kink Is Karma” (No. 91) to “Hot to Go!” (No. 17). In July, Roan also earned her first career top ten hit with the standalone single “Good Luck, Babe!” (which has since climbed to No. 6).
To varying degrees, pop music has always reflected the general mood of the population. Through the cultural and commercial success of Brat and Midwest Princess, Gen Z has helped significant pockets of the left-leaning Internet channel their political anxiety into a somewhat ironic, but still largely genuine, embrace of a new candidate suddenly offering an escape from the absolutely miserable election cycle that the Biden-Trump rematch seemed to promise – and the Harris campaign has taken notice.
In its first post since turning the official Biden campaign TikTok account into “@kamalahq,” the Harris campaign used Roan’s “Femininomenon” to highlight her as a fresh, new alternative to Trump. The day after Harris officially announced her election bid, the X account for campaign headquarters rebranded to fit the Brat aesthetic. In the words of Charli herself, “Kamala IS brat.” In an age where politicians are who we paint them to be, Gen Z has used this summer’s biggest albums to fashion Harris into a candidate that they can truly throw their support behind – whether it’s solely because of the draw of the memes or because anything seems preferable to the looming threat of a second Trump presidency.
Instead of trying to create an image for Harris, her campaign has let Gen Z create an image for her, simultaneously reasserting itself as a key voting bloc and reshaping the relationship between pop music and politics. In this way, Charli and Chappell have helped cement a new standard for era-defining pop stardom. Neither of them has seen a single from their most recent albums reach the Hot 100’s top 10, and their songs aren’t exactly pulling multi-week reigns at No. 1 across different radio formats, either. Rather, they’ve captivated the zeitgeist through fresh idiosyncratic aesthetics and outward rejection of traditional pop fame. After all, part of Chappell’s appeal is her explicit disdain for her ever-rising notoriety, and Charli preceded Brat with an album that cheekily satirized what the ultra-commercialized version of herself would look and sound like.
As the electorate continues to welcome large swaths of new, younger voters, a shuffling has begun to occur in the pop music hierarchy. While artists like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar continue to enrapture younger listeners – both scored culture-shifting Hot 100 chart-toppers this year with “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Not Like Us,” respectively – they also now appeal to a broader range of voters (age-wise) than they have in past presidential election cycles. Lamar, of course, made appearances on former President Barack Obama’s oft-memed summer and year-end playlists, and visited him in the Oval Office back in 2015 — but the years since the Obama administration have cast the rapper in a slightly different role. No longer an exclusively “hip” pick to attract young voters, Lamar, by virtue of his age and material, can reach scores of voters across age demographics.
The same goes for Queen Bey, who was riding high on the success of her Hot 100-topping “Single Ladies” when she performed at Obama’s first Inaugural Ball in 2009. In the years since, she’s performed the National Anthem at Obama’s second Inauguration (2013), played “Formation” at a rally for then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (2016) and took to her Instagram page to back President Biden (2020). At this point in her career, Beyoncé isn’t directly competing with flashy, younger stars like Roan — she’s something of an elder stateswoman at the intersection of pop culture, music and electoral politics. She’s still admired by the country’s youngest eligible voters, but she also commands the respect of Millennials, Gen Xers, and even some Boomers.
In this way, “Freedom,” her and Lamar’s 2016 Grammy-nominated anthem, was a natural pick for Harris’ official campaign song. The song has roots in the mid-2010s Black Lives Matter era, boasts a pair of artists whose blending of politics and music have been lauded (and critiqued for years) and gives the Harris campaign a way to temper the hyper-contemporary feel of their other musical choices. And, for what it’s worth, Bey and Kendrick – two respected Black music titans — are valuable and logical musical picks for a Black candidate whose campaign (at least at the very beginning) was largely defined by the white pop stars of the moment.
Then, there’s the Taylor Swift question. Under a special microscope this cycle because of her silence during past elections (she’s since expressed her regret for remaining mum in 2016 and endorsed the Democrats during the 2018 midterms), Ms. Americana has all eyes on her as November draws nearer. The historic success of her globe-conquering Eras Tour has packed out stadiums across the country. But will she remind her fans to vote? Will she tell them who to vote for? It shouldn’t really matter what Swift’s voting stance is, but it does – especially as political fandom becomes more and more insidious.
The Internet drives pop stardom and political fandom in the same way; choices are made on the basis of how invested a person is in a pop star’s or politician’s brand. In the same way that Swifties buy the umpteenth version of The Tortured Poets Department because they want to be as immersed in her brand as possible, Biden’s most steadfast supporters – who often cited their respect for his 50-year political career and him being an “honorable man” — refused to waver, despite polls showing that his appearance on the ticket could very well cost the Democrats the election. From pop stars to politicians, brand loyalty is the crux of how people engage with most things in America right now, and the 2024 election cycle is already solidifying that. Yes, there are millions of voters that are fully aware of the issues they are most passionate about – namely, gun control, abortion rights, the Gaza conflict and inflation – but the voices of voters who struggle with interacting with politicians solely as public servants who owe them (and not the other way around) are often just as loud, if not louder. The support the Harris-Walz ticket has been able to accrue is undoubtedly impressive, especially because, at press time, the ticket doesn’t even have a platform readily available on their official website.
In the days leading up to Harris officially taking over the top of the ticket, memes overlaying her trademark cackle over pop songs with laughing intros/outros (think: Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” or Kesha’s “Blow”) took over TikTok and Twitter. On TikTok, an AI-generated Beyoncé song that turns Harris’ “coconut” anecdote into an original track plays in over 1,000 videos. Inspired by the “Win With Black Women” Zoom calls that have helped raise millions of dollars for the Harris campaign – and spawned similar calls amongst other identity groups – Swifties launched an @Swifties4Kamala X account that touts over 53,000 followers. Some Swifties have even (jokingly) inquired if they can use a VPN to vote in the election from outside of the U.S. Harris’ recently announced running mate – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – has already been branded as the “Midwestern prince” (Chappell) to Harris’ “brat” (Charli). In the days since Walz joined the ticket, a camo cap with a design nodding to a similar product from Chappell’s online store appeared on the official Harris-Walz campaign website. Call it the Stan Twitterfication of U.S. politics, a reimagining of the cult of personality.
Naturally, part of Stan Twitterfication is projecting entire identities onto people; hours after the announcement of Walz as Harris’ running mate, American activist David Hogg took to X to write, “Tim Walz 100000% stands at his doorstep when it’s raining and says ‘we needed this.’” The day prior, another X user wrote: “Walz strikes me as the type of VP candidate who runs on a platform of making sure everyone knows how to safely change their own spare tire, and I love him for that.”
Whether or not these sentiments are rooted in the reality of Walz’s character is irrelevant. What’s interesting – maybe even damning – is that the kneejerk reaction is to romanticize Walz as a sympathetic and easily understood character rather than assessing his record as a public servant. It’s not that far removed from conversations around pop musicians centering their likability and relatability over their musical, vocal and instrumental prowess. But that’s the name of the game now – and the Harris campaign is smartly leaning into it. From the concept of a politician being “someone you can knock back a few beers with” to the proliferation of online political memes post-2016, this has long been the case in politics. In this election, the scale has increased and feels uniquely defined by and catered to Gen Z for the very first time.
As the Harris-Walz ticket gears up for the home stretch of the 2024 election cycle, they’ll likely continue their pop music-informed strategy. It’s not a bad choice, but it’s one they should exercise with caution – especially because they’ve already selected songs that could have invited a bit more controversy than they have so far. Everyone wants a piece of Brat, but it’s objectively mind-boggling to watch the presidential campaign for a major American political party adopt the aesthetic of a British artist’s coke-positive album. Chappell Roan is the year’s breakout pop star, but using her music for the campaign’s TikTok was a bold choice considering Roan declined an invitation to perform at the White House’s Pride celebration this year, citing her disapproval of the administration’s stance on the conflict in Gaza and transgender rights.
In that vein, “Freedom” is a pitch-perfect anthem on paper, but in the context of both Beyoncé’s and Lamar’s respective silence on global Black liberation, as it relates to Gaza, it rings a bit hollow. There’s also the matter of Lamar’s unavoidably massive “Not Like Us” — which Harris spoofed during a BET Awards commercial preceding her candidacy (June 30) — a Drake diss that has thrust conversations around regionality, race, ethnicity and cultural preservation into the spotlight, as Harris’ own race has become the subject of asinine questioning by her opponents.
If they intend to continue down this path, the Harris-Walz team needs to have their finger on the cultural pulse, but they can’t make it too obvious that they do – that’s when the pandering becomes unbearable. However the Democratic ticket proceeds with this race, their moves for the next few months are sure to further solidify the fact that politics is the new pop music. Ultimately, they’ll likely have to maneuver this campaign like a pop album rollout to secure the “Femininomenon” that they’re promising.
In April, rising pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan released “Good Luck, Babe!”, a sleek, synthy single with nonchalant verses and an emphatically dismissive chorus. Her album Midwest Princess had failed to crack the Billboard 200 when it came out the year before, but “Good Luck, Babe!” immediately showed signs of commercial promise, handily out-streaming previous tracks. It chugged onto the Billboard Hot 100, starting at No. 77, and eleven weeks later, with some coaxing, made it all the way to the top 10.
A version of this path used to be commonplace: It took time, usually months, to propel a single into the top 10. Today, however, it’s hard to find a trajectory like Chappell Roan’s; as of the third week of July, 75% of this year’s top 10 hits have debuted in the top 10. Launching a single has become more like launching a new album, or even a new movie — focus on pre-release marketing, live and die by first-week results.
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This has its advantages. Because so much of pre-release marketing involves teasing songs on social media, artists and labels often know how the public feels about a track before it comes out, so they can spend promotional dollars more efficiently. And unlike movies, songs are relatively cheap to make, so if teasing one fails to arouse interest, an artist can cut bait quickly, or even trash a track and not bother to put it out.
“The industry used to front-load any strategy before they had the confidence that it’s working,” says Nick Bobetsky, who manages Chappell Roan. “You don’t have to do that now.”
But there’s a potential downside, too. Executives say that many artists and labels are often unwilling, or unable, to execute the sort of monthslong campaigns that create hits over time — think Latto’s “Big Energy,” Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” or Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season,” which all took more than 20 weeks to climb the chart and peak in the top 10.
“If you don’t have a song react immediately, if it doesn’t stream an extraordinary amount right away, everyone’s like, ‘It’s not working,’” says J Grand, a former major label A&R who owns the label 88 Classic. “In the same way we need to be patient building artists, we’ve got to be patient with songs we really believe in.”
Twenty-five years ago, it was nearly impossible for a song to explode off the starting line and debut in the Hot 100’s top 10. Chart position was determined by airplay, which usually grew as radio stations took time to gauge the success of a song in their market, and single sales, which often rose in conjunction with airplay and TV appearances and the release of a music video.
Back in 2000, an average top 10 hit took 11.6 weeks — nearly three months — to reach its peak. “Both the flow of information was slow and purchasing was slow,” says Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify employee and the author of You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song: How Streaming Changes Music. “It took a while for anybody to know that a thing was happening, and then it’d be a while before they worked up the enthusiasm to actually go to a record store and buy whatever it was.”
Now, of course, social media ensures that news travels instantly, and the widespread adoption of streaming means that new music is just a click or two away. But an eight- or nine-week climb up the chart was routine until around 2018.
Planning, funding and executing that climb was the chief function of the record labels. “Back then, it was really governed by whether you went to radio, whether you were on TV, whether you had a big press story, or even whether your release was available at a store for people to buy,” says John Fleckenstein, COO at RCA Records.
Labels still have these tools at their disposal — RCA took Latto’s “Big Energy” to radio earlier than expected, according to Fleckenstein, after seeing listeners “were skewing a little older than they had on Latto’s previous releases.” “We don’t feel that growing records is a lost art,” he adds. Radio tends to play a crucial role in this process because stations typically add songs, and then play them more frequently, as they see them build, rather than immediately throwing a single into heavy rotation.
But radio doesn’t drive as much music discovery as it used to, especially for young people, and TV viewership is way down; on top of that, driving listeners to a song is considerably harder in a climate where they have seemingly infinite choice.
So the marketing process starts earlier, usually weeks before a track is released, and sometimes before the track is even finished. “You try to get people’s anticipation up for that song to come out,” Fleckenstein says. Otherwise, it’s just another track adrift in “a sea of content.”
The biggest stars seem to generate anticipation simply by existing. And since multimetric charts incorporate streams, acts like Taylor Swift or Drake routinely enjoy multiple top 10 debuts on the Hot 100 whenever they release a new full-length; Swift has single-handedly occupied the whole top 10. (Before streaming, there was no way of measuring on-demand listening after the purchase of an album, constraining the amount of songs likely to appear on the Hot 100, particularly simultaneously.)
Lesser known acts typically build excitement by previewing a track on short-form video platforms and encouraging fans to pre-save it, so they’ll listen the instant it arrives. The Swedish singer Benjamin Ingrosso shared snippets of “Look Who’s Laughing Now” 32 times across TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts over five weeks before releasing the track in June. “The entire intention was to collect pre-saves,” says Tim Collins, the singer’s manager. “The whole f–king country knew the song before it came out,” the single’s release date was moved up because fans were clamoring for it on TikTok, and it debuted at No. 1 on the Sweden Songs chart.
In the old regime, labels would pick singles ahead of time and spend lavishly to support those tracks, but they were flying blind, with no indication of how listeners felt about the song. Now that’s unnecessary. “If you throw up a brick, you’re probably not going to get the marketing that you want for your project,” Grand says.
“Every song has to prove itself,” Bobetsky adds. “And with every new phase, the artist, in a lot of ways, has to re-prove themselves.” This can be mentally taxing — an artist’s position is never safe — and cruelly Darwinian.
This landscape may also foster a fickle approach to promotion. “Artists who have had a viral moment and leaned into it can be afraid to work other songs that don’t instantly go viral,” says Ethan Curtis, founder and CEO of PushPlay, a management company and marketing agency.
“They think, ‘It didn’t have the sauce, it’s not that good,'” he explains. But “you might hit a nerve [on TikTok] because there’s a certain topic that’s trending that day, and if you posted that video yesterday, it wouldn’t have gone.”
Persistence paid off for one of Curtis’ management clients, the singer JVKE, whose song “Golden Hour” took 22 weeks to peak in the top 10 early in 2023. “A handful” of initial posts with the track sank like a stone, according to Curtis. Some teams might have moved on.
But then JVKE generated excitement on TikTok with a clip where he played the song for his childhood piano teacher. After a few more videos in this vein, interest on the app started flagging, so JVKE’s team encouraged other pianists to post their own clips playing the song “to showcase their chops.”
They made more than two dozen remixes of the single as well – picking collaborators that would expand the song’s geographical reach – then booked JVKE an appearance on The Tonight Show, and paid to push the track to radio. Later, they created their own TikTok fan pages to “repurpose and repost all the content we and others had made,” Curtis says, which “extend[ed] the momentum just long enough to break into the top 10.”
Would other singles benefit from the same sort of patient, sustained, multi-prong push over several months? “I don’t think you should ever give up on a song,” Bobetsky says. Still, he allows, “If you do justice to the song’s promotion and exposure, and it’s not sticky, then trying to keep amplifying it is pretending that we know better than the public.”
On a 95-degree day in late July, Channel Tres shows up on Zoom from his place is Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood wearing a tank top and intermittently drinking from a large water bottle.
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It’s been a few weeks since the artist released his debut album, Head Rush, 17 tracks that package myriad elements of Tres’ psyche — “my love life, dealing with loss, dealing with the transition when my dreams become reality” — into a sophisticated, swaggy amalgamation of hip-hop, R&B and electronic music that tracks his rise from his native Compton to big tours and big festival stages.
“Now I’m somebody people will recognize sometimes,” he says. “I’m not just a bedroom musician anymore. I’m doing things. It was like, ‘I have all these things going on, and I only have this one brain to process it. That was the meaning of the title, Head Rush. It was something that could be euphoric, but it’s also something that can be a headache.”
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This characteristic depth is balanced by a lot of output that’s just purely danceable. This fall, Tres will go on a 15-date tour with Kaytanada for shows he predicts will be “the biggest dance parties of the year.” He’s also currently working on dance music that he’s testing out at DJ sets and afterhours. And the reach is real: When he recently went back to Compton to hang out on the set of Kenrick Lamar’s “Not LIke Us” video, he says “a lot of people came up to me like, ‘Yo man, we love what you’re doing. We’ve gotten into house music.’ I would never think going back home that I’d hear this from people. Stuff like that inspires me.”
Ahead of his performance at HARD Summer in Los Angeles this weekend, Tres talks about what he’s done, what he still wants to achieve and the times he’s just been able to enjoy the moment.
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It’s been a month since your album came out. What has this time been like for you?
The first two weeks were like hell, because I was reading everything. I would search my name on Twitter and read everything; I was reading Reddit, just engulfing myself in the positive and negative feedback. It was a lot for me, but I felt like it was important to get both sides of criticism, just because I want to teach myself how to take whatever it is and be okay with it.
That sounds intense.
I didn’t want to feed into all the positive feedback and fill my head up with all positive things, thinking I’m the shit when I still have things to work on. Then I wanted to also look at the negatives so I could build strength to have thicker skin so it won’t affect me as much. Because the more you get into this, you realize it’s just going to be all types of comments coming at you. I always safeguarded myself from that, but this time, I was like, “No, I’m going to engage.”
Then after that two weeks, I stopped. I was like, “Okay, cool. I’m going to go back to therapy, and instead of bi-weekly make it once a week.” [Laughs.] Then I just got really excited about the future. I was like, “Wow, I really put a chapter of my life into 17 songs and released it, and it feels so good.” I’m excited to take what I learned from this process to inform the next body of work.
Were able to shake off the best and worst things you read about yourself?
Yeah. I learned how to be like, “This is how I feel. I know what I was saying right here. I know how I freaked the production right here and what that means to me as a producer.” After it was all said and done, I was like, “Oh, I’m only in competition with me.” I get to do something I’m passionate about, and it serves me, and it serves my creative juices and the the child in me, but it also pays the bills. So wow, look at the life that I get to live.
You mentioned being recognized and having your profile rise. The last time you spoke with Billboard, in 2023, you said were “ready for big s–t… ready for the big stage type of energy.” Do you feel like you’ve achieved that with this album?
No, I don’t feel like I’ve achieved that. But I feel like I achieved what this album was supposed to achieve for me. I didn’t get to where I want to go with this album, but I’m thankful I did it, because there’s more stories to be told, and I want to leave a trail of [output.] Whenever that moment comes, cool. I feel successful already, but I know there’s places I want to go.
What places are those?
I still want to play Glastonbury. I still want to headline Coachella. There are certain things that I want automatic, like I want to get Tonight Show automatically. I want more excitement behind things I’m doing, but I’m not in a rush for that. I know those things come with the more work I put in.
Have there been moments when you’ve felt like you were getting exactly what you wanted or dreamed of?
I had an album release party for my project and Thundercat showed up, Ty Dolla $ign showed up, Kaytranada showed up, Estelle, Ravyn Lenae. I was wondering if they’re all going to show up. I was like, “Let me just go for the fans and give this body of work the appreciation it needs.” Then everybody showed up. We all listened to the album, then afterwards, everybody I mentioned came on stage, and I was able to play my favorite songs with them and vibe with the crowd. I was so full of love. I was like, “This is what it is. It’s about community.”
These are people I’ve looked up to since like, 2010, and now some of them I can call friends and collaborators. And my mom was there, my aunt, my grandma came. Everything clicked. At that point, nothing mattered — like the successes I want, or my personal ambitions. For my cousins or other people from L.A. that knew me before to see where I’ve gotten to now, that brought a lot of gratitude.
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Maybe this is an unfair question since you just released your album, but are you working on music right now?
I’ve already been working on new music. I’ve been finding new sounds. With Head Rush, I needed to rap more and incorporate some of my hip-hop roots and R&B roots. It’s an electronic album, but it’s not the dance album I wanted to make. It’s more of a album of self -expression, but I put some dance songs in there that are going to be good to perform. But I still have a really crazy electronic dance project I want to make.
Ooh. Tell me more.
I’ve been making dance music again. I mean, I never stopped, but I have a re-love for it again. I’ve been practicing DJing again, and I’ve been finding sounds and new BPMs. I’ve been doing more after parties and underground club parties and testing out records in my DJ sets. I’m getting hungry again about how I relate to dance music. I feel like how I felt when I first fell in love with it again, but in a new way, because I have more skills.
What are the best business decisions that you’ve made so far in your career?
I would say firing the team I started off with. I was very loyal in that situation, and I wasn’t necessarily getting the best work. When I came into the music, I’m thinking I’m working for my team, when in reality, I’m Channel Tres. I created Channel Tres. I’m in the studio creating the songs; I’m putting my life on the line going on these tours. So the people around me need to be held to a standard, and we need to be working together. Nobody’s working for anybody. Being able to let a situation go based on business and not being so loyal because you have emotional connections has been a really great thing for me. Because, yes, I’m very loyal. But sometimes that doesn’t mean that that person is doing the best work for you.
How have things shifted for you since you made that decision?
I feel like I have business partners now. We can look at Channel Tres objectively and make the best decisions for what we’re trying to get to. Because I am a musician and a creative, but I’m also well invested into the business of Channel and how we can further that. I know that I’m gonna show up, and I’m going to put the work in, and when I have somebody that’s working with me, and they have the same energy, I can sleep at night with that.
You’re going on tour with Kaytranada this summer. What’s that show going to look like?
When the Kaytranada tour offer came it was just like, “Wow, this is exactly what I need right now.” I was excited to go on tour by myself, but then I was like, “Nah, Kaytranada and I together on a tour is just going to be the biggest dance party of the year.”
[My team and I] are so locked in to capitalize on the things I’ve already done. My routine is better. Me and creative partner, we’ve gotten better. I’m open to learning, but I’m also coming with fire. I’ve been rehearsing, and I’m honing in on things I haven’t before. Even if it’s just a dance move I want to add to my repertoire. I’ve been watching a lot of Broadway shows like The Wiz. Now I’m walking around in the house, but I’m doing it in a Broadway fashion.
There aren’t that many dance artists that incorporate actual dancing into their live show. Why is that a compelling thing for you to do?
I’ve been dancing since I was a kid. In high school I was in ballet. I’m just an art kid. If I wasn’t doing music, I’d probably be doing a play. I have to make things interesting for myself. Also my first tour I ever went on was with Robyn. I got to watch her every night. The way she worked the crowd, you could feel the love and energy. There’s no mistake that the universe put me on that tour. I want to bring people that type of energy.
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Have you always been so able to freely express yourself, or has it taken a long time to get to this place of just following the impulses?
Naturally as a kid I was like that. But then I did a talent show in seventh grade, and I got booed and made fun of for the rest of the year. It shut me down for a while and I was reserved, and like “I’m just gonna be a producer and be in the background.”
What changed?
Something happened when I was in college. I was a drama minor. I started learning how to act and then kind of felt the energy again. I don’t live where I grew up anymore. I’m not the person that all those people knew anymore.
I experienced house music and dance music and was like, “There’s no time to be precious about this. I’m going get a choreographer. I’m going start taking classes. I’m going to practice and start being the person I want to be. Fuck it. There’s just no time to be cool. If it falls through the floor, it falls through the floor, but I’m just going to put myself out there, because you only get one life.” And it worked.
What was the seventh grade talent show performance?
I grew up in church, that’s how I got good at instruments. I grew up with my great grandparents, so I was wearing loafers and slacks. So I just was like, “I’m gonna bring this energy to school, and it’s gonna be good.” Me and my friend wrote a gospel song. I sang it. I was dancing, and it was just a sea of laughter.
That’s tough.
Because it wasn’t cool to be like that. I’m going to school in Compton. Either you play sports, or you’re a gangbanger. That shit wasn’t cool.
Well, if they could see you now.
They do.
Rakim has been your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper since he and Eric B dropped Paid in Full in 1987. Credited with shifting the way rappers rap, he is often recognized as the inventor of “flow,” as those who came before him rapped with a more flat-footed rhyming cadence. Rakim attacked tracks like Usain Bolt, and his flow has been compared to the way Thelonious Monk played the piano or how John Coltrane manipulated the saxophone.
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However, not too many fans are aware that Rakim is also a producer. For G.O.D’s Network (REB7RTH), his first album since 2009’s The Seventh Seal, the God MC crafted every beat for every song. “This is the first time I’m really showcasing myself as a producer,” he says over the phone. “I always produced tracks. I did a lot of the Eric B & Rakim music, but never really let that be known.”
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Having grown up in a musical family (his aunt was legendary actress and singer Ruth Brown), Rakim always dug for samples — and most notably produced “Juice (Know the Ledge)” from the Juice soundtrack. That’s him playing the live drums on there, and it was him who looped the bassline from Nat Adderley’s “Rise, Sally Rise.”
His new seven-track album is packed with features from rappers new and old, alive and gone. There are verses from the late Nipsey Hussle and Fred the Godson. He has Chino XL and Canibus on the same song. Planet Asia and B.G. make appearances. East Coast underground mainstays Hus Kingpin and 38 Spesh contributed a few bars — as did Wu-Tang Killa Bees Masta Killa, Method Man and La the Darkman.
Rakim talked with Billboard about how this all came together, why he wanted to feature his production skills, the current state of the rap game, and much more. Check out our interview below.
This is your first album since 2009. What inspired you to make this album?
I think the time was just right. The stars finally aligned for me, and I took advantage. There were a couple of label situations that I was trying to get done. Just a deal that I felt was worth my worth. Sometimes things don’t happen the way they should, and I’m not the one to settle. I’ve been in the game for a long time, so my deal isn’t gonna be like an up-and-coming new artist’s deal would be. Artists that have been here for a while, we have to understand our worth, otherwise, everybody else’s goes down. Our art reflects who we are. I was actually working on a project before I started the one I’m putting out now. Me and Jazzy Jeff were doing an album, and I had a song on it called “Reborn.”
So, I feel like now it’s a little easier for artists such as yourself to do things independently because you have the legacy and the fanbase already.
It’s a blessing. You don’t have to conform to what’s going on. If you’ve got a fanbase, do what you’re supposed to do, and they’ll support you.
Someone that was a big proponent of that and helped shift things into where we’re at now is Nipsey Hussle. I noticed that you got a verse from him. How did that come together? Is that a verse that the family let you use in the stash? Or was that something that you and him were working on before he passed? You got Fred the Godson on there, too.
Fred, DMX. I’ve got a Prodigy on there as well. It was an honor to be able to salute those brothers and showcase their work again. My man, Matt Markoff (who served as A&R/executive producer) has so much passion for the project. He went around to the right people and let them put their ear to the project, and was able to get some verses from some of these heavyweight legends.
It’s funny, man — he was going out, making moves and would send me the track back with the verse on it and surprise me. The whole project put a lot of things in perspective for me. The love that I was gettin’ from the artists really let me know who I am. I’m a humble person.
Come on, man, come on. I get it, but it’s like, if Rakim wants a verse from you… I can’t imagine anybody giving you a hard time.
[Laughs.] That’s that love, man, word. When they came back with the finished project, not only did they do their thing, but a lot of them saluted me in a verse — which was humblin’ again. I’m so glad that we did it and got it out, and it’s also a chance for me to showcase my production skills and my DJ skills. I’m kind of enjoying this from a different point of view by being able to produce and mold the project together.
I was gonna ask — I noticed on one of the tracks you say, “Hold up, let me see if I get the scratch right.” So, that’s you scratching on the record?
Yeah, I did all the scratching on the whole project… I DJ’d when I started rhyming when I was young. I used to DJ too. I always loved that element as well. So, it was fun to showcase all of that on this project.
Were those the Kid Wizard days?
Yeah [Laughs.]
I know your thing with Dre didn’t really work out, but the song “Now Is the Time” has a West Coast sound to it. Did you pick up any production tips from working with him?
There were so many lessons and different angles to the game that I learned from Dre. I had a front-row seat to watch the process of producing a track. His energy and passion is unmatched. It made me get back on my grind after seeing his process. I was like, ‘”eah, I’m not applying myself the way I should.” Big up to the Doc, though. Yeah, Dre, I ain’t say nothin’, man. Imma holla at you. I ain’t tell ’em about what we’re working on.
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With you and Eric changing everything with Paid in Full, how do you feel about the way rap has evolved?
I remember when I told my mother that I’ve been going to the studio and that they asked me to sign out of school to go on tour — which was bizarre. I’m sitting there explaining this to my moms and she says, “So, you giving up football? How do you know if this rap thing is gonna last?” Football was my dream, but that stuck in my head.
Mom’s word is golden, but I had that passion. It was something that scared me, but it also kept me focused. I come from that era when not only my mom, but a lot of people didn’t think that hip-hop would last. So, to see it come from where it came from and to see where it’s at now is a blessing. Hip-hop is the biggest genre in music right now. Incredible.
People ask you how you came up with your style because you changed how people rap. You incorporated jazz elements into your rhyme pattern. How does Rakim feel listening to Future, listening to a Young Thug, listening to some of these cats where they talk street sh—t, but it’s not in the traditional 16 bars, they’re singing it, almost like using their voices as instruments?
It’s more R&B/hip-hop, than what I’m used to hip-hop being. But we watched it go from being lyrical to it being what they call “a vibe.” As long as it’s a vibe, they rock to it. It’s a tough situation, when the powers that be morphed it into it being the way it is. There’s no reason Future shouldn’t be able to put out the music that he loves doing and there’s no reason underground artists that love making that grimy boom-bap shouldn’t be able to make what they love. We let the powers that be separate hip-hop and made us work against each other.
We gotta break the limitations down. We have to stop letting them separate hip-hop, and we gotta govern ourselves and take control of our genre. We can’t be where we are now and have no kind of structure, or no kind of understanding about what this is — because it’ll fall to the bottom just as quick as it got to the top.
That’s why the Internet is important because all of this can co-exist now. The major label system isn’t as necessary as before. You can put this album on Bandcamp and there’s going to be a market for it.
And that’s what’s beautiful. We can stick to our guns and make the music that we love making. If you have a fanbase, cater to your fanbase, otherwise, you gonna drift off and you won’t be looking for fans that aren’t gonna know who you are, what you are, or what you do because you changed up on them. It’s important that we take advantage of the platform now. There aren’t any parameters that we have to follow or no cookie cutter that we got to use to get radio play to be relevant.
Make what you love. That’ll help the scale — because right now, the majority rules, and the majority seems to be closer to the R&B/hip-hop side. We need more people to stick to their guns to even that scale out.
How closely have you paid attention to the Drake and Kendrick thing? Because Drake is one of those artists that gets a knock for being an R&B dude, even though he’s battle-tested. He represents the mainstream and Kendrick represents the genre in a more traditional sense to most rap fans.
I think that it was important, because these brothers are at the top of the game, and revered hip-hop. You know, a lot of people in that position won’t accept no challenge, because they got too much to lose. So, it was dope that these brothers put the mainstream success down and said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
The battle put a lot of things in perspective — because it showed the difference between real hip-hop and mainstream hip-hop. Younger artists now know that there’s a difference. A lot of them didn’t even understand that. They just listened to the majority, not knowing that a lot of people don’t categorize what they were hearing as real hip-hop. The battle was very needed for the genre. I tip my hat to them brothers. Let’s just hope that it stays to the music.
To the younger artists out there, do a little history, man, just like anything else. You want to learn about your family history, or your nationality’s history? Research it. Researching hip-hop is one of the illest things you can do. If you find out that your family came from great people and did great things, you’re gonna look at life a little differently. And when you look back at hip-hop and see where it came from and what this thing is about, it’ll give you a better understanding of what these brothers did. It’ll also make you feel a little better about what you represent.
A lot of hit rap records toe the line of pop and R&B these days, and fans are more forgiving about ghostwriters when it comes to some of those songs. I wanted to broach that subject with you because ghostwriting was considered a cardinal sin during your era.
It’s funny. Back early in the game around ’87-’88, people started asking me to write. The first person that asked me, I was so offended by that sh—t. That’s almost like being at practice and this kid is crossing you over like f–king crazy, man. You know what I mean? You’re not gonna go over there and be like, “My man, show me how to do that crossover.” I’m not giving him the golden pen. Like really, man? “Nah. I’m not writing this for you. You crazy?” Not the thought of having a ghostwriter but even me ghostwrite for someone else, you kiddin’?
So, to have a ghostwriter — from where I come from — that’s not acceptable. With singing it’s more complicated, it’s a little different. The singer still has to hit them notes and make it theirs, It’s much different for a singer because if you take a dope song from back in the day that was a hit and you give it to somebody else, it may not be a hit, because they can’t sing it right.
But for MCs, we salute them because of what they say. So, if your words aren’t from you, then how am I supposed to know what you wrote and what you didn’t write? And now, am I still supposed to respect you as an emcee knowing that you didn’t write everything? That’s complicated.
But, if the younger generation accepts that, then, you know, that’s on them. Where I come from, we don’t really respect that. I don’t respect that. Everything I ever said that was a verse, I wrote. I might have let somebody write a hook, or somebody might have sent me a song with a hook on it, but I pride myself on what I do and how I did it. I can’t see somebody else writing my rhymes and feeling like I’m that dude. My man helped me be that dude. I can’t even do that; I wouldn’t even feel right. I can’t even say thank you if somebody came up and was like, “Yo, that last song you did? Bananas.” I’ll feel funny as hell standing there. I would have to say, “You know what, bruh? I didn’t write that.” I can’t front.
I peeped that you have Hus Kingpin and 38 Spesh on the album. How did that come about? Were you fans of theirs? I know Hus is from Long Island. I felt like that was ill because it’s like you’re bridging the gap.
That’s what’s so dope about being able to do this project. We got MCs from every part of the United States. I always keep my ear to the street. From Smack URL to the underground scene, that’s what keeps hip-hop alive and well. I feel good when I see emcees spittin’ like that. I salute them young brothers that’s really wantin’ to be lyrical, pushin’ the envelope and refusing to say, ‘Aight, I’m just gonna make a quick radio song, so I can get out there.’ A lot of these brothers could’ve been tried to do that, but that ain’t where their heart is. They know real MCing and real hip-hop exists and anything outside the line is unacceptable.
Yeah, man, and it’s funny because this has kind of been the theme throughout this interview is just how everything has changed. Before, if you made this album, you would more than likely have had to chase radio play. You don’t have to chase the radio anymore.
I think we made a statement with the project. Straight hip-hop orientated and wasn’t looking to make radio-friendly songs or follow any kind of mold. Everybody did what they love. From watching the underground scene to the URL circuit with cats like Charlie Clips, Goodz — we need to break the walls down and merge all this together. It can’t do nothing but make the genre better. It’s gonna make rappers get in they bag and take their craft seriously.
You gotta show them that underbelly. It’s like when you pick up a log in the woods, and there’s like a whole universe under there.
We talkin’ on a hip-hop level. I won’t even say “street.” You gotta go to the trenches to really understand. I laugh when they try to discover things on Earth, there’s just a few places they don’t go. For one, they don’t go deep in the water and two, they don’t go to the swamps; it’s too dirty for them. It’s the same thing with the hood, they don’t wanna go to the hood; it’s too dirty for ’em. But you ain’t gonna know about too many things on the planet and how things work if you don’t go to the swamps, or you don’t go underwater. You’re on the surface thinking you know what’s going on. You go deep underwater, and you see something swim over and it turns into the thing it just landed on. It ain’t regular down there. There’s some different s—t going on down there.
You said that you’re humble, but you’re also aware that you’re on top of everybody’s “Best Rapper” list. What keeps you motivated to make music?
I think that alone. The expectations that I not only give myself, but what the people give me. I use that as fuel. I would rather people expect me to succeed than to expect me to fail. I gotta keep doing it at a higher rate because that’s what they expect from me. I just try to use it to help me rather than stagnate me.
So, we can expect more from you. You’re going to do more self-produced stuff, I’m assuming.
Yes, sir. I’m getting confident with my tracks. I gotta a lot of tracks over here. I just been storing the right time. I’m working on a solo Rakim joint and working on a couple other projects as well. So, I’m just looking forward to just staying in the studio. I took the year off from touring just so I could get studio work done. Hopefully, you hear a lot of new music from Rakim.
Roughly 30 years ago, Boyz II Men seduced and cajoled their way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “I’ll Make Love to You.” They enjoyed the view from No. 1 for 14 weeks — tying a record at the time — before dethroning themselves with another soaring, imploring ballad, “On Bended Knee.” In 1994, it wasn’t unusual for a vocal quartet like Boyz II Men to top the Hot 100, or get close to it; roughly a third of all top 10 hits that year were the work of R&B groups, rock bands, or ensembles in other configurations.
“When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a constant barrage of groups,” says Michael Paran, a manager whose clients include Jodeci, a quartet that vied with Boyz II Men on the charts. R&B-influenced pop groups like the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys dominated the late 1990s. But the barrage started to let up in the 2000s, according to an analysis of top 10 hits between 1991 and 2023. Solo artists like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake — who got his start in a group before striking out on his own — set a new standard for pop stardom, while rappers like Eminem and Nelly helped hip-hop reach commercial peaks that suddenly seemed out of reach for most rock bands.
And on today’s Hot 100, groups are an endangered species: Since 2018, groups account for less than 8% of all top 10 singles. The last ensemble to summit the chart was Glass Animals with “Heat Waves” in March 2022. No group scored a top 10 hit as a lead artist in the first half of 2024, and there is not a single group anywhere on the latest Hot 100.
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There are many reasons for the demise of groups. The decline of rock, a historically group-focused genre, as a commercial force on the Hot 100 has certainly played a big part. But perhaps more important, advances in music technology have given artists in all genres the ability to conjure the sound of any instrument they desire without the need for collaborators. And social media, a key aspect of modern promotion, tends to reward individual efforts rather than collective enterprise. “Social media is about your voice,” says Ray Daniels, a manager and former major-label A&R. “Not y’all’s voice.”
% of Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 Hits by Groups
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In addition, aspiring artists have a better understanding of the financial realities of groups, which are costly to develop and then split any profits multiple ways. And labels aren’t matchmaking groups the way they did decades ago.
“I’ve been in bands, put the bands together, got the record deals, done the whole thing,” says Jonathan Daniel, co-founder of Crush Music, a management company with a roster that includes both major groups (Weezer) and star soloists (Miley Cyrus). “Trust me, if I was a kid now, I would never be in a group — I would be solo all the way. I wouldn’t need these other guys.”
Groups always used to have a practical purpose: Making a tuneful racket was considerably easier with the help of collaborators playing other instruments or belting harmonies. “Historically you often needed a group to make money — it was almost harder to be a solo artist,” Daniels explains. “You had to have people get together and play the music.”
This has not been the case for some time now. GarageBand hit Mac computers in 2004. Online sites like BeatStars allow vocalists to rent fully formed instrumentals. Artists can make beats and record vocals on their phone. “One guy can go in there and make himself sound like a group if he needs to,” Paran notes.
This can make artists’ lives considerably breezier, because they don’t have to spend time persuading — or arguing with, or massaging the egos of — group members who probably have their own views on songwriting and production. “It’s just much easier to have your own say than to have group members opining on what they want,” says Bill Diggins, longtime manager of TLC.
At the same time that technology has largely nixed the need for musical collaborators, executives believe that the prominence of X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok and other similar platforms further elevates individuals over groups. “How often are groups doing content together on TikTok?” asks Joey Arbagey, another former A&R who worked with Fifth Harmony, among others.
Even bandmates or singers who are in a group probably work to stoke their own social media presence — which represents a safety net if the group falls apart. “Every artist is focused on building their own numbers,” Arbagey continues. “That kind of destroyed that feeling of creating together.”
And those artists that still want to create with others are often aware of the financial implications of this decision: If they hit it big together, they don’t make nearly as much as if they hit it big alone. “When we were kids, we saw The Rolling Stones and thought, ‘They’re rich, they have a plane,” says Daniel from Crush. “We didn’t go, ‘Well, they have to split all the money five ways, but Elton John doesn’t.’” Today, however, thanks to the internet, “artists are much more cognizant of all facets of the music industry,” Diggins says.
On the flip side of that, when labels get involved, groups are also more expensive for them to support. “It’s cheaper to be in the business of a solo artist than it is to be in the business of moving multiple people around and styling and marketing multiple people,” says Tab Nkhereanye, a songwriter and senior vp of A&R at BMG.
The heyday of groups also coincided with a time when labels had much more sway over what music was popular — largely because anyone with aspirations to be heard outside their region needed the labels’ deep pockets and close relationships with radio and television. Record companies scouted for talent, helped put groups together, found songs for them to cut, and then pushed them out through dominant mainstream channels. “It was kind of a machine,” Paran says.
Today, however, U.S. labels aren’t typically involved with artists in the early stages of their careers when they might once have been shunted into a group. Instead, the record company often shows up after acts have already proven their ability to attract a devoted audience, typically through a combination of social media — which, again, caters to individual personalities — and streaming. And on top of that, the influence of traditional outlets like radio and television, which served as the launching pad for so many groups in the past, has nosedived.
Chris Anokute, a longtime A&R turned manager, points out that “most of the breakout boy bands and girl groups of the last 10 years came from TV shows like The X Factor — One Direction, Fifth Harmony.” “I don’t know if you can break acts like that if mainstream platforms like TV or radio don’t really move the needle in the same way,” he continues. “Everybody was watching when those groups went on TV 10 or 15 years ago,” Arbagey agrees. “Now nobody has cable.”
There is at least one country where music-based TV shows still drive listening behavior: South Korea continues to pump out groups at a steady clip, and BTS has made nine appearances in the top 10 on the Hot 100 since 2018. (Still, it’s notable that HYBE — the company behind BTS — and Geffen Records are attempting to develop a new girl group in the U.S. via a Netflix series, rather than network television.) In addition, the recent eruption of the catch-all genre Regional Mexican has propelled new ensembles onto the Hot 100, including Eslabon Armado and Grupo Frontera.
And while groups aren’t peppering the Hot 100 with major singles the way they used to, they maintain a prominent presence in another corner of the industry. “The one place that groups still hold a hell of a lot of water is the live experience,” Daniel notes. In the U.S. in the first half of 2024, U2 had the top tour by a wide margin, according to Billboard Boxscore, and Depeche Mode and the Eagles appeared in the top 10 as well.
While those are all veterans, more recent groups like The 1975 and Fall Out Boy also made it into the top 50. The presence of ensembles on this chart makes sense: On tour, even most solo acts bring backup bands or other musicians to help them bring their songs to life. Musical wunderkinds are few and far between, and crowds aren’t always interested in watching a lone performer sing or rap over a backing track for two hours, so group performance is still common.
But on the upper reaches of Hot 100, the closest thing to a group is usually a collaboration between two or three high-flying solo acts. “When you don’t see it, then you don’t want to be it,” Nkhereanye says of groups. “These days, it’s sexier to be a solo artist.”
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Source: Bounty Tank / Youtube
HipHopWired got the chance to speak exclusively with YouTube star Bounty Tank, who is preparing to release his new album Kick Door University.
The world of reality television has produced quite a few notable stars, and with that in mind, it’s not hard to see how Bounty Tank is the next one up in that progression of fame. The Cleveland, Ohio native is the star of his own YouTube series (recently added to Tubi) which is in its sixth season and has over 780,000 subscribers including paid members in addition to a social media following of over 1 million subscribers. For Bounty Tank aka Franklin Frazier, becoming a bounty hunter was a pivot after attaining a nursing degree from Hampton University which he attended on a football scholarship. His goal to become a U.S. Marshal was put on hold due to hiring freezes, which led him to the world of bounty hunting.
A desire to serve his community and lead with understanding is at the heart of Bounty Tank’s mission, and that energy has led him to dive further into creating music, which is another passion of his. Beginning in 2019, Bounty Tank started to create and release singles, leading to his first album Skeletons being released in 2021. On the verge of his upcoming album, Kick Door University, HipHopWired got the chance to talk extensively with him about his music and his career.
HipHopWired: With your pivot into getting into rap, what was the inspiration for that?
Bounty Tank: Honestly, what planted the seed was – “I got my own show, so why pay someone or pay somebody else for music on the show, when I can do my own?” I’ve always had a passion for music, so it just made sense.
HipHopWired: So with that – when you rhyme, what’s the energy that you like to evoke? Every MC pretty much has their own energy that they want to give off to their fans like for you? How would you define that?
Bounty Tank: I have energy just telling stories about what’s going on in my life. I’m a regular guy. So whatever the vibe is, or the story of the lyrics that I’m talking about, I just like to give. I have a lot of laid-back stuff. I got some songs where I’m just amped up. I mean, it just depends on the vibe of the song. So I think I’m naturally just a laid-back, kind of smooth type of rapper.
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HipHopWired: With the album coming out, are we going to get that mixture?
Bounty Tank: The album is called Kick Door University, but the next single coming out, “Mr. Kick Door” is pure energy – I’m talking about “Okay, I need my money”, (laughs) and it’s full energy. It’ll be a mixture. There’ll be some smooth songs on there too.
HipHopWired: Pivoting back to the show – how’s the feedback been from fans who’ve stuck with you starting the show, seeing you evolve into this artist, in addition to being in the bounty hunter profession, how’s that feedback been?
Bounty Tank: Everybody’s excited. Everyone’s happy to be back. I’ve been gone for six months filming. So everyone’s excited man, they’re loving it. I mean, they like the excitement that the show brings, they like the music, and the energy coming with it. So yeah, it’s a good feedback. It’s crazy.
HipHopWired: One thing that I got from just getting the chance to watch some of the show -the one thing that stands forth is you pretty much being that presence of a guiding light. You’re doing it in a way that most people who have their own preconceptions of being a bounty hunter have them shattered. That is amazing to see. Is it challenging at times to keep that consistent?
Bounty Tank: No, that’s just embedded in me. At the core, I just like to help people so it’s not hard. You know, the people that receive it, they’ll get it and the people that don’t receive it, they just don’t get it. But I’ve always had that door open and lane open. So that’s easy for me because that’s just it’s me, it’s my core.
HipHopWired: And you’ve gotten some great feedback already from like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre giving you a shout-out. Has there been anybody else, you know, from the rap world that’s been giving you the green light, like, “keep going”?
Bounty Tank: It’s a lot of people that watch the show, man…Justina Valentine. she rocks with the show, man. Nick Cannon. There’s a ton of people. I was talking to DJ Drama a couple of months ago, he was on tour and he was watching the show, man. So it’s a lot of people tapped in.
HipHopWired: So, what are your go-to songs, aside from your music, what are your go-to Hip-Hop tracks? Something like, “I need to get my day started or maybe I want to wind down a little bit?”
Bounty Tank: Man, it depends on the vibe, what I’m doing. If I’m on some therapeutic, trying to chill and get my mind right, I’m going to listen to some J. Cole or Kendrick Lamar…it depends on the vibe and really what I have going on to get my day started. Just to get pumped up, man, I might throw some Lil Wayne. The Carter.
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Cash Cobain is up to his old antics again. The Bronx rapper and producer has been known to post snippets of songs he’s making on social media. Sometimes he releases the finished product, sometimes he doesn’t. So there’s no telling if he will ever officially drop his remix of Laila!’s viral “Not My Problem” song. […]
Last summer, salute spent two days in a Tokyo hotel room putting the finishing touches on their debut album. This may seem like a glamorous situation. It wasn’t.
“It sounds cool, finishing your album in Tokyo,” the Manchester-based producer says, “But the last thing I want to be doing in Tokyo is sitting at my desk. I wanted to be outside.”
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Talking to Billboard over Zoom from London on a recent Friday afternoon, salute says these tedious finishing touches were the hardest part of making an album that emerged during writing sessions with friends at a massive house in the English countryside, where a No Social Media rule was put in place. After additional sessions in London, the project, True Magic, reaches its final stage of completion Friday (July 12) when it’s released via Ninja Tune.
A 14-track collection of shimmering, sometimes tough, occasionally sexy and always sleek music that fuses house, garage, synth and French touch, the album is the culmination of nine years worth of single and EP releases, a steadily growing profile and the connections the producer has made along the way.
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“Most of the people on the album are just friends of mine,” they say of the set’s collaborators — a list that includes longtime pal Rina Sawayama (“one of my closest friends in music”), Disclosure, who initially got in touch by DM-ing an invite to their L.A. studio, and other friends including Sam Gellaitry, Empress Of, Karma Kid and Leilah.
Following 2024 U.S. sets that included salute’s Coachella debut in April and a performance at the Four Tet & Friends festival in New York this May, True Magic will bring them back to the States this fall for a nine-date run that ends at III Points in Miami.
Amid the release, salute talks about making True Magic, using an inclusion rider to ensure they play on more inclusive lineups and why they’re happy about not being an overnight success.
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1. Where are you in the world right now, and what’s the setting like?
I’m in London at the moment for a show that I’m playing tonight. This is a very boring hotel lobby.
2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what’s the medium?
This is so cringe: My parents are super Christian, so they wouldn’t let me buy any secular music. I wanted to buy hip-hop for example, and had to buy Christian hip-hop. I was nine or ten, and they took me to this Christian bookstore, and I bought this CD and had no idea who any of the artists were on it. But that’s not the album I recognize as being my first. The one I recognize as my first is Aaliyah’s [2001] self-titled.
3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what do they think of what you do for a living now?
My dad was a cab driver, and my mom was a nurse. I think at first they were confused, because they hadn’t considered you could make a living with dance music. They were probably worried about me, so they weren’t super supportive at first. But further down the line when they understood that it made me happy, that I was able to sustain myself and there was an actual job, they supported it, which is great.
4. What is the first non-gear thing you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?
I bought these expensive New Balance shoes. I was 18, went into the shop in Vienna and did that thing where you buy something without looking at the price. I had all this cash in my hand, and I was like “I’m going to get those shoes, they look amazing.” They ended up costing me like, 250 Euros, which was so much money to me at the time. I was like, “F–k it.” I committed to them. I still own them, and I still wear them sometimes. When I put them on for the first time, I felt rich.
5. What is the last song that you listened to?
I was just listening to the new Kaytranada album — the last song was “Lover/Friend” by Kaytranada and Rochelle Jordan. The album is absolutely amazing.
6. If you had to recommend one album to someone looking to get into dance music, what album would you give them?
Settle by Disclosure, it is your best bet. That album perfectly combined house, garage and pop music, and I don’t think anyone has come close to doing that, in terms of U.K.-leaning dance music. The first Kaytranada album, 99.9%, was really important music for electronic music. But I think overall, in terms of cultural impact, it’s Settle.
7. Amid your rise and all of your success, what have been the most surreal moments?
I was in Colombia playing a festival and sightseeing, so I was in Medellín for a week. I was on the metro at like, 2:00 p.m. listening to music, and this guy calls out to me and says, “This is going to sound strange, but you’re not a DJ, are you?” I was like, “Yeah.” He shows me his phone, and he was listening to one of my songs. I was on the metro, in the backend of the city, thousands of miles away from home, and this guy is telling me how much he loves my music and how excited he is to see me perform.
That happening is bizarre and very humbling as well – people coming up to me and telling me how my music has helped them. Also going to places that are so far away, where I don’t speak the language and there’s a complete cultural disconnect, but you’re bonding over music you’ve made. That, to me, is so surreal.
8. You wrote that “writing this record nearly cost me my nerves.” Care to tell me more about that?
I love writing music and the creative part of it, having a few friends around and writing songs. But actually sequencing the album, finishing those songs and doing all the technical bits at the end, that probably takes up most of the time. None of the songs on the album took that long to write. It’s the last bit, doing all the technical stuff, re-recording elements, that is so tiring. I hate it. That’s when you’ve heard every song a few hundred times, and it’s like “I don’t even know if this sounds like music anymore.”
9. How did you know when it was done?
When is anything done? When there was nothing obvious that stood out to me, and I was able to listen through without cringing at anything. [Laughs.] That’s when I knew. For the most part, it was like, “Am I broadly happy with this? Am I going to regret putting this out? No? Then it’s done.”
10. What does success for the album look like to you?
I think of success less in streaming or units sold and more in cultural impact. If my album inspires a bunch of producers to move into being album artists, rather than just dance music producers who release three or four track EPs, breaking out of the DJ mold and working more on their artistry. That’s what I think Disclosure did with Settle. It influenced a whole generation of producers to realize that there was crossover into pop music. That’s what I want to do through True Magic, to have the level of confidence that Settle did. I know it’s a lofty goal, but that album inspired me so much.
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11. It feels like a healthy moment for dance music, with new albums by Kaytranada, Peggy Gou, Justice, you, among others, all released this year. Does that track for you?
It definitely tracks for me. There’s so much happening in all corners of dance music, and I think we’re back in low-level golden era without realizing it. Historically, dance music has suffered from a lack of really good albums — and all of the sudden, all of these amazing projects are dropping. For all of these artists to be releasing music in the space of a year, and for most of it to be so good, that’s rare. It shows how healthy dance music is.
What underlines that for me: in America, it’s mainly tech house and dubstep, but there is such a huge appetite for stuff outside those genres. When I go [to the States] and see the tickets my friends are selling, and how many people show up to these pop-up shows we do, it’s really encouraging. America has always had that thing where people say, “Oh America is a few years behind everywhere else,” but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. When I go America, my crowds are really knowledgeable — they’re very open as well, which is super important. So I agree, dance music is in an amazing place.
12. Who have been your biggest supporters?
Within music, Hudson Mohawke is a big supporter of mine. He shows me so much love. DJ Seinfeld is a huge supporter of mine. Barry Can’t Swim has my back through and through. Mall Grab has shown me so much love over the years — he’s introduced me to his audience, and is part of the reason I’ve been able to tour Australia. Annie Mac from Radio 1, she’s obviously retired now, but she was a very vocal supporter of my music for like, eight years. She is responsible for showing my music to so many people. Without her, my career would not be anywhere near what it is right now.
13. I read in your DJ Mag profile that you have an inclusion rider. What prompted that decision?
I was playing a show in Newcastle in the north of England, and I got there and every DJ on the lineup was white and male. It wouldn’t have been an issue for me if they were good DJs, but pretty much everyone sucked. They were like, really bad. Basically, the promoter had just booked his best friends to play. I was there [thinking] like, “So many of my girl mates, so many of my queer mates, so many of my Black mates would have absolutely killed this night.” But it’s just kind of how it is, where a promoter will just book his mates rather than booking a good DJ.
I got back to my hotel and texted my agent like, “I want to make sure that I am performing among more people who look like me, and among more people who are nonbinary and trans, etc.” I found a template for an inclusion rider online, and it basically stipulates that 30% of the lineup of any stage I play on has to be from an underrepresented group, and has to be approved by me.
14. How has that worked out?
It’s been really great. It’s not the solution to a problem, because the problem is very much systemic. There is a reason why there is such a drought of non-white, non-male DJs at the top of the DJ sphere, and it goes further than just implementing an inclusion rider, but I think it’s better than nothing. It’s a good start.
I had this queer DJ that was supporting me in Belgium say “thank you so much, I’m so grateful that I’m able to play for a crowd this big.” That is, to me, what it’s about — because those opportunities are not usually given to people outside a very specific category of DJs. As a Black person myself, I’ve had to deal with being on lineups where I’m the token, and I just want it to feel less tokenistic and more like the promoter actually gives a f–k, and it makes a difference. I’ve had promoters who weren’t interested in it, so those are promoters I’m just not going to work with anymore.
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15. What’s been the best business decision you’ve made so far in your career?
It’s realizing I don’t want A&Rs involved in my creative process. The label I’m releasing on now, at the start they said, “We can be as involved or not involved as you want us to be with A&R-ing the album.” I said, “Actually, I want you to back off completely and I will deliver it to you at the end.” I sent them a draft of the album halfway through the production process, and then again at the end — and they were like, “This is amazing.” I was like “Yes, because you let me do my thing.”
16. Has that now always been the case?
The previous label I was signed to — it’s not their fault, because I didn’t say anything, but the A&R was meddling quite a lot. That’s when I realized I wasn’t making music I was happy with; I was letting someone else dictate what I should be making. It wasn’t great for me. But I love A&R-ing, and I think I’m good at it. I love putting people in rooms and making great stuff. If I’m given space to do that, that‘s where I flourish.
17. What’s the most challenging aspect of your career right now?
Being away so much. Not seeing the people that matter to me. I was recently away for like, six weeks. I did Coachella, then went to Japan, and then randomly did more shows in the U.S. I’ve been touring at this level for two years now — and it’s amazing and I love it — but it does suck that I can’t just call my mate and say “do you want to go for a drink?” because I’m halfway around the world.
Obviously I appreciate meeting people on the road, and I’ve met so many amazing friends, but it’s just not the same as going to your best friend’s house to chill. It’s made me appreciate the time I do have when I’m at home. It’s made me a lot more present. I don’t take it for granted as much, when you might not see the person sitting opposite from you for a few months.
18. Maybe it’s also that you’re having these peak experiences, but you’re not with the people you’d like to share them with while they’re happening?
Right. I did this amazing show in America. I was playing Four Tet & Friends in New York [in May.] It was my birthday, and people were like, “This must be the best birthday you’ve ever had, right?” It was an amazing birthday, but I kind of wished my people were there with me.
19. Who’s been your greatest mentor, and what’s the best advice they’ve given you?
My greatest mentor is still my manager, Will. I’ve been with him for 10 years. He is probably the person who understands me the most, when it come to my career. Obviously it’s his job too, but he always just reminds me of the best version of myself.
It’s cliché, but when you really think of that, it translates into so many things. Everything I’ve done over any other project has reminded me to do what feels right for me and not try to please the label or [my manager]. In the past, when I’ve done what I thought someone else would want me to do, or what I thought I needed to do, it’s fallen flat. But Will is a constant reminder that people love me for me, and I shouldn’t forget that.
20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?
I used to worry so much and compare myself to other people so much. I’d see my friends’ careers blowing up, and I was like “I wish that was me.” It used to really mess with my self esteem. But when I see some of the careers where people have been really successful and it’s gone really quickly, it’s often happened that they’ve crashed afterwards. Maybe they didn’t have the support they needed, or things were moving too quickly and they didn’t find their feet properly.
I’m so grateful now that it wasn’t like that for me. My career has been such a slow burn. It happening like this has given me time to adjust. So I would tell my younger self not to worry, because it will all turn out just fine.
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Source: @aldreday courtesy of @hiphopwired / A.L. Dre | iOne Digital
The spirit of competition has always fed the beast that is Hip-Hop. Not just anyone could set up a sound system, plug into a streetlight and DJ for the block party.
The streets had to be with you (or else, you’d be risking robbery or bodily harm). Same goes for the rappers who would soon enough come to the forefront. Sure, you might have been friends with the DJ, but the crowd would expeditiouslymake it clear if that alley-oop was either adept curation or “you might want to give up the mic before you get really booed, or jumped” folly. This hierarchy, along with the human propensity for misguided dislike or “hating,” meant that “beef” has long been intrinsic to Hip-Hop’s DNA. Whether for the sake of getting your own time in the spotlight or just letting the listeners know why you’re the better option, the thin line between a friendly feud and cold-blooded animus has always been there.
At its worst, the bitter rivalries led to spilled blood, even homicide (rest in powerful peace Tupac and Biggie). But at its best, which is more common, it spurned innovation and timeless records. Beef has permeated Hip-Hop throughout its 50 years and going life, as covered in By The Numbers: How Rap Beef Affects the Culture and has moved the culture, as noted in It’s What’s For Hip-Hop: 9 Rap Beefs That Shifted Hip-Hop Culture. Also, the tour de force that is Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” makes it clear Hip-Hop will always have an appetite for well-crafted and no holds barred battle.
Back in the early 1990s, before the Internet, artist André LeRoy “A.L. Dre” Davis cooked up a artistic depiction of one of Hip-Hop most infamous if now forgotten beefs—KRS-One vs. PM Dawn. The story goes The Teacha stepped to PM Dawn’s Prince B at a now-shuttered venue in NYC called Sound Factory, and it ended badly for the “Set Adrift” rapper. There were no cell phone cameras in the building 30 or so years ago, so Dre artfully recreated what allegedly went down for The Source magazine, and the rest is history.
So we felt it would be dope to use A.L. Dre’s artwork, with his permission of course, to flip a homage to Hip-Hop for Hip-Hop Wired’s first-ever digital cover. The assignment was understood and executed to perfection.