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Kai Cenat looks as if he has a new enemy, as fellow streamer IShowSpeed has released a diss track directed toward him online.
In the current climate of rap beef that’s been present these last couple of weeks, another surprising feud has surfaced, this time between popular streamers Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed. The new track was released by IShowSpeed on Tuesday (April 23) during a live stream, where he rapped the denigrating lyrics directed at Cenat over the instrumental of Drake’s “Back To Back” track from 2015 as he stood in front of a green screen.
“Kai, you can’t pull Tyla/You dirty-a*s n***a you do not pull b***hes/I’m sending 5k to a f**king b***h, I never paid for p***y, n***a suck my d***k,” IShowSpeed spits out, referencing the South African songstress’ recent visit to the popular streamer which garnered a lot of attention and a claim by Cenat of extortion from an OnlyFans personality. “Adin leaked my number/B***h, here go your muthaf**kin number,” he continues showing a contact number on his smartphone purportedly belonging to Kai Cenat. “B***h, I really don’t care/Zoom in, take a good stare/N***a, I don’t give a f**k/You always on my d**k, n***a, suck my left nut.” Kai Cenat hasn’t commented on the track as of yet. The 19-year-old and IShowSpeed have had a turbulent relationship in the past, but have collaborated multiple times. But the new turn by IShowSpeed might be linked to Kai Cenat seemingly sending verbal barbs his way in a freestyle that he released over 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” which went viral last month.
As for IShowSpeed, he’s gotten into hot water for online stunts in the past involving other streamers who’ve blasted him for leaking personal information linked to them. The popular gamer and streamer Ninja called IShowSpeed out last November after deleting his Discord channel. He stated that the 23-year-old leaked the information to the channel to the public and his followers during a stream. “That Discord had Drake, Travis Scott, Marshmello, JuJu, every professional Fortnite player you could imagine,” he said at the time. All of the top OG streamers, like fucking everyone, and I had to fucking nuke it because Speed leaked it.”
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The latest dance taking over New York City is the “Reemski,” and its Brooklyn creator and the Bronx rapper whose song its associated with are ecstatic over its popularity.
If you’re tapped into the latest dance trends in New York City, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the “Reemski.” Gaining viral popularity thanks to posts with over 1 million views and counting on TikTok and on X, formerly Twitter, the dance has gained new forms including as a joke on the performance of the MTA for example, and being banned in the Russian republic of Chechnya as part of activities that are at too fast of a tempo. Even Kai Cenat has picked up on it. The dance’s creator, Kareem Gadson, is happy with all of it.
“I just got tired of doing the dances that I was seeing out here,” Gadson said of creating the hit dance, which he says he did in 2016. “So I just decided to do my own.”
The aspiring rapper from Brooklyn calls his dance the “Reemski” because the leg movements are similar to those of downhill skiers. “As you getting low you have to move sideways like you’re skiing,” Gadson says. The dance is normally done to the Cash Cobain track “Fisherrr,” a collaboration song with Bay Swag, and requires the dancer to get lower to the ground by bending their knees as the bass drop of the song comes in while moving their chest and shoulders in unison. “If you ever watch someone skiing and then you watch my dance, then you will go ‘OK, I see what story you’re talking about.’”
For Elijah Hicks, the man who utilized the “Reemski” in a joke about Jesus walking out of the tomb, he suggests not being too caught up in the technical parts of the dance. “You just roll your shoulders, but it’s about the drop,” he said. “The drop is what makes it fun. It’s all in like one motion. Everybody can do it, because it’s so easy to do,” before adding, “Your grandmother and your grandfather could do it. All they gotta do is roll their shoulders.”
Gadson is particularly pleased that the dance hasn’t gotten any infamous attachments. “I like that it doesn’t have anything to do with violence,” he said in an interview. “It’s got a lot to do with just having fun and enjoying yourself.” As for Cash Cobain, he’s enjoying the dance because of the associated fame for his single, calling the timing of the “Reemski” going viral “perfect.”
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Queen of Da Souf rapper Latto sent a clear “I an’t the one” message to a concertgoer who thought it was OK to throw an object her way while she was on stage during the Rolling Loud Germany music festival.
“You want your ass beat? Throw it again. Throw it again. I’mma beat your ass. Throw it again,” Latto said after she was allegedly interrupted by a flying object from the crowd during her performance of her hit song “Put It On Da Floor.”
Yeeeah—that might not be the “Big Energy” the festival attendee was expecting. Latto was giving major Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction “Say ‘what’ again” vibes in response to being disrespected by the out of control fan.
And just in case anyone (wrongly) thinks Latto overreacted in this instance, there have enough recent incidents involving fans throwing things at performers on stage to justify the “Fast Lane” rapper going all the way off on the person she said threw something at her.
From HuffPost:
Harry Styles appeared to get hit in the face with an object during a concert in Vienna, Austria, last week while Drake got hit in the hand with a phone days before as he opened his “It’s All a Blur” tour in Chicago.
Bebe Rexha was struck by a phone last month and was checked into a hospital after the object hit her in the face and bruised her eye.
Nicholas Malvagna, who was charged with assault in connection to throwing the phone at the singer, said he “was trying to see if I could hit her with the phone at the end of the show because it would be funny,” according to a criminal complaint detailed in the New York Post.
Some people might also find it “funny” if a fan got their teeth kicked in for throwing things at an artist while they’re trying to work.
People who don’t know how to behave at live shows need to stay home and throw things at their TVs.
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In today’s episode of Tapioca Tears And The Poor Souls Who Supply Them, an apparently bi-racial interviewer conducted an awkward, cringy and second-hand embarrassment-inducing interview with the rap duo City Girls, got dragged for it by Black people and tried to blame the dragging on Black people’s alleged attitudes towards those who aren’t “full Black,” not her deplorable interviewing skills.
First, let’s start with the interview, because, bruh—what was even going on here?
Tamera Kissen, the interviewer who Blavity described as an “influencer,” caught up with City Girls after their set at Hip Hop festival Rolling Loud in California. I would say that at some point, the interview went downhill, but really, there was never a hill. This interview started on the ground and just continued to sink.
From Blavity:
During the interview, Yung Miami and Kissen realized they had met before. However, they were unable to recall the details of their last encounter. An awkward silence followed as the pair tried to remember how they met.
The conversation continued to spiral down as Kissen threw out random questions throughout the clip.
Many social media users followed up with criticism, saying Kissen doesn’t know how to conduct herself professionally.
In other words, she got dragged because the “interview” was drag-worthy.
According to the Shade Room, Kissen had an interesting take on why Black people reacted so negatively to an interview that would obviously only receive a negative response.
“The community really don’t f**k with you if you ain’t full black, let’s just be honest,” she wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
Nah sis, if you really want to “be honest,” you don’t get to throw Black people under the bus because everyone who saw your janky-a** interview wanted to know what in the amateur hour was happening.
I mean, she spent the first 30 seconds of the “interview” going back and forth with Miami about where they knew each other from like they had just bumped into each other at Walmart. Then Kissen’s first question out the gate was, “How many broke men have you let hit?”
Wait, sorry, that was her second question. Her first question to the rap duo was, “Did you know it was the 50th day of Hip Hop today?” to which the City Girls answered “no,” to which the supposedly partially Black woman interviewing a Hip Hop act responded, “Me neither. They told me to talk about it.”
Now, I’m going to give Kissen the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant “50th anniversary of Hip Hop.” Still, she doesn’t know why the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop is important, but she’s upset the Black community doesn’t take her seriously, huh? I mean, OK.)
But nah, it’s probably just because she’s biracial. That tracks.
Honestly, you can tell Kissen hasn’t been around enough “full Black” people, because if she had, she would have known hitting “send” on that alleged tweet would get her dragged even further.
I mean, if we want to really keep it one hundred, blaming Black people for your own inadequacy is some white people sh*t. So, maybe that’s the real problem.
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If you’re a fan of Busta Rhymes please remember to respect his personal space. The Hip-Hop star recently threw a drink at a woman who groped him.
As spotted on Hot New Hip Hop, the New York native had to put an admirer in her place for doing way too much. While attending the MAGIC Fashion Trade Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, he was moving throughout the expo floor surrounded by his entourage.
As expected he was being followed by some of his fans and it seems a woman shot her shot but missed horribly. In a video, she is seen grabbing his backside to which he responds by throwing his drink at her.
As expected, the clip quickly went viral. So much so several media outlets worked to identify the woman. The Shade Room connected with her and got her to give her side of the incident.
“I didn’t mean to touch his behind honestly I was just happy to meet him and wanted a pic” said Nikita Mathis, owner of Platinum Plus Fashions Boutique. “Been a long-time fan I admit I shouldn’t have [touched] him at all but he’s Busta I felt like I could possibly get a pic.”
Mistakes do happen but Mathis received some harsh criticism online from both men and women who generally did not find that Busta Rhymes reacted poorly. The “Touch It” rapper has yet to comment on or even acknowledge the incident as of yet. In 2022, he checked a fan during a performance who was getting way too touchy.
You can see the video from the Vegas incident below.
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Proud Mother Perms 3-Year-Old Daughter’s Hair And Shares Video On TikTok, Leaving Users Divided Three days ago, a TikTok was posted of a mother perming her three-year-old daughter’s hair in a beauty salon. The video was shared by user @flambingo, who listed her identity as a 23-year-old mother-of-one in her account’s bio. The video was […]
In 2019 and 2020, promoting music on TikTok often meant paying prominent influencers to use a song in their videos. The concept was straightforward — cash for exposure — and on a good day, the results were easy to notice: Streams shot up. “All you needed was those [popular] people to post and a song flew,” one digital marketer reminisced earlier this year.
If this strategy once helped a track fly, it is now more likely to flop. “Bigger influencers actually don’t move the needle on music consumption” anymore, another digital marketer told Billboard in April. Lately worry has been spreading in the music industry that the link between song usage on TikTok more generally and consumption on streaming platforms appears to be losing potency. “For a while it was like, ‘All you gotta do is get a song going on TikTok, and it’s outta here!’” one major label executive says. “It’s not a guarantee anymore” that a song will become a hit.
This sentiment was reflected in a year-end report that TikTok published last week outlining the most popular songs and artists on the app. The top 10 TikTok tracks in the U.S. were streamed far less in 2022 than they were in 2021, according to data from Luminate. And the winners in 2021 were streamed far less than they were in 2020.
This indicates that the correlation between TikTok usage and U.S. streams is weakening. And it offers supports for a growing chorus of marketers who whisper that TikTok video usage isn’t “translating” as well to streams as it did in years past.
In 2020, being a top TikTok track in the U.S. practically ensured streaming success: Luminate data shows that nearly every song in TikTok’s top 10 earned more than 250 million on-demand plays Stateside. Just two years later, that no longer appears to be the case: See Luclover’s “L$d” (20.4 million, No. 2 on TikTok in the U.S.), Yung Lean’s “Ginseng Strip 2002” (71.1 million, No. 3), and Duke & Jones and Louis Theroux’s “Jiggle Jiggle” (82.5 million streams, No. 8). Now “There’s a bunch of stuff going off [on TikTok] that’s not even a hit,” says one A&R.
The overall streaming totals for TikTok’s biggest songs show a sharp decline year over year. Back in 2020, the top 10 singles on TikTok in the U.S. — from Doja Cat’s “Say So” to Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” — collectively amassed more than 4.9 billion Stateside streams. The top 10 songs on TikTok in the U.S. in 2021 — think back to Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” and Cardi B’s “Up” — garnered only a little more than 3 billion streams between them in America. And the top 10 TikTok songs in the U.S. in 2022, ranging from Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” amassed just 1.9 billion Stateside streams combined. That’s a drop of roughly 3 billion streams, or 61%, in two years.
A representative for TikTok declined to comment for this story. In the platform’s year-end report, Ole Obermann, Global Head of Music, said that “13 out of 14 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1’s were supported by viral trends on TikTok.” “Our platform continues to unlock real-world opportunities for artists and labels,” Obermann added, “helping talent to secure record deals, brand collaborations, chart success, or be re-discovered decades later.”
But TikTok has changed markedly in the last few years, making it harder to turn success on the app into those opportunities — at least in the world of streaming. The first challenge for the music industry is saturation. “There’s so much noise; it’s harder to cut through,” says one manager whose acts have been at the center of multiple bidding wars following viral moments. “Once upon a time there wasn’t a lot of money pouring into TikTok. Now the music business, Hollywood, fashion, retail, beverage, everybody is trying to use TikTok to drive their product.” Music is competing for attention not only with other music, the huge amount of new songs and user-generated remixes that pop up each day, but with Marvel movies and canned cocktails.
And as TikTok’s user-base has swelled, it’s splintered into smaller communities that share the same interests, meaning that capturing everyone’s eyeballs — and ears — is increasingly difficult. “More users means TikTok’s ‘For You’ page algorithm has more content to offer, and it also means more data that allows it to be more targeted with its content recommendations,” one digital marketer told Billboard earlier this year. “People are less likely to see the same thing, like Charli D’Amelio dancing, and are more likely to see content from niches the algorithm recommends specifically for them.” As a result, “trends are siloed when they used to be community-wide,” a digital marketing company owner explained recently.
In addition, a handful of executives posit that TikTok is addictive enough that some users, especially younger ones, are starting to “use it as their music service,” according to one indie label-head, rather than leaving the app to go stream music elsewhere. Obermann hit back against this idea in November: “Our community comes to TikTok to watch videos,” he told Billboard, “not to listen to full-length tracks.”
It’s not clear that everyone wants to listen to full-length tracks these days. What is clear is that the interactivity that users find so compelling on TikTok threatens to undermine the traditional streaming experience. When music encountered on the app in a goofy or galvanizing video “is listened to [later] on streaming, it is stripped of all that creative and cultural context,” Mark Mulligan, managing director for music consultancy MIDiA Research, wrote recently. “It is like only listening to the soundtrack of a movie.” Some users may prefer to hear the music along with the video clips, even if it comes in short bursts.
The music industry views TikTok as a means to an end, and the equation has always been simple: More videos on the app using our music = more streams for our music. If the connection between the two weakens, it will have notable implications for A&R and marketing strategy. “There’s very little predictability now,” says one A&R. “You just can’t know how long something will sustain anymore.”
TikTok is known for compulsively addictive short-form video, and for the past three years, much of the music industry has been hooked. By now, the platform is widely viewed as the most potent driver of streaming activity; marketing strategies often center on trying to harness the app’s users to touch off hits.
Lately, however, there’s been a noticeable shift in the way the music business talks about TikTok. One major-label executive with experience running campaigns on the platform recently mused to colleagues that he thought it was “dead” for breaking new songs. Another calls it “not workable.” “Does TikTok break hits now?” asks an A&R executive. “There’s a bunch of stuff going off there that’s not even a hit. We’re running on the inertia of what it was.”
“TikTok is eating itself,” declares Max Bernstein, who founded the marketing agency Muuser. “It still drives consumption if you get it right, but it’s much harder to maneuver now. Trends are siloed when they used to be community-wide, and influencer media is becoming prohibitively expensive.”
A number of A&Rs and marketers feel similarly, and they are trying to adjust strategies when it comes to signing artists and allocating marketing dollars. It’s the music business’ version of algorithmic anxiety: An industry accustomed to figuring out how to leverage promotional tools to favor its artists is learning that TikTok is increasingly tough to control.
Not everyone agrees, of course. Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of the label Black 17 Media, which has had success on TikTok, calls the idea that the platform is “not workable” “absurd.” The app’s users helped singles like Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” soar on streaming services; at this point, it’s hard to think of a recent hit that wasn’t aided and abetted by TikTok. “The biggest game in town is TikTok,” says Chris Anokute, an A&R exec-turned-manager. “Everyone who wants to tell you otherwise is delusional, they don’t understand it, or they missed the boat.”
But even some of those who believe, as one rap label-head puts it, that TikTok “is the main platform to focus on for marketing,” still acknowledge that the industry’s attitude towards it has shifted. “People are frustrated because they can’t finesse the system so easily anymore,” the hip-hop executive says.
This frustration relates to larger anxieties in the music industry. Managers, A&R executives and marketers say it’s harder than ever to command listener attention, and they believe TikTok’s position as the preeminent music discovery platform is partially to blame. “If we’re asking, ‘how do people find new great artists that they’re going to fall in love with,’ hearing a nine-second snippet of a song is probably not the answer that any of us would give,” says Justin Lehmann, founder of Mischief Management (Aminé, Khai Dreams).
Still, TikTok is where people are spending their time — more than 90 minutes a day, according to the data analytics company Sensor Tower, nearly twice as much as they spend on Instagram. The music industry has no choice but to try to reach those potential listeners. It’s just getting harder and harder to do.
“There are a lot of songs that pop quickly [on TikTok], but it doesn’t have the same effect,” says Talya Elitzer, co-founder of the indie label and management company Godmode. “It’s not the golden era of TikTok by any means,” confirms another veteran digital marketer. “Things aren’t performing the way they used to.”
And executives say the impact of their marketing budgets is waning. According to a recent report by music consulting agency ContraBrand, based on analysis of TikTok’s top 200 from the first half of 2022, “paid-for tactics, such as influencers and ads, accounted for success in under 12% of the platform’s viral tracks.” “You can do your best to manufacture something on [TikTok], but I haven’t seen too many people be super successful,” says Cassie Petrey, CEO of the social media company and management firm Crowd Surf. “There’s an illusion of control people think they have over TikTok because we can pay influencers and push more video usage.”
As awareness of that illusion grows, “a lot of major companies, the savvy ones, are not spending as much on TikTok as they once were,” according to Elitzer. Another marketer says that he’s cut TikTok spending in many cases by more than 50%.
Labels may be shifting their signing strategies around TikTok as well. Whereas record companies have been signing acts off a single viral explosion, hoping for quick returns on their investment, a bevy of one-hit wonders has caused some to contemplate changing course. “I’ve heard a lot more A&Rs that I’ve been speaking with go back to signing artists based on musicality, which is exciting,” says Tim Collins, co-founder of Creed Media, an entertainment marketing agency.
“Too many people got caught with empty bags — labels overpaid for these deals, and the artist never delivered a better song or couldn’t rise to the occasion,” Anokute adds. “People were making multi-million dollar offers without even meeting the artist! The race to jump on everything moving on TikTok has slowed down.”
After a period where the app seemed to overshadow everything in music, executives seem more open to the idea that focusing all resources solely on TikTok may not be a viable long-term strategy. Petrey preaches a zen attitude about it all. “You’ll have moments on social media that are big, and you’ll have other times where you thought that song was the one and it didn’t go,” she says. “Continue to make good work.”
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