Female rappers, they are always in mad pressure. Like, if you don’t have a super crazy smash, it’s like, 'Oh, you flop, flop flop.' The song could be like two times platinum. 'Oh, like, flop, flop, flop'... There’s male artists that will go two years without putting a f***ing song out and they don’t be like, ‘Oh, you’re irrelevant. It’s over for you.’ Me, I didn’t put out songs for nine months and it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s irrelevant. She’s over. She’s a flop.' | | | | Puff the Magic DJ: Snoop Dogg performs as DJ Snoopadelic at a drive-in concert in Ventura, Calif., Oct. 2, 2020.
(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “Female rappers, they are always in mad pressure. Like, if you don’t have a super crazy smash, it’s like, 'Oh, you flop, flop flop.' The song could be like two times platinum. 'Oh, like, flop, flop, flop'... There’s male artists that will go two years without putting a f***ing song out and they don’t be like, ‘Oh, you’re irrelevant. It’s over for you.’ Me, I didn’t put out songs for nine months and it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s irrelevant. She’s over. She’s a flop.'”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Lyrics from major country, hip-hop and rock songs and albums released last week: "When lines of tomorrow are drawn / Can I live with the side that I chose to be on?" (And here's the very smart MARISSA R. MOSS with "a few thoughts" on that one.) "F*** cardboard signs, we in the field." (More on the artist behind that one below.) "We got mommies and vets taking fire / From the cops on the beat and the occupiers." I offer this as your continuing reminder that protest songs are still being written and recorded and that they weren't better, or more prevalent, at some magical time in the past. They're prevalent, and packing punches, now. And those are just some of the really obvious ones. Love songs can be protest songs, too. Instrumentals can be protest songs. Engaged artists have a thousand ways of engaging, and all that's required of the rest of us is to pay attention. Which, to be fair, can be hard. We'll have to take NBC NEWS correspondent KELLY O'DONNELL's word for it that supporters of the president were blasting BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN's perennially misunderstood "BORN IN THE USA" outside WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER Sunday—the video she tweeted shows them playing LEE GREENWOOD's not-at-all-misunderstood "GOD BLESS THE USA"—but we can say with confidence that the song is in its fourth decade of proving that plenty of people don't recognize protest songs even when the singer is screaming them in their ears. YG, whose "FTP" is the second lyric quoted above, is also responsible for "FDT" (the "F" in both songs stands for the same word), which is playing in the background in this disturbing video that went viral over the weekend, in which a standoff between political opponents at a Texas gas station ends with a punch. Several sites, including TMZ, have suggested that the song itself led to the punch, though that's not clear from the video or from anything police have said. But the song is, without a doubt, a provocation that demands to be heard as such. For both better and worse, it offers no options for misunderstanding... Jazz musician lettering... CAMEO on steroids: For $7,500—the price of 10 SNOOP DOGG cameos or 12 CHAKA KHAN cameos—the metal band STEEL PANTHER will record a custom song for you. DJ KHALED could charge more like $750,000 for a service like this, and probably should... RIP TONY "COOKIE MONSTA" COOK and PETER "WOOSH" BIRCH. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | The Ringer | | You know part of Westside Gunn’s story: the cosigns from Jay-Z and Eminem, the appearances at Paris Fashion Week, the grimy, ice-cold raps. But there’s something deeper at work for the Flygod. The Griselda MC talks about his Buffalo roots, how his music gamble paid off, and his just-released Shady Records debut, ‘Who Made the Sunshine.’ | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | The long-running "Song Exploder" podcast becomes the latest audio series to get transformed into TV content, courtesy of Netflix. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a pair of live music veterans discuss the present and future of the industry, on our podcast The Pitchfork Review. | | | |  | Water & Music | | So many people with years of experience creating or marketing music are seeing even the most simple financial modeling tools around recording deals for the first time — which goes to show the long road we still have ahead of us in the industry-wide quest for “transparency.” | | | |  | CBS News | | A music producer on the edge of stardom has a dark premonition - then he’s gunned down. His parents want answers. | | | |  | The Creative Independent | | Brassland co-founder Alec Hanley Bemis explains what he's learned during almost two decades of running a label. | | | |  | Marissa R. Moss | | When an artist is lucky enough to get to that point in their career when they can make choices that veer away from the least resistance and straight into the current, it tells you everything. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | How do you rank Joni Mitchell, the Notorious B.I.G., and Ornette Coleman? | | | |  | The Guardian | | A brutal childhood, a traumatic marriage, decades of racism: the singer has overcome it all on her way to the top. She lets rip about the people who have wronged her and the self-belief that sustains her. | | | |  | Psyche | | Musical thinking offers a means for composing our lives and a philosophical foundation that embraces both sound and silence. | | | |  | The New York Times | | Ensembles shut by the coronavirus pandemic are shaking up their programming. Artists of color are hoping it’s for the long haul. | | | |  | NPR | | NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Joe Talbot, lead singer for the British rock band Idles about their new album Ultra Mono. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | When we reported on the launch of Soundtrack by Twitch earlier this week, we had a sneaking suspicion that we’d be hearing from the publishing sector. | | | |  | Slate | | Scoring a Hot 100 hit is still a career milestone—but then the pressure is on to score another. | | | |  | OkayAfrica | | Navigating mbalax, hip-hop, and afropop, Senegalese artists are sticking together to make their music heard. | | | |  | Music In Africa | | Amapiano’s demeanour is paradoxical: it's soulful and innocent yet carnal with bright melodies and occasional raw and repetitive hooks, which deeply resonate in the Johannesburg and Pretoria townships where it was first popularised by bedroom producers. | | | |  | 8Sided Blog | | Artists and record labels are learning that the tools exist, for the first time in history, to reach new levels of independence. | | | |  | Perfect Sound Forever | | The Washington D.C. scene is best known for the Dischord label bands and the social and political philosophy that surrounded the label. Now it's fair to say that it has become legendary with the D.C. scene now regarded as having a similar stature as that of the London, New York or L.A. variances. | | | |  | The Bitter Southerner | | Poet Joy Priest gives readers a glimpse into her past as she recounts the hip-hop music that shaped her Southern experience. | | | |  | The Song Sommelier | | I remember when Beats first launched it's pre Apple-Music service back in 2014. The vernacular was very much about human curation over algorithms -- giving Spotify a preemptive poke in the eye. Jimmy Iovine's favourite saying of the time was "What song comes next is as important as what song is playing now." | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
