And that should be the last of my vacation footage - special thanks to Hoodie Allen for showing a quick cameo at Reading Festival, he was certainly cool to let me film the review in front of him and the conversation afterwards was illuminating. For an act still running the independent hustle, I've got a ton of respect for his refinement. In the mean time... no idea where to go next, we'll see - stay tuned!
Well, despite YouTube dicking me over again with monetization, here we go. Can't say I loved this, but it was passable enough I guess. And now onto something far less interesting... well, stay tuned.
So let's get into territory that can be a touchy subject for hip-hop heads: pop rap. And i can already see some of you scoffing, but let's be real: there have been artists who have played for lighter and sillier material since hip-hop's inception, some who are even now held up among the greats or at the very least respected. But don't get me wrong, I get the stigma, because when people think of pop rap in the modern day, they tend to treat the music as utterly disposable songs by utterly disposable artists, and while they aren't often wrong, you could make the argument that some of these acts can actually flow better than the endless stream of utterly forgettable mumble rappers, or who might actually have a turn of phrase that's interesting or funny - something that an increasingly humorless mainstream hip-hop scene tends to ignore. But when you also factor in the subset of white pop rap artists who tend to be using hip-hop just as a vehicle to make bad comedy - Lil Dicky - it doesn't help a stereotype of sanitized, corny, and ultimately forgettable acts that you listen to briefly in college and ever again. So where does Hoodie Allen fall in? Well, it's tough to say - you could definitely make the argument that his debut had its fair number of pop rap singles, blending in Drake and Ed Sheeran-esque vocals with loose bragging and plenty of stealing your girlfriend - a cliche I don't like regardless of genre - but unlike so many of his peers he had remained entirely independent, and his followup Happy Camper early last year grounded itself with a little more self-awareness and maturity, slightly groovier production, and a style that pulled more from Chance The Rapper than anything like Ed Sheeran. Now he could still slip towards corniness at spots and some of his production choices and collaborators are certainly dubious in my books, but he was on the right path, and considering he reached out himself for me to cover The Hype, I figured I might as well give it a chance - what did I find?
You know, I actually thought this episode would be a quicker edit than it was. Go figure. Okay, I think I'm ready for some Fall Out Boy now, bring it on!
This week, things finally seemed to get back to normal - and to be honest, I was expecting the charts to get a lot worse this week thanks to an injection of new album tracks from reviews I did last week. Instead, it seems like the opposite is true, as no additional Rae Sremmurd tracks landed on the Hot 100 - thank God - and Meghan Trainor had losses across the board. In fact, for the first week ever on Billboard BREAKDOWN, we have no returning entries, just brand-new songs - granted, with more Chris Brown than is healthy for anyone, but hey, we're getting Jhene Aiko, another Fall Out Boy single, and a punk cover of Taylor Swift, I'll take it!
