Video & Audio: September 2021

You forgot to take the chicken out

Doechii: “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake”

The current top tier of rising pop stars is not only comfortable switching between wildly contrasting modes, they are really good at each of those modes. Doechii starts out in kindergarten, then accelerates into a credible Nicki imitation. Then she starts to do it again, but that’s just a fake out preceding a lusher alt-R&B beat, a Paramore quote, and a toilet paper joke. What hath Weird Al wrought?

Maisie Peters: “John Hughes Movie”

We’re up to like the sixth microgeneration to love John Hughes movies and the fifth to belatedly discover in their twenties that they’re almost uniformly problematic. Still, she’s already written a better Chorus-1 melody than her boss Ed Sheeran has managed, and she and/or her producers certainly understand how to create an Inspirational Drop as a Chorus-2 substitute.

Baby Keem ft. Kendrick Lamar: “Family Ties”

Keem constructs a witty, impressive (if down-the-middle) first half, so Kendrick only has to occasionally break into his B-flows to avoid totally outshining his cousin.

Penelope Scott: “Rät”

Seems kind of young to have such profoundly mixed-to-fuck-you feelings about tech bros, though you can pretend she’s singing from near-future Grimes’s POV if it helps.

Joseph Spence: “Out on the Rolling Sea”

A prayer for divine intervention so uncanny that rather than Jesus, it might be aliens that end up plucking him out of the Bermuda Triangle.

Section H8: “Track & Field”

Uncharacteristically syncopated hardcore sprint about how running from the LAPD is going to be a sport at the 2028 Olympics.

EST Gee, Lil Baby, 42 Dugg, Rylo Rodriguez: “5500 Degrees”

This pleasant Cash Money tribute is elevated when Lil Baby, apparently under the impression he still has something to prove, gets the last verse and rather unchivalrously blows his predecessors away. Learn from Uncle Kendrick!

Lava Lava ft. Mbosso: “Basi Tu”

Tanzania might have the best broken-heart-on-sleeve songs these days, and these two bongo flava guys are not shy of letting you know that oh, they have suffered.

Lainey Wilson: “Things a Man Oughta Know”

Lainey’s here to remind you of the mess you left when you went away, where “you” means “the traditional gendered division of knowledge.” Modern women are expected to have mastered all knowledge practical and emotional, whereas judging by the video, men can’t even be expected to know how to pull off an armed robbery competently. Don’t turn your back on the liquor store guy!

Swae Lee, Jhené Aiko: “In the Dark”

Swae “guess I’m a singer now” Lee is one of the few who can croon “I’m somebody’s reward” and make gifting himself seem like a huge act of generosity towards the recipient. As far as recipients go, Jhené Aiko is a more deserving one of Marvel money than Post Malone.

Bella Poarch: “Build a Bitch”

The second-biggest Filipino-American breakout multimedia star of the 2020s (her lip-syncing went TikTok viral last year) is also concerned about unrealistic body image standards: she’s “deftly dismantling the impossible standards of beauty that we are put under.” As a writer at Vogue put it.

Walker Hayes: “Fancy Like”

I honestly don't know how many levels of irony he’s on—I’m sure the pleasure he takes in Applebee’s food-I-suppose is genuine, but I know he knows that it ain’t fancy, but I also suspect he thinks people won’t know that he knows that. Given that Applebee’s has now paid up to use the song in its ads, however, the functional irony counter resets to zero. Pleasure is nothing to feel guilty about. The Oreo shake definitely is.