Video & Audio: Songs of whose summer

You play right field? I play right field too

Post Malone & Morgan Wallen: “I Had Some Help”

Just when Song of the Summer, Inasmuch As Any One Song Can Be Said To Be “The” Song of the Summer (which hereon I’ll abbreviate as “Song of the Summer”) looked like a straight-up duel between Kendrick and Tommy Richman, here come the former and current biggest male stars in America. That the song is very good (and insanely catchy) isn’t surprising given how mission-critical it is to UniMoth, plus even before his Bey/Taylor duets turned him face, Posty has always been more interesting playing with others. More surprising is how willing Wallen is to play second fiddle: here comes a carpetbagger who immediately reveals himself to be the Daryl Strawberry to your Homer Simpson, and you’re enthusiastically lending him a hand up? If it turns out he’s secretly gathering intel for a dis track, I might have to finally give him his A minus.

Tommy Richman: “Million Dollar Baby” (VHS version)

As someone old enough to have chained VCRs together to pirate Au hasard Balthazar, I don’t exactly romanticize the analog tape era. But precisely because cassette fidelity was shit, vocals usually had to be pushed up front, and I think that’s what happened with this mix. Any complaints I have about the return of the clipping wars seem irrelevant: 90% of my yelling-at-cloud complaints about modern production dissipate when I can make out the words.

Kendrick Lamar: “Euphoria”

The marketplace has decided otherwise, but the bouncy pedo one seems a bit repetitive to me. This is the culture-altering dis I find the most replayable: Kendrick using all his powers for the first time since 2015, not only handling beat switches with ease but using multiple flows within each section. Forget Pulitzers (except Greg Tate’s), if I were starting a feud, it wouldn’t be with the most technically proficient multiplatinum rapper ever, unless it was to emphasize that this title no longer belonged to a white guy.

Beyoncé: “Ya Ya”

Now that Posty is going to make Countrypop Life 2 necessary, I can punt off Cowboy Carter until then. In the interim, I’ll enjoy this correct assertion that anything that Tina Turner might have covered counts as country. “These Boots Are Made for Walking”? The Beach Boys? “Love Is Strange”? As long as it plays on Nutbush AM radio.

Gerry Read & DJ Koze: “Highly Recommended”

It’s another Kozy sunset cooldown by the pool, when suddenly the aliens beam down. They jabber excitedly for some time, but after some tentacle gesturing it becomes apparent they just want a hard seltzer too. A refreshing time is had by all. [WHITE CLAW PAY FOR THE SYNC AND GIVE ME A $100,000 FINDER’S FEE]

Bibi Babydoll & D. Silverstre: “Onlyfans X Fogosa”

I’m heartened and relieved that Brazil Beat Blog is back on the new albums grind, but Rod, like all of us, has his blind spots. As a complement, I’m happy to rely on Dave Moore to tell me which of the many beat/vocal combinations from Curitibana’s porn-funk breakout is optimal. (Fine, I did check; he’s right.) We all have our specializations.

Key Glock: “Let’s Go”

A two-bar trap beat that actually sounds good? Thank you King Wonka, Hadouken Beats, and folk group Werchowyna, who in the tradition of “The Ketchup Song” sing something that sounds like “let’s go” except it’s in Polish. Mr. Glock doesn’t really compare to his late cousin Young Dolph, but except in the “somehow I missed the point of John Wick” video, that isn’t a problem here.

Chappell Roan: “Good Luck, Babe!”

Fifth octave choruses are back: mostly head voice until it’s time to belt “I told you so.” Also funny that she sings “you’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling”, and then at the end of the song, the world grinds to a halt. Song of the summer in a slightly higher RPM world; in this one it feels more likely to stall at number 18.

Zico & Jennie: “Spot!”

The early Song of the Summer leader on a more economically powerful continent is… not a million miles away from “Million Dollar Baby”? An obvious difference is that here, Blackpink’s Jennie makes the most of a rare opportunity for a solo display of star power; certainly Zico seems like a more stimulating hang than the Weeknd or King Charles. Another: no way the control freaks at Hybe are allowing a VHS version.

Shakes & Les & Zee Nxumalo & Pabi Cooper & 031Choppa: “Thula Mabota”

Ama-popularization continues in its three-steps-forward two-steps-back manner (puns are always intended in this column.) Shakes & Les & co. allow singing and Americanisms, yet they also bring the syncopation, alternating between accents on the two and the 2.5. They aren’t afraid to let the drums drop out on multiple occasions, sometimes letting the keybs doodle, sometimes isolating the donk.

Tierra Whack: “Imaginary Friends”

The thing is that Drake has been a tremendously influential vocalist. He wasn’t the first to mix rapping and singing, but nobody before him could switch between the two modes with the ease he showed in 2009–11. Of course by now there are innumerable vocalists who do this better and sometimes have something to say.

Omar Souleyman: “Yal Harak Qalbe”

Looks like Mad Decent has paid Souleyman enough to go full EDM-pop (elsewhere on the Erbil album there are even thirty-second note psy-trance fills.) If it doesn’t sound like he’s completely into it, at least not enough to match the wronged-man lyrics here, his keyboard player certainly is, throwing hooks and textures into this like there’s no tomorrow.

Shallipopi: “ASAP”

Oh hey, Semipop Life fave Alhaji Waziri Oshomah is on a Nigerian number one hit. Shallipopi doesn’t feed off the highlife, or really do much at all (though maybe that’s appropriate for a song named after a rapper no one even considered inviting to the current beef), but it’s the padding of Waziri’s retirement account that matters.

Heems: “On the Radar Freestyle”

The structured rhyme stringing in the first half of this reappeared as “I’m Pretty Cool” on Lafandar. The second half is freely evolving rhyme stringing: “Rocky”/“rhaki” to “baggy”/“Shaggy”. He’s pretty good at rapping!