When Nicki Minaj released the album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded in spring 2012, it was a bold experiment, one-half slick dance-pop songs like “Pound the Alarm” and one-half killer-rhyme workouts like “Come on a Cone” and “Beez in the Trap.” It was a peculiar time for mainstream hip-hop: Billboard was just starting to tabulate streaming data, Black music’s grip on the charts seemed to be slipping, and elsewhere, big-tent EDM was ascending. This sent savvy commercial artists like Usher and Rihanna lurching for club hits. Nicki’s glossy lead single, “Starships,” charted globally, though not without complaint from hip-hop fans, who felt she was pandering.
Nicki would never push that far again on a studio album, but others who followed have taken cues from what she learned. Pop, rap, R&B, and dance music get along much better now thanks to the work of performers like Drake, the Weeknd, and Ariana Grande; on songs like “Passionfruit,” “Can’t Feel My Face,” and “7 rings,” the cutting-edge production of contemporary hip-hop and R&B meets pop’s market-tested pliability. The artists coming up in their wake are even more versatile. Lil Nas X turned the tables on the country singers cribbing from rap with “Old Town Road,” then flirted with the sounds of flamenco and pop-rock in subsequent hits. Saweetie is on songs with everyone from Little Mix to Gwen Stefani this year. And then there’s Doja Cat—the always entertaining, occasionally frustrating star who is piecing together a body of work that feels like the logical conclusion to what Pink Friday first attempted.
Denne historien er fra June 21 - July 4, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra June 21 - July 4, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
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Creator, Destroyer
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In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
