Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

fun fact: alexandra burke had three UK top 10s in 2010 alone

And Girl on Fire peaked at 11.

this is crazy to me, i felt like every radio station in the world was playing this song on nonstop rotation for like 4 months

that one had a really long tail but not that high of a peak

man i just uh... fell into a wikipedia rabbit hole reading about the billboard charts and their relation to AT40

i'm out now, everything intact

that wiki's on fire

Apologies if this has been asked/mentioned in here already, but has anyone looked at whether the same is happening in Canada? American culture is so pervasive that I'm sure it's affected us here in the north but to what extent is what I'm wondering. I could check myself but in case someone has already done it...

canadian radio is us radio modulo black people + shania twain, basically

do u live in canada murg? i live in quebec so my view might be skewed. don't know any good articles about it but a lot of rap songs that were hits in the US didn't chart very high here, even during the golden era c 2003

Yeah, I'm in Calgary.

The Canadian charts are generally a lot "whiter" than American charts, though we have had things like "Girl on Fire" get into the top 10 and Rihanna's Stay and Will.I.Am's "Scream & Shout" both got to Number 1.

Actually it looks like several singles from Will.I.Am's latest album charted higher in Canada than in America, with #ThatPower peaking at 6 and Fall Down at 15. Ugh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/26131830

Actor Chris O'Dowd has claimed black contestants on The X Factor leave the competition early because the "viewing public is racist".

The Bridesmaids star said he was a "big X Factor fan".

He added: "Generally my favourites go out in the first few weeks and, of course, because the viewing public is so racist, all the black, strong singers go out in round five."

The 34-year-old was speaking to the Radio Times when he made the comments.

Last year The X Factor contestant Hannah Barrett said she had been "disappointed" by the racist abuse she received while she was on the ITV show.

She said she felt it was important to address the issues of race and appearance in the music industry.

"You do see a lot of women who are black but just lighter. I think it was kind of hard for everyone to think she [Hannah] is fully black, she's proper dark."

She also said the problem was not limited to the audience of the show.

"In the charts now you have light-skinned people, light-skinned women, that everyone's attracted to."

She added: "There's hardly, really, a black woman everyone's attracted to as much."

Hallelujah singer Alexandra Burke became the first black contestant to win the show in 2008, while Leona Lewis, who triumphed in 2006, has a black father and white mother.

Pharrell's "Happy" is a strong contender for a Hot 100 #1, currently at #2 behind that Katy Perry song.

Huh, I haven't heard "Happy" on the radio at all, but "Talk Dirty" suddenly seems omnipresent.

I've heard it twice in the last week. I suppose it's "surging," to use Billboard parlance.

Heh, and after the talk about KUBE in Noz's comment section, they're JUST NOW adding "My Hitta"

i kinda want "Talk Dirty" to be #1 more than "Happy." back-to-back Juicy J and 2 Chainz features at #1!

Balkan Beat Box song "Hermetico" sampled in "Talk Dirty." "Happy" is getting lots of D.C. urban radio play.

i hear "happy" all the time. mostly on pop, occasionally on rhythmic, maybe just once or twice on r&b/hip-hop. i assume once it gets performed on the oscars it is practically guaranteed #1.

hope it wins tbh though i can't imagine it'll beat u2 doing a song from a mandela biopic

http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/toni-braxton-babyface-and-billboards-black-pop-problem

good piece

Excellent

"Happy" is definitely in heavy rotation on urban radio. it's having a "Blurred Lines"-like ascent on multiple formats - #12 on R&B/hip-hop airplay this week and #15 on pop.

Pharrell's second act continues to blow my mind. Has anyone ever had two imperial phases?

oh c'mon, plenty have. and his second wind hasn't exactly had Aerosmith-like longevity yet.

OK, who? My memory's failing me. I'm not talking two periods of success - I mean two periods of can-do-no-wrong centrality. Following a key role in the two biggest hits of 2013 with a solo hit from a kids' movie seems remarkable to me.

timbaland in 2006?

I guess so, though I never felt like he fell off as dramatically as the Neptunes so the comeback felt less surprising.

kind of ironic given the thread topic, but the obvious one is max martin

I could say that Martin is a backroom songwriter rather than a performer but that's cheating because Pharrell is both so I'll just concede that my sweeping generalisation is probably wrong.

i really like the piece lex posted, both as a summary of recent trends and why they are regrettable but also as a description of that album ("Braxton and Babyface’s voices move around each other like smoke drifting up towards a darkened ceiling")

not sure pharrell's had one imperial phase as performer tbh

yeah...there was the run from just before "Frontin'" where he was getting star billing on other people's hits a lot (as opposed to just singing or rapping a hook without necessarily getting a feature credit) that started to slow down a couple years later when he tried to do a big solo album and In My Mind was kind of a disaster.

eh feature muddles it but i think crediting pharell w/ an imperial phase for a bunch of features is like crediting nixon w/ four terms in office or saying will perdue is twice the player hakeem olajuwon was. how many solo #1s did he have?

i mean the term is somewhat nebulous anyway but you're not really emperor if you're in a triumvirate imo

Zero, though "Happy" may change that.

His #1's as a feature are "Drop It Like It's Hot", "Money Maker" (lol) and "Blurred Lines"

How "Money Maker" got to #1 is something I'll never understand.

If you want to see something truly perplexing, just look at the US chart positions of all of Ludacris's singles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludacris_discography#As_lead_artist

it's especially funny because his album sales went down as his single chart positions went up for a while there

Also I'm not sure if Happy will get to number 1. It kind of feels like one of those pleasant throwback hits with a lot of cross genre and cross genrational appeal that fails to break it to number one much like "Get Lucky" or "Fuck You".

Yeah that's about as perplexing as when I found out that prior to Beyonce, DMX held the record for the most consecutive number one album debuts.

yeah that's 'zero' imperial phases also. producer/performer makes it difficult to define also - dre and puffy had an imperial phase yes, timbaland and pharrell i'd argue no. how do you guys define imperial phase, in terms of numbers? seems like there should be something beyond mere 'very solid hit cycle for an album', some degree of crazy dominance and omniscience is implied as well as a certain degree of prolificacy in a concentrated period of time. maybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song) - 'oh sheila' and a million prince productions and cowrites as evidence of his imperial phase, john cafferty and rick springfield's 'bruce' as evidence of springsteen's (have always enjoyed mouse & the traps 'a public execution' as evidence of what a factor in pop dylan was at the time). if your b-sides are getting heavy airplay...you might be in an imperial phase.

number one album debuts prior to soundscan were virtually unheard of. ppl lost their shit when elton john pulled it off.

Also I'm not sure if Happy will get to number 1. It kind of feels like one of those pleasant throwback hits with a lot of cross genre and cross genrational appeal that fails to break it to number one much like "Get Lucky" or "Fuck You".

― MarkoP, Thursday, February 13, 2014 12:22 PM

o man this is just a trend piece waiting to be written

to be clear i wasn't agreeing w/ the use of 'imperial phase' at all

that luda #s look completely insane ('what's yr fantasy' didn't even go top 20??? also apparently 'welcome to atlanta' not nearly as big a hit outside atlanta) though i do recall being annoyed at the time that 'move bitch' did so much better than his other singles to that point.

Imperial phase denotes a cultural ubiquity, where even castoffs and b-sides become hits too (Elton John 1972-1976, Wings/Macca 1973-1976, Madonna 1985-1991, you know the deal). I don't see Pharrell's as ever having one.

yeah i see 'imperial phase' sometimes used to just mean 'a period where the act managed multiple hits, possibly off multiple albums' and i'm like 'so you're saying chicago had two imperial phases???'

and then you have weird situations like beyonce that past couple of years where it sure as hell feels like an imperial phase but the actual hit singles aren't there

aybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song)

A key tenant. Again: Prince, Madonna, PSB, Babyface, Bowie in England 1972-1976.