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

oh lol i'll check it out

But can anyone get near the amount of spots on a chart as Ed Sheeran?

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2017/03/datapanik-in-the-year-sheero/

drake apparently

all you need know is we'll be hearing that Ed Sheeran song for a while yet

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 20, 2017 10:00 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've only heard this from my roommate karaoking it

^^^speaking if songs I only hear when I'm streaming them...

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1487-will-the-mainstream-support-more-than-one-rap-queen-at-a-time-a-charts-investigation/

"Consider this: In the entire history of Billboard’s Hot 100, solo female rappers have fronted a No. 1 single just twice—Lauryn Hill’s 1998 half-sung “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and Iggy Azalea’s 2014 Charli XCX–backed “Fancy.” (That paltry number rises from two to 2.25 if we count Lil’ Kim’s equally billed verse with Christina Aguilera, Mya and Pink on their 2001 remake of “Lady Marmalade.”) And female rappers aren’t even guaranteed proper credit when they do support a chart-topping hit. On “No Diggity,” the classic 1996 BLACKstreet smash, Dr. Dre and Queen Pen rapped on virtually equal bars, but only Dre was listed on the single; Pen went unmentioned on both the CD-single cover and the Hot 100. Even Remy Ma herself has experienced a buried credit. As part of Fat Joe’s Terror Squad crew, she rapped on the summer 2004 chart-topper “Lean Back,” but despite equal billing with Joe on the single, only the group name was credited on the Hot 100."

Sad! Do US pop hit stations all just take orders from I heart Radio corporate algorhythm types?

the ones owned by iheart do. the ones owned by cbs take cues from cbs data. etc.

http://www.kingdomnubia.com/2017/05/23/8-reasons-why-rb-has-died-in-the-black-community/

A southern soul dj I know on Facebook was circulating this.

The writer doesn't provide many facts to support some of the allegations there

That article uses every possible "kids these days!" cliche.

yeah. i'm also not sure what was implied in pointing out that "in the Billboard issue dated Nov. 23, 1963, when Black artists were still struggling to break out of being viewed as 'race' music, just under half of the Top 10 on the Hot R&B Singles chart were white acts." was it a favorable comparison with billboard's heavily white-dominated r&b charts in 2013, or an attempt to show that the dynamic hasn't really changed all that much in all these years? (also, a nitpick, but i'm pretty sure in 1963 that 'race music' was already considered quite an unsavory and embarrassing term + that the commercial and artistic importance of r&b was pretty well established given the emergence of rock & roll in the prior decade.)

in any case, using billboard's 1963 r&b charts as evidence for just about any industry phenom (other than what the charts themselves were like) is misguided at best; that chart had such a massive problem with sensitivity during that year that it was dropped from the publication without explanation by the year's end. in other words, the dataset forming the basis of the chart was not specific enough to the actual r&b market: of the four white artists in the top 10 of billboard's chart that week, exactly zero were on the analogous r&b chart from trade mag rival cash box -- not just missing from the top 10, but also from the entire 50-position chart. (in fact, none of those 4 singles *ever* cracked cash box's top 50, including jimmy gilmer's "sugar shack" which was (probably embarrassingly) listed at #1 on billboard. for comparison, of the remaining 6 billboard top 10 singles that week, all were currently or had previously been top 10 cash box r&b singles.)

anyway sigh i'm rambling too much AS I SOMETIMES DO RE: THE CHARTS. i think there is really important and incisive discussion to be had here about the marginal corner r&b has been forced into on the commercial landscape but this ain't quite it, and no 'kids these days' cliches would even need to be invoked imo.

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/08/09/541951925/kehlani-and-r-bs-women-of-color-struggle-to-be-heard-in-pop-market

"In a recent interview with The Guardian, Tinashe caused an uproar when she talked about "colorism," and her worry that, as a black woman of mixed race, "sometimes I feel like I don't fully fit into the black community." While the comment seemed to address her personal experiences, some fans took it as sour grapes over her seemingly flailing career. Regardless, it was a moment of frustration for a wildly creative artist facing limited options. "There are hundreds of male rappers that all look the same, that sound the same, but if you're a black woman, you're either Beyoncé or Rihanna," she said."

The moderate success of SweetSexySavage has reignited conversations about whether the music industry is devaluing R&B artists and, specifically, talented women of color. Kehlani's not alone: Sevyn Streeter, SZA and Mary J. Blige have also released superior major-label projects this year, only to find a muted reception on the pop charts.

Wonder what it will take to change pop radio programming

as much as i love the song, i was surprised to see "love galore" doing as well as it has been at urban radio considering sza is pretty new to the mainstream + a woman. even after it broke at urban i was expecting rhythmic stations to stupidly pass it up, but apparently they started playing it as part of the iheartradio on the verge payola program. unfortunately i expect mainstream pop stations' response to be minimal at best -- the most 'urban' songs my city's top 40 is currently playing are liam payne's imitation of 2014-mustard, halsey's imitation of "needed me" + the traffic ticket lawyer commercial -- but it will be interesting to see how far it goes.

also have my eye on: dej loaf's "no fear", which definitely seems to be aiming right down the middle in terms of its sound and mood and is surprisingly cutesy for her. most illuminating of all, i think, will be cardi b's "bodak yellow", which was well on its way to becoming a streaming smash even before it started breaking at any radio format. given how quickly it's gaining now and how much more room it has to grow at radio, i honestly wouldn't be surprised if it challenges for #1 on the hot 100. maybe pop radio will touch a song by a non-rih black woman if it's a #1 hit?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-rb-women-20170901-story.html?curator=MusicREDEF

“For some reason, people are consuming male-based entertainment on a much greater scale,” Tinashe said. “You look at the pop charts and there are no black women. And it looks like that on rhythmic and urban charts. Perhaps it's a subject matter issue? Maybe it's the gatekeepers? I can't put my finger on it.”

the gatekeepers have hated women for many years

women being relegated to features plays into this (probably the reason why SZA is on a Maroon 5 song, among the more ?!!!?!?!? developments recently but not *surprising* per se)

i'm glad to see artists in the industry acknowledging the issue for what it really is. industryites are so entrenched in the ways that the industry has organized itself into formats (that are implicitly or sometimes explicitly based on social categories like age/race/gender) that they actually think that these arbitrary categories like 'rhythmic' and 'urban' actually have some objective meaning! it often seems to me so hopeless that anything will actually change until radio and its various formats just crumble and cease to be relevant, and even then i'm not sure that would solve it.

that quote from the exec trying to explain the discrepancies by pointing to 'beauty standards' and whatnot is really awful for so many reasons. (and then to top it up with "it really, always, comes down to the song" is so insulting! that's also the go-to excuse from country radio programmers trying to explain why they play women only like 5% of the time, as if the inability to choose good songs is inherently endemic to women or something.)

broke my heart to see sevyn's quote about being stuck in depression and contemplating suicide :(

And her latest single, doing quite well on adult R&B and even regular R&B stations, is fabulous.

i hope when "bodak yellow" reaches #1, which should be soon, possibly even next week, that writers who comment upon it place it in its proper context as the astonishing achievement that it is

it might get leapfrogged by that logic song

a supertramp cover??

lol

i wish man

writers who comment upon it place it in its proper context as the astonishing achievement that it is

if you're talking about the invention of the wonderful word "arrove" as the past tense of "arrive" i agree but otherwise idgi tbh so i would welcome such comments

i didn't mean astonishing achievement artistically

(altho i like it very much)

I think that song is pretty much perfect.

it... yeah i'm not going to get into it

i guess it's nice that a woman had a hit with a trap by numbers boast too, yay equality

I think that song is just ok?? Don't really understand the adoration. It's obviously tied into ppl's overt identification w her but there are tons of female rappers who had buzz also doing no flocking freestyles, that this is the Kodak freestyle above all others is a neat bit of pr finesse

Iirc that's how anyone knows who Asian Doll is w/in rap, she broke out last year w a million view video of her no flocking freestyle (and I'm pretty sure it was on a now deleted SoundCloud from even earlier)

https://youtu.be/UU2-XKlKoEw

I mean it's a smart move if you're on her team to identify that a lot of female rappers were connecting through these Kodak freestyles but for me at least the awareness of this saviness doesn't help me fall for the song any more

Pr finnesse is a little unfair, she's obviously a star and the song is fine, I like it. but it's not as exciting to me as anything by so many other female artists that no one else covers

if there were so many female rappers, or black women performing music of any genre, garnering the level of attention and success this song has i wouldn't have bothered to make that post. this thread is about the charts as a reflection of what/who's popping and what/who's getting pushed to the back -- so yes, that a black woman whom many had never heard of before this song broke is likely to top the singles chart (w/ her own single, not as a guest) is very noteworthy to me. literally the only black woman to top the hot 100 with her own single has been rihanna going all the way back to two-thousand-freaking-nine! and the only others to even come close in the interim were, like rihanna, also huge stars who'd established themselves during the period when crossover from black radio was still fairly commonplace.

obviously it's not to say that *poof* this song goes #1 and now the tides will turn for black women and women more broadly on the charts. but it's something.

apologies if i accidentally turned this thread into the place where we discuss whether we like this song and feel its success is deserved.

i'm not saying its not noteworthy, im responding to people saying its 'pretty much perfect' and 'an astonishing achievement.' its a fuckin no flocking freestyle, its fine. in the context, conservative music labels taking a chance on a social media star who'd already been minted into celebrity by reality television does not strike me as some bold new moment, i mean its great she has success but to me it just points to how stacked the system is against 99% of female artists

and forgive me if it makes it sound like im 'against' cardi b or something, this is also a professional frustration w people who would never in a million years cover cupcakke/rico nasty/asian doll/cuban doll/molly brazy/bali baby etc etc etc caping for this great victory for women as if it isn't their deference to 'what's buzzing' (after a massive push from a major label w/ great A&R) that reinforces these kinds of Pyrrhic "victories"

d40 otm

The truth is people just want to stand behind shit they "know" will succeed bc they're incapable about going out on a ledge for art on merits beyond scalability, especially when it comes to rap where there's this crisis of authenticity & ppl take "I hear it coming out of cars" as a legit recommendation engine as if lots of generic bullshit doesn't take off all the time

well it's no. 1 now

cupcakke/rico nasty/asian doll/cuban doll/molly brazy/bali baby

Not heard any of these yet but the names and associations behind them alone are fascinating in a marketing sense.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/black-musicians-on-being-boxed-in-by-randb-and-rap-expectations-we-fit-in-so-many-things/

Moses Sumney, Kami and Dawn Richard...

good article -- dawn's words on the expected trajectory for a black artist (esp black woman artist) are very insightful

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/how-hip-hop-edged-grittier-rb-singers-out-of-the-mainstream-w504678

It's all rap's fault...(well sorta) says writer Elias Light and those interviewed

Why did the doors close for deep and gritty vocalists, who were an important part of R&B's mainstream as the genre progressed through soul, funk, Quiet Storm, disco, Eighties synth fusions, house music and the hip-hop-inflected mutations of the Nineties? More than 20 conversations* with artists, producers, label executives and radio programmers indicate that low-register R&B singers were squeezed on two sides at the turn of the millennium: First, rappers took over the vocal ranges that once belonged to R&B, and then struggling labels abandoned R&B groups, which traditionally supported a wide variety of voices. These shifts were compounded as mainstream radio stopped playing R&B songs, which limited the avenues of exposure for all R&B singers but especially hurt those who favor low, throaty intonations.

Lower register singers still exist in the radio niche known as Urban Adult Contemporary. However, Top 40 stations are accepting very few R&B songs – analyzing Billboard charts shows that in 1996, 26 singles from singers made it from the mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart to the Pop Airplay chart; last year, that number fell to five**.

** The five singers to cross over were Beyoncé, Tory Lanez, the Weeknd, John Legend and PartyNextDoor. Rihanna gets major support at pop radio, so she is not considered an R&B artist for these purposes; Drake is counted as a rapper. Even if you chose to count both those artists as R&B singers, the number of crossover singles from singers has still fallen from 26 to 11.

that is also a very nice article! but i don't think that's the right way to interpret it

It's a bit awkward in its interpretation of rap and r'n'b and how program directors make their choices

Songwriter/producer Warren "Oak" Felder (Alessia Cara, Kehlani) shares a similar story. "There was one particular artist I'm not going to name, but we sat down with their team [in 2011] and they wrote out other genre names to call the music," he remembers. "The names were like, 'soulful noir.' That's how toxic that word had become."

I'm probably wrong, I HOPE I'm wrong, but my first thought was "I really hope that isn't Usher"

also I don't really get the argument here, big voices and raspy voices and low voices are not mutually exclusive.