Photo: Jerrod Harris/Getty Images
2022 is destined to be a train wreck. December’s COVID spike showed just how loose our guardrails are, with the midterm election slog weaponizing a decade of bitter ideological division, fueling the heat to demonize queer art and gender expression, denigrate women’s bodies, and dramatize The details of the violence in the city were greatly exaggerated. Political power is contested, and every inch of public life is stained by culture wars aimed at currying favor with contested, divided constituencies.
The underlying theme of this year’s major conflict is the gleeful abandonment of their better judgment to the urge to subvert audience expectations and spark controversy.Rihanna fans were surprised to hear Johnny Depp would walk into her room Savage X Fenty show roll. 4 The defamation trial between him and Amber Heard has been widely circulated on the Internet and has provided a script for the next high-profile celebrity case to become gossip fodder.Katy Perry, her year 2017 witness The debut was an exhausting public display of her every libertarian political impulse, which saddened former Republican real estate billionaire Rick Caruso, who ran for mayor of Los Angeles on a promise to replace the LAPD with a new one. Officials flooded the streets, but were ultimately defeated. People flocked to the girlfriend of the late Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock, thinking she had put him in danger after posting a picture on Instagram of the Roscoe home where he was killed, but it was later revealed that the couple arrived as suspects already there. At various points this year we’ve talked about the impact of an overwhelming sense of uncertainty on music, about Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s hyper-anxiety animated album, about how everyone from Post Malone to Thom Yorke is writing about paranoia and depression song. It will also be important to watch how musicians and their supporters cope with the turbulent news times off the record, how everyone navigates the minefield of grief and pain that this year has turned into, and our Bad habits can lead us down darker paths.
We’ve weathered the wrath of millionaires and billionaires this year, making the internet feel like living near a filthy factory, with bad vibes seeping into public squares like runoff every time someone who buys Twitter uses his Serving the Sovereign avenges his personal slights as much. The confrontation between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B morphed into a world of interconnected rifts between artist and fandom, a rift that was hard to keep up with as City Girl’s Latto and JT snowballed. That tension feels like fallout over the years when hip-hop only accommodated one or two very successful women. Malice dragged everyone down.Fan Transformation infantry; adopted a harsh strategy. Horrible behavior — ageism, body shaming and death threats — is rife. Classic diss records don’t, though GloRilla’s swaggering Cardi performance in “Tomorrow 2” is the kind of show you can only put on when you’re acutely aware of how much people hate you. To be fair, Nicki’s gathering talented women from both sides of the Atlantic to remix her No. 1 hit, “Super Freaky Girl,” was as much a gesture of transregional solidarity as “Tomorrow 2’s” New York-Memphis connection . But if these camps really cared about building a united front, they wouldn’t allow shit that seemed so fixable over the phone to enter the public discourse. Being rowdy just gets a lot of attention. People don’t know what to do with the influx of successful women in rap, other than harsh criticism.
At the root of every debate, especially the infighting over the Grammys’ rap category space, is the reality that no one is as used to seeing 20-something women dominating radio programming as they have been in this decade, and it’s pretty easy. Few have had to top the charts with a 40-year-old mom with a Twerk anthem. That’s what happens when a new class is considered a one-off and its predecessor is said to be “eliminated”, right?Why Hitmaka—the former producer of rapper Yung Berg, who on his debut single “Sexy Lady” likened his hitting game to a Michael Vick pass, and went on to co-produce tons of Ty Dolla $ign and Jeremih bedroom jam – suddenly one Bar Holder and Sex-Centric Music Critic?
As a keen trendsetter, it’s hard not to check out Drake’s collaboration with 21 Savage—on honestly, it’s ok — as a tacit acceptance of the land layout, Trust gets caught up in the battle of the sexes talk that he knows people like him about. Chopping on Ice Spice and DRAM appears to be an attempt to determine exactly how often people are talking about trivia in 2022.But Megan Thee Stallion in her loss“Circo Loco” — “This bitch lied about getting shots, but she’s still a stallion/She ain’t even kidding, but she’s still smiling” — was typical of a year when people took every opportunity to demean women And any excuses to justify men.
Bloggers and members of the media who spent months questioning whether Meghan was shot in 2020, only to learn it was never an issue during the Tory Lanez trial, dropped that insignificant burger to criticize Stallion’s sexual history and questioned she witness, Lanez seemed more excited about Lanez as a pariah than a musician or a pandemic-era influencer, whose ideas of fairness involved harassing shooting victims. Some influential goblins and gossip sites care more about attention than accuracy or accountability. (Either you hate the gun violence that plagues hip-hop, or you don’t mind people you hate being applauded. Both sides of the stance — “Ah, ah, both are annoying” — are creepy. Think about the last time someone got patted shoot, you think, I mean… This could be some unforgiving shit. Some killer or dictator. ) Black women need the same diligence and protection as men. They should not run a smear campaign on top of physical violence and institutional oppression.
At the start of the year, Ye portrayed himself as an inspirational figure whose altruistic mission was hindered by false narratives, but in the ensuing hours he weaponized his fans, ranging from dissenting Adidas High Regardless of friends and family who asked him to soften his words.Parade around last year’s DaBaby and Marilyn Manson Dongda After launching, Yeh showed that he was prone to the same ideological trap of being in a man’s dilemma this decade – willing to see himself in a man’s dilemma because of disrespect or serious abuse of others rather than out of business People of purpose, their actions, shape personal politics from any random real or perceived contempt — but his dogged embrace of white supremacist conspiracy theorists and classic anti-Semitic rhetoric is the same path that new media drives people on. An iconic case of the old thought path.
It feels like these developments can only continue in an era of muddy waters and doubling down on bets, when singer-songwriters are focused on unapproachable fun and people across the entertainment industry are saying things they haven’t said in the marketplace of ideas. A well-thought-out throw into the arms of a right-wing reactionary ready to force-sell how identity politics can get out of hand.
But Yeh isn’t the first black superstar to turn conservative in a shift that feels like a betrayal of his stated ideals, and he’s far from the only American mogul to be the source of racist, conspiratorial misinformation at a time of historical crisis . Slavery fueled big business, and much of the vehement opposition to its abolition stemmed from the many fortunes that were literally taken from stolen black families. Henry Ford took turns blaming Jewish capitalists for WWII in the final years of his life, did everything he could to keep the US out of it, and created the B-24 bombers that hit Germany in the early 40s. Yeh was indulging in a very popular Jewish conspiracy In group theory, the theory goes back centuries and aligns itself with those pushing the same nationalist “America first” bullshit everyone’s great-grandparents heard, this time fueled by technology.
Anti-Semitism, like any ideology woven around racism, sprinkles fairy dust on real frustrations, increases the absurdity of myths and monster stories, and creates divisions in communities and the arts by stoking fear and envy. Technology is new, but conservatism is about sticking to the lines and celebrating the old ways. History repeats itself when no one reads. But Ye’s recent apparent downfall of his groundbreaking fashion and music empire isn’t just about drumbeats finally coming together to the beat of his own Greek tragedy type, the latest heap on Slip ‘N Slide leading to reactionary politics. In a negative news cycle (of his own creation), Ye was so desperate for approval that he let the proverbial wolf in the door. The reactionaries with him now have well-rehearsed talking points and understand that any exposure is an opportunity to win converts, and many wounded, angry people yearn for an organizational philosophy that makes their social frustrations Significant.
This guiding ideology can be unity or hatred. You fall into fascism by a slope, not a cliff. Now is the time to put the house in order as the former president calls for the literal dissolution of the constitution.Hip-hop media—and pop music—is not immune Be tempted by sexist, racist, nationalist rhetoric, even though people of color are often the primary targets of such rhetoric. This is the year that stress tests our ability to be kind and our susceptibility to lies – fans clash and get hit, chauvinist rap media personalities see Megan Jockey as the accused, not the year Victims in court proceedings – Identifying the rifts in our communities that could tear us apart in a political climate bloodier than the carnage we read about every month, and nothing promising in the long-term forecast The place. The way everyone’s been behaving this year… let’s try not to do it again, eh? Let’s get it under control. Let’s start over.
