What do Psy, Baauer, Rae Sremmurd and Iggy Azalea have in common? They’re all viral video sensations. Or at least, that’s what Iggy Azalea wants you to think.

For the past few weeks, the Mullumbimby-born artist has been trying to turn her recent single Mo Bounce into a dance video meme á la Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake and the #MannequinChallenge set to Black Beatles.

Back in March, Iggy debuted Mo Bounce, a song about bouncing your ass “in the motherfuckin’ house”. The track was released alongside a series of official GIFs like this fun and appropriate one:

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It wasn’t long before a fan page came up with the #MoBounceChallenge. Azalea hopped onto her own bandwagon and started retweeting dozens of fan videos. The thing is, they’re all kind of… weird.

Iggy wasn’t deterred, even filming her own #MoBounceChallenge.

A few hundred #MoBounceChallenge videos began to circulate on Twitter, and the fledgling meme grew from there across Instagram, YouTube and beyond. To date there are 1124 Instagram posts carrying the #MoBounceChallenge tag, and 1690 videos on YouTube.

For comparison? The Black Beatles #MannequinChallenge has nearly two million on Instagram and 2.1 million on YouTube. Searching for Harlem Shake on YouTube brings up more than 15 million results, while Gangnam Style brings up ten million.

So where did it all go wrong? We’ve pieced the guidelines together.

How To NOT Go Viral

#1. Promote Your Own Meme

Adopting the challenge as her own was her first big mistake. You can’t choose your own nickname, and you can’t send yourself viral.

Psy didn’t intend for his track to go viral, nor did Baauer or Rae Sremmurd. Each happened naturally enough to generate widespread organic support. Importantly, people found it funny, spontaneous and on-trend, as opposed to feeling like a promotional marketing campaign with money and coordinated publicity behind it.

The former viral videos were fun, non-promotional, and more about the funny videos than the song itself. The #MoBounceChallenge doesn’t exist for fun. It’s purely to promote the song.

#2. Don’t Be Even Slightly Funny

Gangnam Style is a silly, novel song. So is Harlem Shake. The videos were hilarious, adaptable and inoffensive. Most were done in groups, with offices, celebrities, families and friends attempting to one-up one another with funnier and more elaborate videos. ‘Mo Bounce’ isn’t a funny song. The grating rhythm is assaultive and annoying, the lyrics are atrocious (Homie, if you’re broke, oh, no you don’t deserve hoes… We just came to party, party, party, … Bounce, Bounce, Bounce, Bounce, Bounce, Bounce, Bounce…) As for the #MoBounceChallenge itself? It’s literally just awkward twerking.

#3. Get Ignored By Famous People

Memes and videos need a lot of attention to get to viral status. Who gets lots of attention? Celebrities! Dozens of them participated in Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake and the Mannequin Challenge, from Britney Spears to the Jenners, a reunited Destiny’s Child to Stephen Colbert, Ed Sheeran and One Direction to Hugh Jackman and Steph Curry.

As for Mo Bounce, the closest Iggy got was Ellen DeGeneres parodying the video clip – not the meme, the official video – which Iggy rode with and tried to adopt:

Can we make this the official video instead? @TheEllenShow wins the #MoBounceChallenge for SURE.

A post shared by Iggy Azalea (@thenewclassic) on

#4. Be Uncomfortably Over-Sexualised

This is no surprise for an Iggy Azalea song, but if your viral meme involves filming yourself aggressively twerking and sharing it online, your target audience is going to be extremely small. Would you get your entire office to film themselves twerking to Mo Bounce? Would Destiny’s Child reunite to shake their asses for the #MoBounceChallenge?

The song is awkward enough without a video at all, let alone with added twerk. It’s not shareable, it’s not cute – it’s just a bit gross.

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It makes sense that Iggy is trying to use any and every available method to build up credibility, relevance and respect ahead of new music. But viral videos are one of the few things that can’t be forced, and she’s not doing herself any favours by trying.

Sorry, Iggy. The #MoBounceChallenge has bounced right out of motherfuckin’ house.

We’re at about the exact midpoint of 2016, a year as full of good music as it has been the very bad. Today we’re heading over to the dark side and celebrating the utter worst this year has spewed forth. We can’t be responsible for any unexpected leprosy your ears may experience after subjecting them to:

Disturbed – The Sound Of Silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4

Take everything that was good about Simon And Garfunkel’s haunting original, hurl it into an abyss and then supplement it with David Draiman’s disgustingly autotuned baritone and a whole lot of soullessly melodramatic orchestral arrangements and you arrive at nu-metal has-beens Disturbed and their agonisingly limp cover of The Sound Of Silence.

Some of their first material after an incredibly welcomed five year hiatus (to anyone who uses their ears for good) from making music for people who still wear Monster Energy apparel in 2016, misery, utter shrieking misery is the only way to describe it. Draiman probably thinks he sounds operatic here, but it sounds more like he’s having a colonoscopy without anaesthetic while he hideously warbles some of the greatest lyrics ever written, treating each individual vowel he encounters as though it looked him in the eye and called his mother a cheap whore.

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With particular mistreatment of the letter ‘U’. (Image: Billboard)

What made it so much worse is the sheer traction this picked up after some probably now future-endeavoured intern let Disturbed onto the set of Conan to perform it live, where it was then broadcast to millions of tasteless dad rock-loving ears worldwide, the owners of which leapt at any and every opportunity to smash their caps lock into the kill position and bogan-yell down anyone who contested that this watery, flavourless nonsense wasn’t a legitimate artform but shameless to the point of parody.

You’re allowed to think Disturbed’s cover of The Sound Of Silence is good music in the same way that you’re allowed to think the earth is flat: you have every right to, but people will still assume you’re a moron beyond help. Speaking of which…

B.o.B. – Flatline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCA8HofWsxc

Who would have thought back at the peak of his career when pop-oriented ATL rapper B.o.B. was comparing himself to Andre 3000 (HA!) and releasing innocent enough garbage like Nothing On You and featuring alongside Eminem and Hayley Williams that in just a few years he’d be releasing diss tracks like this year’s Flatline that sound as though they were written in a cirrus cloud of vape as a joint collaboration between a neckbeard and a fedora.

Neil deGrasse Tyson had no idea the type of man he was fucking with when he all but doubled over laughing at B.o.B.’s ridiculous claims on Twitter that the Earth was flat (among other things). Nope, Tyson’s many doctorates and masters in the fields of things B.o.B. considers inconsequential like astrophysics and his many published and academically recognised works on our universe, even his People Magazine’s ‘Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive’ award (no!), all totally PUNCHED FROM EXISTENCE by B.o.B and his vaguely threatening rhymes on heliocentrism, clones and the ‘cults’ of Masonry and *gasp!* science. The only let-down was that the portmanteau ‘sheeple’ wasn’t used anywhere despite its diverse rhyming potential.

A rare photo from the inside of B.o.B.’s brain

The end result is that Flatline is the approximate sound of a lizard person hissing chemtrails conspiracies in your ear. There are people out there who believe Elvis did 9/11 who would snort with derision at how ridiculous B.o.B. sounds trying to take on possibly the most well-informed man on the planet regarding the subject of the shape of our Earth.

Let Neil deGrasse Tyson’s merciless pantsing on this song serve as a lesson and watch your mouth Stephen Hawking, lest your bullshit theories on space and time invoke the all-knowing wrath of B.o.B.

Soulja Boy – Snapchat (ft. Lil Yachty and Rich The Kid)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmIcrhHJyg

We’re at peak 2016 with this gibberish. An entire song detailing ‘how to use a multimedia sharing app in the foulest way possible’? You know that human tapeworm Soulja Boy has got you covered.

“Remember me?”

Featuring trap beats a trained rodent could have created backing such lyrical pinnacles ripped directly from the core syllabus of the Pitbull Academy Of Rhyming as ‘she send me that pussy on Snapchat/she bussin’ it open on Snapchat/she twerkin’ that ass on Snapchat’ and enough similarly egregious uses of the word ‘Snapchat’ that it has the potential to make the Roxanne drinking game look like Pass The Parcel at a toddler’s birthday.

Snapchat comes off as though it was written by someone whose sex education consisted of the YouPorn comments section and the halcyon days of Zoo Magazine. There are 15-year-old kids who would scoff at the immaturity of this utter trash and the end result is about as pleasant as an unhideable no-reason boner in a room full of people you dislike. It slid up in the world’s musical inbox like the kind of unsolicited dick pic you can almost smell through the phone right around the time those abhorrently overused cat and dog filters started taking off as a new and exciting way to tell your friends and family that you are unquestionably a fuckwit. We can only speculate that some jackass member of Soulja Boy’s PR team decided capitalising on this newfound surge in popularity of Snapchat could best be done via a platform as rancid as this song.

It’s 2016 and you’re still making grotty ringtones Soulja, go home.

Redfoo – New Thang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGiBiHocSZM

Hello Redfoo my old friend… No longer fouling up Australian television with his unwanted presence, the man at the head of the pack for the most disparate ratio between shitheaded entitlement to actual musical ability put out yet another album the world wanted about as much as a kick to its collective groin in the absolutely paralysis tick-infested Party Rock Mansion earlier this year.

An album that didn’t even sell well enough for Redfoo to afford the rent on a Party Rock Single Bedroom In A Halfway House, let alone this mythical mansion of poor taste he speaks of. If you were seriously one of the 144 people who used real money to purchase this album then please, know that we are here for you and somebody loves you but also know that you are horrible to the point of being irreparable on the inside.

New Thang was its lead single, three minutes and forty-five seconds of the most ear-stabbingly rotten hip-hop/dance music you’ve ever heard, Redfoo slitheringly propositioning some poor female he has decided he would like to mate with as his ‘new thang’ over a shitpants terrible recycled beat and a derivative saxophone hook so gratingly obnoxious that it makes everything achieved in that field prior by people like Jason DeRulo and Macklemore (more on him later) seem positively forgivable. Listening to this will cause even your collarbone to pop, it’s that douchey.

There are mummified corpses with more life in them than Redfoo’s career at this point and even their tombs aren’t marked with curses as horrifyingly disfiguring as those at the entrance to the Party Rock Mansion. Please stop giving this man even the littlest bit of money.

Meghan Trainor – Me Too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDRORgoZxZU

The first two-time member of this list after last year’s abysmal Dear Future Husband launched her career on the wings of a million screaming locusts, is Meghan Trainor, who backed up her debut record with Thank You, a salutation evidently directed at anyone silly enough to buy her music the first time around. If you’re wondering who is responsible for this ongoing reign of terror she calls a career, it’s pretty much every vanilla white mum who gets a steely glint in their eye during Farmer Wants A Wife commercials and who still thinks The Coffee Club is fine dining.

While her insipid rapping over lead single NO is arguably more sonically rubbish, it’s the sheer audacious stones behind sophomore single Me Too that angried up my blood the most. Over a dance beat that even people in 2002 would laugh at, Meghan Trainor shrieks from the rooftops to the world just how much she loves herself some Meghan Trainor (SPOILER: the answer is ‘more than anything’).

Seriously. This is the most self-centred drivel I’ve ever heard. The entitlement on record here makes Redfoo up there look like Nelson Mandela, as Trainor breathes in a stunted and wholly unappealing manner about how everyone should want, nay, yearn with every fiber of their being, to be Meghan Trainor.

I’m sure Me Too was supposed to come across as a song of bold empowerment and a middle finger to ‘haters’ everywhere, but what it actually reeks of is hilariously misguided self-absorption and fathomless delusion without even being slightly musically pleasant to back it up. I’d absolutely take the innocuous doo-wop-ripping Meghan Trainor from last year over this, the noise of a plague of scuttling cockroaches that presently make up the soundscape of ‘edgy’ dance music Meghan Trainor.

Iggy Azalea – Team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVGRN7Z7T1A

I almost feel bad including Iggy Azalea, joining Meghan Trainor as our other back-to-back artist carrying over from last year, it’s almost too easy to rip on her, but her latest single Team is so noxiously choking that it can’t go unchecked.

Evidently Iggy feels as though she can just regurgitate and rehash everything she’s ever done and her fans will be lunkheaded enough to still enjoy it. The hamfisted production on damn near every one of her songs is exactly the same, her snotty, ear-grinding and not-at-all endearing delivery is exactly the same. The skull-bashingly obvious basketball references and metaphors are meant to be hip but they come off absolutely lame as fuck, like this song was constructed with the sole intention of being used in time outs and commercials during NBA games (something I can sadly confirm happens regularly).

The national anthem of ‘white kids dabbing on camera’

All I can thank her for is that she (her poisonous writing team really) probably used great personal restraint in not calling it Squad, a word that results in an animal that is as cute as it is endangered being chokeslammed every time a white person uses it to refer to their social circle. The overarching sentiment is exactly the same though and it’s cringingly painful to hear.

Team was supposed to be the first taste to get us all excited for it, but that next album of yours is looking less and less palatable by the second, Igs. Put this song in the bin, airlift it out over the Mariana trench and drop it directly into the deepest, darkest part of the sea where it belongs.

Macklemore And Ryan Lewis – White Privilege II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rl4ZGdy34

If making music was truly a meritocracy, Macklemore would be on welfare. After making a great deal of us cringe so hard our necks disappeared temporarily with utter ass-piss like Thrift Shop and Downtown, he and co-conspirator Ryan Lewis made it permanent and recorded possibly the most self-indulgent tripe of the last decade in their probably well-meaning but stupid and hypocritical beyond belief White Privilege II.

Eight minutes and forty-five awkward seconds of pure wank. The sequel to a 2005 song that was already a terrible enough idea at the time, White Privilege II makes the thought of two more Avatar movies seem like something I’m looking forward to. I’m not sure which part is worse, the simpering #NotAllWhiteRappers message behind it or him calling out some of his peers for being guilty of cultural appropriation, including Miley Cyrus, the aforementioned Iggy Azalea and even Elvis Presley, accusations that are rich as all fuck coming from him despite eventually acknowledging his own guilt.

The importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the issues raised by Macklemore in this song cannot be overstated, but doing so via this mess of a song, where he pretends the focus is on the larger issue but is actually squarely and shamelessly on nobody but Macklemore, is one of the least effective ways to do it.

The world was never looking to Macklemore to give his two cents on this, one of the most important issues the world is currently facing. That he thought himself important and influential enough to do it anyway and then do it with not only complete mediocrity but pure selfishness, is why White Privilege II is the frontrunner for the worst song of 2016 so far.

May God have mercy on us all heading into the back half of this year…

Image: YouTube

Gifs: Giphy

It has been a rather rollercoaster few weeks in the life of Australia’s present biggest export to the United States, Iggy Azalea. Lost in the debate of whether or not it was a crumb move for rookie Los Angeles Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell to film teammate (and Azalea’s fiance) Nick Young all but admitting to cheating on the pop star as a ‘prank’ only for the video to wind up on the Internet somehow, is the emotional trauma a revelation like that must have put Iggy Azalea through.

Through it all she put on a bravely defiant face in social media, posting something I’m sure would have made D’Angelo Russell’s time in the Lakers locker room even easier:

https://twitter.com/IGGYAZALEA/status/715080842138103808

nick-young-frustrated

 Image: Lakerholicz

“Yeah, thanks ‘BRO'”

She subsequently released her latest single Team, the first from her upcoming sophomore record Digital Distortion and received some favourable reviews from critics and fans. It appeared Azalea was back to business as usual and ready to move on, but just like its partner in death, taxes are a universal fact of life and need to be paid. And it appears Iggy hasn’t.

Yes, the Mullumbimby MC, who originally went by the name Amethyst Kelly before embarking on a hip-hop career in the US that would see her catapulted to the upper echelons of modern talent, has to pay her taxes and tie her shoes one a time like the rest of us. The IRS has alleged that she owes them almost $400K dating back to 2014. Considering that was the year her chart-obliterating debut album The New Classic was released you would think Iggy would have more than enough of that sweet, nourishing Fancy money to foot a mere (by pop sensation standards) 400 thousand dollar tax bill but apparently not according to a leaked court document totalling the amount owed at $391,056.55, which is a whole LOT of Dollarydoos.

It isn’t even the first time Iggy Azalea has ever been accused of stealing either, we still remember Janelle Monae going to utter town on her last year, Erykah Badu too and there’s also the age-old discussion about cultural appropriation on top of that.

This is admittedly a very different kind of alleged thievery though and Azalea wasn’t having one solitary bar of it, taking to Twitter almost immediately to explain her side of the situation:

https://twitter.com/IGGYAZALEA/status/717094612683206656?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

https://twitter.com/IGGYAZALEA/status/717096756392042497?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Though I find her music wholly terrible, I can say that I do enjoy her innately Australian ability to give less than half a shit about paying bills until it’s the last minute and someone is hopping mad at you. I’d actually like to personally thank Iggy Azalea for making my overdue phone bill and my near four figures worth of parking and toll fines seem positively inconsequential compared to her tax bill.

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Image: YouTube

And hey, at least the punishments surrounding unpaid debt in the States aren’t nearly as draconian and harsh as those in her native Australia.

Image: NME

Macklemore’s new song White Privilege II was released last week, adding fuel to the fire that is the cultural appropriation debate. Now, Azealia Banks has hit back with a series of tweets – and for once, we agree with her. During her rant, she encouraged listeners to not to be so quick to “applaud Macklemore for shit black artists have been saying for years.”

“I Don’t Need Nor Do I Want Macklemore to Speak For Me,” she wrote.

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690654117400805376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690654557593063426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690655012498862081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Despite beef with Iggy Azalea, she actually stood up for her. Azalea was mentioned by name in the song and shamed for exploiting black culture. “You’re Miley, you’re Elvis, you’re Iggy Azalea / Fake and so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic.”

Calling him a misogynist, she encouraged Macklemore to take on Eminem instead as that would “make a statement”. She was sure to mention that she has nothing against white rappers, she only wants to “hear two white rappers beef.” She named a few of the white rappers she does like, including Post Malone, Spooky Black, Machine Gun Kelly, Eminem and Big Daddy Ryan, along with Kesha.

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690655552062488576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690655581280026624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690659479600402433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690659902126161920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690660109731663874?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/690660229550317568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The song itself is a borderline offensive shambles. In our takedown analysis of the new tune, we have described the song as “messy” and a “ham-fisted attempt to address how Macklemore feels about racism.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rl4ZGdy34

Iggy Azalea. Whether you think she’s an offensive rip-off artist, or harmless purveyor of hip-hop lite – she’s nonetheless become a veritable human punching bag due to her consistently being accused of appropriating black culture, and now her hip-hop highness herself, Erykah Badu has become the latest in a series of artists to jump on Azalea’s grave and call her out at this year’s Soul Train Awards.

 

Badu, the First Lady of Neo-Soul, was the host of this year’s Soul Train Awards, and to kick things off, she had prepared an opening monologue that saw her using a prop phone to field and receive calls from celebrities. The phone gimmick was a reference to Badu’s new mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone, which features Andre 3000 on track Hello and a Hotline Bling inspired jam Cell U Lar Device. Whilst Badu dropped several quality gags, there was one clear highlight.

“Who is this?” says Badu as she answers an flip phone, “Iggy Azalea? Yeah, hey…. No, no, no, you can come, ‘cause what you doin’ is definitely not rap.” You don’t have be able to lip read to see one dude drop a “ohhhh shit!” The Internet – a forum neither forgiving nor forgetful – was quick to immortalise the comment in meme and gif.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBtSc7d2Eu0

But given that Badu is a figure universally revered and Azalea is a figure universally reviled – this comes across much more like fly-swatting than mud-slinging. In fact, Azalea may even be slightly proud that her name is even being mentioned by Erykah Badu.

Janelle Monae and Jidenna (the first signing to her label Wonderland Records) recently sparked controversy when his single Classic Man showed similarities to Iggy Azalea’s hit Fancy. Azalea has openly discussed the track on social media a number of times, declaring it is a sample and she receives royalties for the usage of her song.

Monae and Jidenna recently aired their side of the story in a Hot 97 radio interview, declaring the pair only gave Azalea and co. songwriting credits as a cautionary measure to avoid a repeat of the Pharrell Williams/Robin Thicke lawsuit, which saw a large payout to the Marvin Gaye estate over copyright claims on the track Blurred Lines.

“The truth is we actually didn’t sample it. But ever since the decision of Robin Thicke and Pharrell, we believe that it was important to make sure that we are safe… When that Robin Thicke verdict came out, we realised the game had changed in music. I’m glad we were safe,” says Jidenna.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsiN0W15w0U]

Then, in a hard hitting burn regarding the common criticism about Iggy Azalea and cultural appropriation within hip hop culture, Janelle Monae stated: “Hey, she steals from us, we steal back.”

You can watch the whole interview below.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHaLl95JNYA]

Want more? Read our feature on Iggy Azalea and the ongoing debate of cultural appropriation here.

Action Bronson has found himself at the centre of a veritable shit-storm when a bunch of angry Canadians trawled through his back catalogue to unearth the appallingly titled B-side Consensual Rape. Because of the existence of the song (which has never been performed live) Bronson’s NXNE performance on public property was cancelled. Whilst the title is undeniably crap, the songs actual lyrics are relatively tame for a rap song. Consensual Rape begins with the muttered words “fucking drug shit, do the drugs…” which subtly hints that a) this is probably not a person to be taken too seriously, and b) if you’re offended by drug use, Bronson is probably not going to be your cup of decaffeinated tea. Rap is a genre known for being controversial, for being shocking, and for being inextricably bound up with crime. But even still, some lines still manage to offend more than others. We count down the top 8 most controversial rap lyrics of all time.

canadians-south-park

1. “Tire marks, tire marks, finish line with the fire marks/When the relay starts I’m a runaway slave…master” – Iggy Azalea, D.R.U.G.S

If there’s an institution in the universe that white people generally take great pains to distance themselves from; it’s slavery. By the same token, there’s an unwritten rule of Public Relations that you should never invite your audience to draw comparisons between yourself and slave owners. This probably goes double if your whole career is dogged by accusations of cultural appropriation. So when Iggy Azalea referred to herself as the “runaway slave master,” Mayor Rob Ford’s spin team shook their heads with pity.

But this was a freestyle rap yeah? A gifted freestyle rapper can’t control the Pentecostal words that come out of their mouth. At it’s worst it’s just a very twisted Freudian slip. Wrong. The song samples a Kendrick Lamar B-Side, Looking for Detox in which K-Dot raps “tire marks, tire marks, finish line with the fire marks, when the relay starts I’m a runaway slave.” In a touching piece of “homage” Azalea samples the song and re-uses the same opening line from Kendrick. Except she alters it very, very slightly by changing it to “SLAVE-MASTER.” So what Iggy has done here is stolen the work of a black man, put a tasty racist twist on it, and then presented it as her own. It’s like a racist aptronym. The dictionary definition of “cultural appropriation” should just be the YouTube URL to this song.

Azalea manages to make a song titled D.R.U.G.S controversial for a slavery reference.

2. “If you don’t judge my gold chains/I’ll forget the iron chains” – LL Cool J, Accidental Racist

Where to begin with this sonic abortion? In an extremely misguided attempt to repair race relations, Nashville singer Brad Paisley seeks forgiveness for his “accidental racism” – a sentiment shared by my grandfather. Paisley is acutely aware of how offensive his Confederate flag t-shirt might appear. But he doesn’t wear it to honour the Confederate legacy of driving a nation into Civil War to preserve the right to hold black people in bondage. No. He wears it because he’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan. A band that very occasionally uses the Confederate colours and motifs in some of their artwork. Fair enough. And I suppose he wears that white hood with the two eyeholes cut out simply because he’s a man that appreciates privacy and the feeling of fine bed linen against his face. Paisley is sick of the bigotry. He’s wrongfully judged by his appearance, and not by his “progressive” sentiments that echo the absolute pointlessness of trying to make amends such as: “it ain’t like you and me can re-write history, our generation didn’t start this nation” and “it ain’t like I can walk a mile in someone else’s skin.”

Sadly, whilst Brad Paisley is the real villain here he’s not (yet) a rapper, and is outside of our crosshairs. In 11 bars of absolute dribble, LL Cool J manages to make The Klumps look like Dr. Cornel West. LL laments the bigotry black people have to suffer: “just because my pants are sagging doesn’t mean I’m up to no good.” But yet he who is without sin cast the first stone, because LL isn’t innocent either – “so when I see that white cowboy hat, I’m thinking it’s not good.” However, he reaches a compromise, and he won’t judge Brad for his symbol of a separatist nation that would rather be literally dead than without slaves, if Brad doesn’t “judge my do rag.” Fair.

It’s done even less to repair race relations than this famous interracial duet in which a black man was also a puppet.

3. “‘Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels/ Beat the pussy up like Emmett Till” – Lil Wayne, Karate Chop (Remix)

Good taste is maybe not something you’d expect from a man with diamonds permanently affixed to his teeth and the ‘ESPN’ logo tattooed to his arm – but Lil Wayne’s line in the ‘Karate Chop’ remix still managed to be fish-market odious. In this poetic gem Wayne Carter graciously lets the degradation of women take a backseat to the brutal murder of a civil rights icon, and still manages to throw in a mention of his skateboard as well for good measure.

Emmett Till was of course the teenage boy who was murdered in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman, and who helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. The Till family sent Weezy a letter showing their disgust for his lyrics “Not only are you destroying the preservation and legacy of Emmett Till’s memory and name, but the impact of his murder in black history.” They also took umbrage with Wayne’s insensitive zeal with the female sex organ “… along with degradation of women,”

Of course the reason why Wayne’s lyric is so offensive is because if it weren’t for the death of Emmett Till, Weezy would have probably been unable to purchase his 16-year-old daughter Reginae a Ferrari. Oh, and he said “beat up the pussy”!??

Reginae's actual Ferrari.

Reginae’s actual Ferrari.

4. “Fuckk the F.B.I. and fuck all the Army troops/Fighting for what, bitch? Be your own man” – Soulja Boy, Let’s Be Real

Soulja Boy is the artist who perpetually pushes boundaries, causes us to question what we often take for granted, asks the tough questions and is prepared to tackle the controversial issues of the day did Crank Dat.

Soulja Boy is not known for his politics, and as such people were decidedly pissed when a guy with controlling interest in the Bathing Ape Company thought he would throw in his two cents on the Iraq War.

And if you’re part of the select group of impressionable US servicemen who find themselves regularly swayed by the content of rap lyrics, chances are you’re still not going to be convinced by a guy who’s actual Wikipedia page describes his music as “vacuous and insipid.”

5.“I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit/Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets/How much money does it take to really make a full clip?/9/11, building 7, did they really pull it?” – Lupe Fiasco, Words I Never Said

If you want a surefire way to look like a dumbass, publicly declare your support for a conspiracy theory.

Words I Never Said was Lupe’s middle finger to Atlantic Records, which touched on controversial political topics like September 11, government fiscal policy and the occupation of Gaza. It was considered so ‘edgy’ and ‘subversive’ that it was adopted as a pseudo-theme song by hacker group Anonymous.

For a singer to simply name-check the issues on pages 1-5 of today’s newspaper doesn’t make you Bob Dylan. This is more We Didn’t Start The Fire than Imagine. It’s got a lot of this about it –

https://youtu.be/TLEK0UZH4cs

Lupe has long walked a tight rope between genius and idiot. And this one firmly falls in the latter category. “Obama didn’t say shit” says Lupe “that’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either.” Encouraging voter apathy amongst black populations isn’t generally regarded as a social good….

6. “Little gay-looking boy / So gay I can barely say it with a straight face-looking boy / You witnessing massacre like you watching a church gathering taking place-looking boy”– Eminem, Rap God

Eminem made a name for himself with shocking homophobic lyrics, but managed to throw off the suggestion that these were genuinely held sentiments when he performed with Elton John at the 2001 Grammys. Further, Eminem has always maintained that he has never used the word “faggot” to refer to a person’s sexuality, but was rather a word used in the Detroit rap-battle scene to mean a “punk or a bitch or an asshole.” That may be so. But this line on Rap God delivered at age 40 is fairly unequivocal. The Gay vs. Straight thing sort of makes that fairly clear. C’mon man.

7. “I swear that bitch Rita Ora got a big mouth/ Next time I see her might curse the bitch out/ Kicked the bitch out once cause she bitched out/ Spit my kids out, jizzed up all in her mouth and made the bitch bounce.” – A$AP Rocky, Better Things

Oh man. Did he really just say “spit my kids out”? What’s more insulting is Rocky’s painful backtracking in interviews, in which he sort of half-qualifies his comments, and then ends up saying something even worse. “She got me into a lot of trouble but I just want to clarify, this isn’t me saying ‘don’t go listen to Rita Ora‘ or that she’s a terrible person… I didn’t say the pussy was whack,” he said. Yeah guys, it’s not as if he said “the pussy was whack”, which is obviously the absolutely worst thing he could have said, and which would have entitled Rita to be offended.

At one point he tries to pass off the lyric as the dying wish of mentor A$AP Yams, saying, “that was one of the joints that I feel like a I recorded before Yams passed that I knew he really loved.” I’m sure wherever Yams is now, he’s touched that he’s been remembered through a moving anecdote of one person’s inability to ingest A$AP Rocky’s genetic material. “To Rita Ora and her fans – keep going, you’re still beautiful baby girl, just next time keep your mouth shut and I’ll do the same.” Yuck. Of course Rocky has taken the high road here, where Rita Ora had no discretion. Rocky is a man of intense privacy, not one to put his relationships in the public sphere.

8. “Put Molly all in her champagne she aint’ even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that she ain’t even know it” – Rick Ross, U.O.E.N.2O

For those who don’t know, Rick Ross was an actual former state prison guard, before becoming a rapper and taking the name of an actual living drug king pin. It’s the kind of 180 that would make Tony Hawk blush. Given that Rozay ranks just behind the Talented Mr. Ripley for people who have built success on a foundation of pure lies, you sort of have to take everything he says with a pinch of his finest fictional blow. He’s not exactly credible; if you ain’t even know it. So when Ross said on that same song, “I’m bout to get you fucked niggas whacked,” there weren’t riots in the street. Because it was yet another example of the kind of fake boasting that even Brian Williams would think pathetic.

But the date-rape line was more offensive than copping an up close glimpse of Ross’s inked-up man-mammary – because, like, what if he’s not joking? Obviously there’s a fine line between humour, braggadocio and real life. So the general rule of thumb is that if you want to keep your Rebook deals, and keep peoples food from retching up their oesophagus, axe the date-rape lines – this could have been very easily achieved given that absolutely nothing in Ross’s verse rhymed, meaning it could have literally been replaced with ANYTHING. Abysmal.

By God, it is already June. That means we are halfway through yet another year, and what a year it has been so far in terms of good music. And while it is important to reflect on the good times, and we here at Howl and Echoes like to think we cover as much of the good as we possibly can, it is equally as important to reflect upon the bad. Music that is just silly with awful actually. So as we hit the midpoint of 2015, we’re taking a look at the worst of the worst thus far. Be warned. Be very warned. Here are six of the worst songs of 2015 so far.

6. Meghan Trainor – Dear Future Husband

Meghan Trainor means well and all with this insipidly cheesy little jazz number, I’m sure. It’s vomit-y to be as nice as I can about it though. She has written and recorded it as some kind of simpering instruction manual for any would-be suitors to follow should they wish to spend the rest of their (probably significantly shortened) lives with her, but what she has unintentionally done is provide men everywhere a good reason to never call her, ever again, purely because of how terrible this song is.

It sounds like a dreadful original Christmas carol and is twice as infuriating. There’s a good chance Meghan Trainor is a succubus. Or a nest of spiders wearing the skin of what used to be an innocent woman. Nothing that wasn’t on that level of hellish could have produced this, it just isn’t possible.

5: Waka Flocka Flame (feat. Good Charlotte) – Game On

When it comes to unadulterated obnoxiousness, few combinations conceivable to mankind do it quite as well as this. Waka Flocka and Good fucking Charlotte, together at last for the theme song to an Adam Sandler movie so ridiculous in premise that it makes Jack And Jill look Oscar-worthy.

This is rap rock that even Fred Durst would find offensively bad. The Madden brothers, taking a break from being utter nitwits on Australian television and making me seriously reconsider not having a ‘Fuck Off, We’re Full’ bumper sticker on my car, sing as though they physically can’t hear how shitty they are, and Flocka raps absolute nonsense like:

Ah, bought the tour bus like a spaceship
I’m racin’ against nothin’ but time
Probably wouldn’t be so lost if you was watchin’ the signs
They gon’ play me like a PlayStation from playin’ on that station

The Genius annotation for that can be surmised as follows;

4: The Wombats – Emoticons

This whole song is an utter clusterfuck of mess. It’s saccharine to the point of giving mouth ulcers to everyone who listens, over-produced and with lyrics that are just abominably stupid. Sweet fuck on a crust, nobody but a 15-year-old girl is listening to a song that opens with dreadful imagery like ‘it’s tough to stay objective baby, with your tongue abseiling down my neck’  and finding it enjoyable. The chorus:

You need to find a different boy’s heart to chew
Chew
And all these emoticons and words
Try to make it better but they only make it worse

Is about as relevant for those who have seen the last of puberty as sex education is. It’s a musical Jay-Jays t-shirt. If you tried to print the lyrics for this song off you would end up with next month’s issue of Dolly magazine (they still make that right?), featuring a centrefold quiz on how miserable a person you are.

If you liked Emoticons, go straight to incredibly. You are an incredibly miserable fucking person.

3: Kid Rock – First Kiss

I’ll admit it, Kid Rock in his Devil Without A Cause heyday was one of my guilty pleasures. He just had so few fucks to give and I was a teenager who thought his hillbilly-fried rap metal was real neat. I recoiled in horror then in 2007 when he tried to revive the festering corpse of southern rock by bastardising Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd in the interminably soulless All Summer Long. 

He’s continuing in that vein here, and the results are sickening. I won’t dance around it, he now sounds like Shannon Noll, only if Nollsy had a 20 pack/year history of smoking naught but Marlboro Reds and gargling moonshine after meals. He sings about such nostalgic redneck delights as listening to Tom Petty on the radio and owning a pickup truck, as well as remembering his first kiss from his high school sweetheart, who probably did nothing to deserve such cruel and unusual punishment.

Picture this trying to assault your mouth with his and you will know her terror.

I’m not sure she’s quite as wistful for old Kid Rock, who dresses and smells like what a bottle of Jim Beam would if it gained sentience. Fun Fact: Kid Rock is in an unreleased sex tape with Scott Stapp and I would rather experience that then this horseshit paint-by-numbers country drivel one more time.

2: Eden xo – The Weekend

I’m really, really sorry to do this to you, but I have experienced Eden xo and I’m pretty sure I have to pass her video along to someone else or I’ll die a terrible, terrible death in seven days. I’m so sorry.

She’s coming for you now…

The Weekend goes for two minutes and fifty-two unbearable seconds, and I think I’d rather be electrocuted while magpies swoop at me for that amount of time than deal with this kind of emotional torture. Eden xo’s grasp of lyrics makes Rebecca Black look like Tracy Chapman. The chorus of this clown-dick appalling ditty:

Oh my God it’s the weekend,
Hands up for the weekend!
Oh my God it’s the weekend,
Hands up for the weekend!

If the weekend was exactly how Eden xo wanted it to be, I would spend mine working in a Russian labour camp. And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Lil Jon is here to poke his stupid little dreadlocked head in and prove you stupefyingly wrong:

God is dead.

1. Britney Spears (feat. Iggy Azalea) – Pretty Girls

This song is unspeakably crass. It is a turkey slap to the face of good taste. It is pure, blinding, vanilla white trash of the highest order. It could kill every single one of the Avengers, it is so unforgivingly toxic.

Christ, it boggles my mind how anyone in charge of a record label sat down and pitched this as a fine idea. Whoever did could sell fire in hell, because they successfully convinced the producers of this… this evil,  to flush their tattered souls straight down there via this musical toilet.

Britney delivers her lyrics like she’s having a seizure after inhaling a balloon full of helium and the regrets of strippers. Iggy is at her culture-appropriatingly grating best. She might as well just cut to the chase and run with blackface already, it’s getting that bad. You would have to be an actual parasite to find anything even remotely good about any of this. Playing the lyrics backwards is an incantation that summons poisonous snakes. Only poisonous snakes. All of the poisonous snakes.

You were warned.

Here’s to the rest of what 2015 has to bring!

 

The greatest cultural appropriator of our time, Iggy Azalea, has cancelled her Great Escape US Tour.

After already being delayed earlier this year due to “production delays”, the female emcee has cancelled her tour amid rumours of a management fall-out. Ticket holders allegedly received an email on Friday announcing that, “The Iggy Azalea Great Escape Tour scheduled for this fall has been cancelled and refunds are available at point of purchase.”

The Great Escape Tour was meant to start on September 18th in San Diego, after being pushed back earlier in the year due to what a statement described as “production delays”.

Here is a tweet from the horse’s mouth herself:

Apparently, “There will be a new tour planned around Iggy‘s new record to be released in 2016”. Goddamn, we can’t wait…

While the demise of the tour won’t be great disappointment to genuine rap fans, here at H&E we’ve hypothesised the four REAL reasons for Iggy’s concert cancellation.

4. Low Ticket Sales

Let’s be honest, it was a little overambitious for Iggy to assume that she would have an enormous stadium turnout on the level of someone like Rihanna or Beyonce. She’s relatively new to the A-list, only finding fame with her hit Fancy. The tour was supposed to stop at arenas like Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and LA’s Staples Center. The two venues cater to 15,795 and 18,118 spectators respectively, a far cry from the 1000 plus concerts she’s put on previously.

3. A shitty playlist

Unlike real rappers who rely on, oh I don’t know, SKILL, experience and culture to craft and buffer a song out, Iggy goes straight for the ‘I’ll-make-a-rap-song-and-insert-a-pop-chorus-somewhere-in-there-to sell-records’. This is evident in her most recent string of ‘hits’: Fancy ft. Charli XCX, Black Widow ft. Rita Ora, Trouble ft. Jennifer Hudson and Pretty Girls ft. Britney Spears.

Although I’m pretty sure an auto-tuned queef played on repeat would sound better than auditory farce that Pretty Girls is, most of the people featuring in these songs are big stars in their own right, and big stars have, like, shit to do you know? So I doubt any of them would be making an appearance at one, let alone any, of the Great Escape shows.

And when the the structural support of some of your biggest hits are missing, well, that really detracts from the entertainment factor of your performance. But I suppose that’s what happens when you aim for the charts and not the hearts.

2. She’s not really actually that talented

When you sound and talk like someone from the northern coast of Australia, but rap like someone from the southern USA, there is going to be something a little questionable about the level and authenticity of your talent. 

There is something quite off-putting about hearing Iggy’s strong Australian drawl when she speaks as proposed to her American rap style. But that’s not the most off-putting thing you hear from her she she goes on air. Just look at this video of her below trying to freestyle on Sway.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2oGADsQ_P0&w=560&h=315]

Painful, painful stuff. Even Iggy herself is reluctant to freestyle, which she awkwardly fumbles through, before picking up a little steam towards the end.

If you think that’s bad, check this video out of one of her performances live, which was so incoherent, that it required a ‘translation…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQEywtgXc8E&w=560&h=315]

Is it any wonder she can’t fill stadiums?

1. She is a repeat perpetrator of grossly insensitive cultural crimes

You’d have to be living under a rock, or at least without internet access, to not have heard even a smidgen of the cultural appropriation debate (which we discuss here) being waged against Iggy Azalea. To quickly surmise, Iggy is being accused of putting on a cultural ‘blackface’, in which she pantomimes all the musical attributes of a Southern American rapper.

Being a white, Australian female, who has essentially absorbed the style of another culture’s (being the African American culture of the US) background into her musical style without proper acknowledge to that said culture, Iggy Azalea is able to capitalise on the palatability of her whiteness to reach a wider audience, without the fallbacks of actually being a marginalised black person in a country where systemic racism is heavily institutionalised.

Being an Australian myself, it is hard for me, or anyone in my position, to understand how grossly offensive this could be to an African American. But imagine this: A white person, from another country, rolls in and pick and chooses whatever she likes from your musical culture, a culture based on a history of systematic oppression and suffering, the only outlet for the gross injustice you face on a daily basis, and appropriates it into her own music without any acknowledgment of where it came from. How would that makes you feel? I don’t imagine it would be good.

And Azalea’s debut album The New Classic, did not debate to critical acclaim on the ‘Urban’ (i.e. Black) charts, let alone the mainstream one. Why would any genuine rap/hip hop fans want to go see her make a mockery of a genre that is uniquely African American in origin? 

So there you have it. And if you ever feel a little bit upset that Iggy won’t be going on tour, just remember, she and Britney recorded this atrocity.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV2uebhnqOw&w=560&h=315]

Rapper Iggy Azalea has put the controversial issue of cultural appropriation back on the agenda. The issue is raw in the wake of a wave of race riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, following police killings of unarmed black men. The debate is particularly contentious because it involves a discussion of two competing rights, that most regard as fundamental. A right to free expression versus a right to cultural integrity. The idea that people should be free to express themselves without limit, while at the same time acknowledging that we shouldn’t rob others of their culture. It’s sometimes not easy to see where the line has to be drawn.

It’s fairly easy to accept that there’s something inherently vomit-inducing about cultural appropriation. The example that comes most easily to mind is hipsters sporting Native American headdresses at Burning Man or Glastonbury. It’s easy to understand what’s twisted about a group of rich white people on horse tranquilizers, taking the image and identity of a proud and vanquished race for the purpose of looking briefly spiritual. It’s not right that someone’s ancient and sacred culture can be used to lend temporary chic to your Instagram upload. It’s also obvious that this is doubly offensive when this is done by a colonial culture to one that was cruelly conquered. I don’t think anyone would begrudge a Native American if he wanted to wear a pork-pie hat to Coachella.  The exact same thing happens with black culture. You can see that there’s something awful about acknowledging  the ‘cool’ value of  black dress, appearance and lifestyle, without understanding  that black people themselves are valuable. 16-year-old actor Amandla Stenberg said it best in her high school history video: “what would America be like if it loved black people as much as it loves black culture?”

Harry took some peyote to honour the country’s indigenous. But the ketamine was purely for himself.

Harry took some peyote to honour the country’s indigenous. But the ketamine was purely for himself.

Then there’s the flip side of the coin. People have a right to express themselves in any way they think fit. There shouldn’t be any limitations placed on the subject of a person’s art. It’s clear an individual shouldn’t be limited to the artistic styles of their racial forbears. It’s not possible to localise a musical genre in one ethnic group, and restrict its use to its original proponents. Of course the originators of hip hop were African Americans. And hip hop has its origin in jazz, which is also a distinctly black genre. But jazz has its origin in classical music, which is white as hell. And if you’re being pedantic, Africa is the cradle of civilization, and all music can be traced back to a mammoth tusk whacked against a taut piece of saber-toothed-tiger fur. Art can only be furthered, enhanced and improved through interaction between cultures.

These people are white.

These people are white.

So where do you draw the line? When is something cultural appropriation, and when is it merely using the culture of another to influence and enhance your art? It might be useful to draw a distinction between image and art.

There’s nothing wrong with a Korean man playing the bagpipes. The bagpipes are an awful instrument played almost exclusively by the Scottish. But that Korean man shouldn’t be limited in pursuit of his art to the instrument or sounds of his native country, or anywhere for that matter. If he picks up those bagpipes, his unique perspective could lead him to become the greatest bagpipe player of all time. But the minute he puts on a tartan kilt, dyes his hair red, and starts saying “ach” every 30 seconds, that’s not okay. Because this time he has taken another culture’s image. And when you take someone’s image you’ve explicitly taken their identity. Because this is what you visually put out to the world as the manifestation of yourself. It’s the most direct and constant expression of your culture.

It's 2015 people. This is the new normal.

It’s 2015 people. This is the new normal.

So there’s nothing wrong with Iggy Azalea rapping. Rap is a genre of music. It doesn’t belong to anyone. Of course its creators were black and most of its practitioners are black, but there shouldn’t be any limit on what art a person can practice and what can influence and inspire them. However, there IS something wrong about Iggy Azalea presenting herself AS black. I think the criticism that’s frequently leveled at Iggy for rapping in a voice that is different to her real speaking voice is probably fair. While many rappers adopt a persona or accent when they rap, Iggy’s style sounds like very, very bad ‘blackface’. There’s a southern drawl that borders on parody, and the frequent use of what can only be described, for lack of a better word, as “ebonics.” It sounds like a 4 minute minstrel show. “Shoot nigga with the swag dock holiday / I’m steady blowin loud, broke nigga’s ain’t allowed” says Iggy on Murda Bizness. Now, let’s just ignore the fact that a) she has explicitly used the word “nigga” here which is controversial and b) that all rap music involves bragging about criminal activity that likely never occurred. This line still seems particularly preposterous, because she is not only communicating as if she physically were African American, but a violent criminal African American. She is writing from the perspective of, using the lingo of, and about the interests of a section of black rappers, people and culture. That strikes me as not okay.

This is offensive.

This is offensive.

I think Eminem’s career is a fair baseline for comparison. When Eminem became famous, there was of course a conversation about cultural appropriation. But it never sparked the same level of debate as Iggy Azalea. Maybe that’s because society wasn’t as culturally sensitive in the 90’s, or maybe it’s because Iggy is unfairly targeted as a woman. But whilst Slim did indeed “use black music so selfishly” he never tried to be black. His voice, appearance, expression were always all his own. In fact, he only ever used the genre to offer the world his own unique perspective, as opposed to adopting the persona, language and mannerisms of a vastly different culture. What it was like to be him, what it was like to be white. Even Macklemore (who very controversially beat out Kendrick Lamar for a Grammy in 2014) at least sounds like a white guy from Seattle. And Macklemore raps from his own perspective, too – Thrift Shop is a song about the very hipster, very white habit of shopping for second hand clothing.

Cultural appropriation is a hugely controversial issue. Whilst people should be allowed to express themselves freely, image might be seen as an appropriate limitation. In the mean time, It might genuinely be interesting to hear Iggy Azalea rap with a voice that is her own and from a perspective that is her own. And I don’t necessarily mean 16 bars on the Sydney Swans win in 2012.