I don't want to play anymore because now I miss him

Mix 13: Floundering to define A-Pop, then listening to a bunch of other stuff instead

Popessimism?

A-Pop

Spent a lot of this week painting myself into various discursive corners thinking and chatting about “A-pop” with some folks from the Singles Jukebox and on Twitter: the idea that much of American/Anglophone pop music has in some ways become a distinctively regional concern competing against other global heavyweights, particularly K-pop, Latin American reggaeton and other ascendant styles, and Nigerian Afrobeats, with South African amapiano maybe starting to make a global claim, especially through cross-pollination with Afrobeats.

Here’s a bunch of what I wrote—it’s muddled and I’m not sure that I have the concept very well sorted yet, if there is in fact a concept to be sorted at all.

With A-pop I’m making distinction between “mass culture”—with an implied US/western lens of transmitting pop music to the rest of the world —and “global culture,” in which many international strands are globally important, even to people who could once think of themselves as the center of the world (I’m thinking, e.g., of K-pop as a more dominant pop scene among young people I know in America than any other non-hip-hop-related and/or Taylor Swift-related American pop music). The problem with American/Anglophone pop as a competitive regional concern—that is, with A-pop competing with K-pop, say—is that there are lots of remaining stars of mass culture that are genuinely global preventing everyone else from acting as a regional unit. There is also often no ecosystem below the remaining mass culture stars: if you really like Taylor Swift, you just listen to more Taylor Swift.

In other regional scenes around the world, you can become globally popular in a direct route from a regional success to global recognition, even if you're using a sort of international or transnational strategy for it (as in the case of BTS using international K-pop fans to feed back into their popularity within the actual Korean idol scene). There have always been routes like this, to go “global” in ways that may sort of intersect with “mass culture” but maintain the connection to an international regional scene (my family is rewatching I Love Lucy so I’m thinking about the mambo craze).

But increasingly, appealing to “mass culture” as a sort of proxy for global success is extremely difficult to achieve, and it's usually only achieved by a tiny handful of celebrities, many of whom have established careers from a decade ago or more. In the past, huge global celebrities didn't usually go directly from regional to global— they filtered through a western sense of mass culture to get global. What's changed in the last twenty years is that the regional-to-global pipeline is easier to access and easier to notice.

But in America, and maybe the Anglophone mainstream pop sphere more generally, pop stars are trying to find their way into the rarified air of mass culture, a thing that includes maybe a dozen (mostly American/British) celebrity musicians. And they're getting trapped in this bubble far below the impact of mass culture or global cultural significance, but without seeing themselves as a coherent regional pop movement. American pop stars below the megastar level put me in mind of Eurovision contestants with no country.

Internationally, there are a few regional stars who wind up appealing to a remaining sense of “mass culture” as their way to get global popularity, but often they're not really central to the broader regional ecosystem they emerged from. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” succeeded as mass culture in a way that BTS and BLACKPINK went straight to global culture. (I personally know young people for whom BTS and BLACKPINK were gateways to K-pop, whereas I don’t think Psy, a longtime veteran of K-pop, necessarily got people into K-pop fandom with “Gangnam Style,” though he maybe paved a route for others?) Tyla’s “Water” succeeded as an amapiano mass culture event (too early to tell its impact) while Burna Boy went from Afrobeats to global culture without really needing the mass culture pit stop.

That’s about where I ran out of gas and decided maybe I should let the rest of the world speak for itself by sticking a bunch of songs on a mix. So enjoy!

Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12

MIX 13: I DON’T WANT TO PLAY ANYMORE BECAUSE NOW I MISS HIM

1. TisaKorean: Exxactly

I enjoyed TisaKorean’s 2023 album, but thought the framing of mid-aughts ringtone rap was a little forced. So imagine my surprise figuring out that some of that frame was a projection on my part (not that the packaging didn’t do its fair share of setting my expectations), and TisaKorean follows a more intuitive inner muse. His new one is a tour de force of weirdo rap, obsessed with silliness not just as a branding exercise. If he’s not a fraction as guileless as Soulja Boy was, he is at least similarly attuned to the stoopid sublime. “Exxactly” is understated, polite even, compared to some of the other songs on the album (Jacob Sujin Kuppermann pointed me toward it as an album standout), but I like its casual, stripped-down feeling; you can almost see him shrugging: “eh, I think we got it.” And they did.

2. Doechii f. JT: Alter Ego

Stoopid or stupid? Doechii made more of an impression as Iamdoechii a few years ago, when she was more firmly on the tentative, ironic side of raunch rap, but this is a big swing to the rafters, mining the sort of house-rap that Azealia Banks perfected before succumbing to a nasty case of brainworms. (I don’t think we’ve found the Naomi Klein doppelgänger to Banks’s Naomi Wolf yet? Or maybe there are two Naomis trapped inside of Azealia Banks, and only one of them a Wolf.)

3. Cloonee: Sippin’ Yak

A late-90s rap back-n-forth with the distinctively ’20s transformation of all genres into hyperactive novelty techno (compliment—heck, not just compliment, I’m basically in heaven). Thanks to Kat Stevens for this one.

4. Black K: Ils vont déposer

This one’s from a C’ôte D’Ivoire artist I featured last year (alongside one of my favorite CI artists, AB Le Superman), has more of an Afrobeats gloss than the polyrhythms-meet-log-drum sound I fell for on last year’s selection.

5. Shakes & Les, Zee Nxumalo, Pabi Cooper, 031Choppa: Thula Mabota

Speak of the log drum!¹ Every time I think I’m out of amapiano, they pull me back in. And “they” in this case is Shakes & Les, a duo that seems to have wrested the title of “Best Amapiano Ampersand” from Mellow & Sleazy (for now). They also feature at the end of the mix with a track from their fantastic EP, Funk Series. I like this one better, though, not least because of Zee Nxumalo and Pabi Cooper’s vocals. I wonder if — between the combination of the amapiano R&B breakthrough via Tyla, amapiano’s sounds finally taking root in multiple international scenes, and the ongoing cross-pollination of Afrobeats and amapiano — amapiano has found a way to keep a spotlight on vocalists while keeping the best elements of non-hierarchal composition? Last year I complained about a few pop crossover spotlights on vocals (via Major Lazer and Major League Djz) being antithetical to what amapiano was doing best. But I’m kind of over that quibble—maybe amapiano is just stabilizing as a more scalable and exportable pop form in its own right.

6. Illit: Magnetic

Must apologize for forgetting who recommended which K-pop tracks this week — I’m pretty sure both were from Singles Jukebox writers. This one is another exhibit in the ongoing case that “My Boo” is one of the most important songs of all time — there must be several hours worth of (usually pretty good!) K-pop songs using this chord progression. But my favorite part is where the music pauses on a sonic cue that sounds like my Bluetooth headphones disconnecting. I fall for it every time, like actually getting fooled by a a can of novelty peanut brittle.

7. E1and f. Bryn: 虛情假意 (BFF)

I’ve already flogged the Minimum Viable Pop concept to death, but my god, there is no more textbook example than this jaw-droppingly shameless NewJeans rip-off from Taiwan.

8. PEAKSayaa!: ปักตะกร้า

Here I’d merely point to the dnb-pop influence and not NewJeans specifically — a Thai novelty from an artist whose childhood elementary school came up in a brief Google search without my figuring much else out about her role in the Thai pop scene.

9. Kiss of Life: Midas Touch

Another TSJ recommendation, K-pop reaching back to new jack swing. This reminds me of my sense of the c. 2010 K-pop list of ingredients: basically, elements of multiple eras of American pop and teenpop (new jack swing, “clean” and kid-oriented hip-hop, British girl groups, early Britney/BSB). At the time I thought K-pop was suggesting an alternate history of US millennial teenpop with broader cultural buy-in of its first wave, so that there was no pressure to “mature” — teenpop without the gritty reboot of boyband dissolution and Britney’s road to 2007, say. (I think I was onto something, but too myopic and too focused on American precedents in a one-way transmission model.)

10. Two Shell, FKA Twigs: Talk to Me

Light house-pop with chirpy vocals that remind me of Minnie Minogue, the airiest upper reaches of Kylie Minogue’s register, like on “(Everything) I Know,” where Kylie doubles as her own chipmunk without any special effects. Has FKA Twigs ever done anything like this? (This is the song that got me thinking about A-pop this week, even though I’m not sure that it’s even a very good example of what I’m thinking about!)

11. Tei Shi: No Falta

Second Spanish-language Tei Shi of the year. Will need to check out whatever album results from these.

12. Ëda Diaz: Nenita [2022]

Lead track from the new album of French-Colombian singer/bassist Ëda Diaz, which, Afro-Colombian percussion notwithstanding, does suggest someone who studied conservatory-level classical piano. This song was technically released in 2022, but the album came out in February.

13. Tainy, Tokischa: Jalo!

A song from Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, which sounds like a fake movie from the show The Other Two. Why on earth the Scargiver needs hype music (with a catchy sung hook from a dembow artist I’m following) eludes me, and I doubt I will watch to find out.

14. Tus: Qué Significa?

Greek rapper Tus has named this song so generically that it is (so far) impossible to find on YouTube. Qué significa indeed — I’ll never figure it out if I can’t even Google it! I was, however, able to find general information on Tus, who apparently put out a song that ambiguously glorified human trafficking and was widely condemned by officials in Greece. His defense is that he was being satirical and shedding light on the issue, but I can’t make heads or tails of it.

15. Dj Aguilar, R10 O Pinta, MC Marlon PH: Toma de 4 Toma de Ladin Vs Então Pare e Pense

16. Dj Pedrin Vieira, MC Pânico: Jetinho Diferente

Two baile funk tracks, the second from billdifferen, who calls the bass sample slap-bass funk but has a hint of Led Zeppelin in it. (No idea where the first song came from.) What I like about “Jeitinho Diferente” is that the bass loop makes the clave almost impossible for me to track when it finally comes in; I can tell the clave has been programmed against a regular beat, but I can’t figure out where to start counting; the whole thing is a rhythmic jumble.²

17. Afrikan Drums, Mc Rd: Pega Pega

Interesting collaboration between a DJ duo from Mozambique and a Brazilian MC, sort of structured as a cross-cultural mullet, African drums in front and a funk party in the back.

18. Omar Souleyman: Yal Harak Qalbe

Omar Souleyman is an artist I always like when I hear him, should probably go back and relisten to his stuff.

19. Mr. Vegas, iBez Don: Dugu Dugu 2

20. I-Octane: Unfinish Dolly

Two Jamaican dancehall songs that I have little to say about. Have been trying to make more of an effort to track Jamaican and Caribbean music, which as far as I can tell is a Spotify blindspot in terms of their playlists. I would wait for Jonathan Bogart to put out his next Caribbean list but I imagine he is busy writing about his top 50 singles between 1954-1976. (Go subscribe!)

21. Josué, Clyde Bessi: Maintenant je capte

French rap gets over the [7] line with a pretty guitar sample throughout.

22. The Zawose Queens: Maisha

Tanzanian duo get us not only over the [7] line but nearly over the finish line with an instrumental that reminds me of…Penguin Cafe, I think?

23. Shakes & Les f. Lee McKrazy: Funk 99

The aforementioned track from the Shakes & Les EP Funk Series. Go listen to it!

***

That’s it! Until next time, try not to paint yourself into too many discursive corners, unless you have nothing better to do.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Shakes & Les, Zee Nxumalo, Pabi Cooper, & 031choppa’s “Thula Mabota” (“Angisafuni ukudlala ngoba manje ngyamfeela”)

1. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about when I mention “log drum,” the log drum is a preset sound that goes BOWWWW and is often used in a ratatat style in amapiano. Like this.

2. When I refer to clave or “hard clave” in funk music, I’m talking about the use of 5-in-4, a common pattern in Brazilian and Cuban music that made its way into rock in the late 50s. In funk, you hear a very rigid and often harsh-sounding pattern of three beats—…tak-tak…tak—hitting on the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th beat of the classic five-beat clave pattern: think the “Diddley beat” or “I Want Candy”: clap, clap, clap, clap-clap. Now take away the first and fourth clap.

Funk uses clave in a way that leaves no room for the intuitive swing feel of clave in rumba or bossanova; it crams those five beats into four almost oppressively, and plays around with the weirdest way to make the beat work — using harsh vocal sounds or bizarre synth buzzes to spell out the beat. The funk clave always lands hard on the final beat (on 4 in the 4 count), and maintains a sense of the rigid tempo of house music; specifically it ditches the fourth beat out of five in the clave pattern (usually played a bit after the 3rd beat in 4), which is often what gives other versions of clave ryhthm a softer feel. Funk often gives a little pause at beat 3 and then hits the final beat like a sledgehammer.