Jon Caramanica
Appearances
The Daily
The Year in Music
Can I start by going back a little bit? Please. It's important to remember, before all of this, Drake and Kendrick are generational peers. They are not simply artists of a generation. They are generational peers. They emerged roughly around the same time with two different value propositions for the direction that hip-hop should go in.
The Daily
The Year in Music
They have worked together in the past, but there has been an icy chill between them for many years. Through the Drake lens, hip-hop is a font for melody, for a certain kind of emotional storytelling. It's pop-oriented, both in the nature of the songwriting and also simply because a billion people like it. That's the Drake proposition. And I would say that that is the dominant proposition.
The Daily
The Year in Music
hip-hop proposition of the 2010s into the 2020s then you have kendrick kendrick is a moralist he's a lyrical traditionalist he's someone who grew up and and admired the great storytellers of the 90s um and sees himself squarely in that tradition and also understands the genre as something that should be protected something that needs defense
The Daily
The Year in Music
Kendrick the Rapper today is very much the Kendrick the Rapper of 10 years ago, telling stories, complicated double-triple entendres, and a stern message that art matters, that black art matters, that it's inseparable from politics, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. For the last 10 years, those two ideas have run parallel to each other. It has not been a zero-sum game until this year.
The Daily
The Year in Music
There's a verse that Kendrick had on a Future and Metro Boomin album where he says, There's no big three, it's just big me. Big three is a reference to Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar, the generational titans of the 2010s. Could have just come and gone, and we would have said, oh, and then it would have just come and gone. But it did not come and go.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And what followed were about two to three months of back and forth songs.
The Daily
The Year in Music
The reason that Kendrick came out on top is because he made a hit. It is the biggest diss record hit, I think, in hip-hop history. And that's beating Drake at his own game. In the dyad, Drake is the hitmaker, and Kendrick took that from him this year.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Beyonce has been on this long run of making historically-minded albums that restore Black contribution in different corners of American pop to the center of the discourse. She did it on Renaissance, and now she's doing it on Cowboy Carter.
The Daily
The Year in Music
It is a part of an ongoing conversation that Beyonce is having through her music with her most dedicated listeners about... in this case, the role of Black Americans in shaping popular music. And I think, as to your point about thesis, it does feel like there is a lesson in this. And if people who are outside of the hive seek to learn from that lesson, all the better.
The Daily
The Year in Music
But it is also consistent with how Beyonce has been presenting her music for the last few years with a variety of styles.
The Daily
The Year in Music
A bar song simply puts together two great tastes that, in fact, taste great together. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the song that Shaboosie tied for longest run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 is Lil Nas X's Old Town Road. Another hip-hop country hybrid. What this tells me is, number one, these are both two very effective pop songs.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Also, the Shaboosie song is based on an interpolation of Jaquan's Tipsy, which is an incredible song from the early to mid-2000s. Maybe the hardest beat of that year. And a great catchphrase structure that Shaboosie then took and put into this, so it has familiarity. There are millions and millions of people who do not think it's strange to listen to hip-hop and listen to country.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And those people maybe are not represented in mainstream media, but they exist. They're real. And the success of these songs indicates to me that we are in a maturing of generation that accepts that pop music is not simply pop. And you do not have to say, I listen to everything but country. I listen to everything but hip-hop.
The Daily
The Year in Music
It's that all of these things are part of the larger popular music discourse. And it is not unusual to have hip-hop and country not simply sit next to each other, but sit on top of each other. That's what the success of these two songs tells me.
The Daily
The Year in Music
My only note on the Post Malone album is Post Malone made a rap album. It's just a country album. But like structurally, it's a rap album. It's packed with guests. It's packed with the hit-making producers and songwriters of the day, except everything on it is country.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I think there's a couple reasons. One, those lines between genres that I think, especially in the 80s and 90s, we were so preoccupied with. If I'm for indie rock, I must be against hip-hop. If I'm for country, I must be against rock. That doesn't matter. No person under 30 genuinely thinks that or genuinely feels that. That's like a generational problem that people older should work through.
The Daily
The Year in Music
So there's that. I also think... Country music is big business. Country music is very popular. That is a huge audience. And it is an audience that maybe is a little bit, if any audience is cloistered, maybe the country music audience is cloistered.
The Daily
The Year in Music
So Post Malone didn't say, unlike Beyonce, he didn't say, I want to make a concept art piece about what it means for me, an interloper, to make a country album. He just said, he picked up the phone and said, who can make hits? I want some country hits.
The Daily
The Year in Music
John Caramonica? Album-wise, to me, I find Charlie an unconvincing vocalist. I do not enjoy listening to Brat. To me, Charlie is capturing a mood incredibly well, but I don't feel that mood reflected in the songs and the quality of the songs.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I think the mood is real, but to me, the songs, if you listen to them purely as art, the songs are not that effective. I never think of Charlie's voice. Like, I think of Taylor's voice often. I think of Beyonce's voice often. I think of Britney's voice often. I don't think of Charlie's voice. I think it's just we're bumping up against the outer limitations of a skill set.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Sure. So Chapel Roan is a great example of an artist who has been kicking around the lower tier of the music business for years. You know, people say overnight success. People say came from nowhere. And of course, that's rarely, if ever, the case. Uh, Chapel had a record deal previously. It did not go right. She works with Dan Nigro, who is a producer, also produces Olivia Rodrigo.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Last year, Chapel had a couple of songs that got a bunch of attention. Nothing quite as big as what happened this year. But... What started to happen last year is people said, here's someone who has an incredibly sophisticated visual presentation, someone who writes incredibly direct poetic lyrics about lived experience. And then this year, it all kind of came to a head.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And I think the reason it came to a head this year is not to go back to Charlie, but it I think Chapel Rowan is an incredibly strong traditional songwriter. I think the songs are so well-structured. And I think at root, they're very studied. And that's really why base-level fans and online fans are into it, but also everybody else was able to find a way into it as well.
The Daily
The Year in Music
It also can't be underestimated that Chapel Roan is singing songs about queer love, queer lust, queer disappointment. Like, these are things that have often been subliminally encoded into pop music and no longer are subliminally encoded. And I think there's a real power on top of the structure of the songs, on top of the power of the voice.
The Daily
The Year in Music
There is this added layer to it, I think, is speaking very loudly, especially for a younger generation that is ready for that.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I went to see her in Tennessee, and I was blown away by the level of fan identification. The Chapel Roan audience... It's almost like 5X Error Store in intensity, which is saying a lot.
The Daily
The Year in Music
She's post-hit. This is really important to understand. Taylor Swift's post-hit this year was about hits without stars, stars without hits. And what that means is the biggest individual songs you heard this year are likely to come from the hit-making ecosystem, which is up from TikTok, slightly unexpected, maybe a little left field.
The Daily
The Year in Music
To me, I don't think Chapel and Sabrina fit exactly into that, but I do think that they are the highest profile avatars of that mode of hit creation. Taylor doesn't need that. Taylor has 300 million people who care about Taylor Swift. Now, does that mean that she has a hit? It does not.