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

this week "earned it" becomes, with "happy" and "all of me", one of the three songs since 2010 to have gone #1 in all-format radio play (http://www.billboard.com/charts/radio-songs) that broke r&b radio before pop radio rather than the other way around. 2010 is the year when rihanna's "what's my name" was the only such song to do the same. (from 2009 going back to the first full year that billboard's hot 100 airplay chart was tracking an all-format panel [1999] several such songs would pull it off.)

*'several such songs would pull it off each year' i should say

*tears for Trap Queen*

Wait, how did this T-Wayne song suddenly enter at #17? Is it a thing?

vine

also kylie jenner's instagram appears to be the smoking gun of what boosted it that high

t-wayne signed a deal w/ 300 entertainment just like fetty wap so the radio play will prob start catching up any minute now...

Wow

Educate me on T-wayne

Check out D-wops of Jupiter

very interesting discussion here: https://youtu.be/odXOU2vKgc4?t=16m32s

actually it gets very stupid very quickly

god i hate peter rosenberg

it is somewhat insightful but then the whole discussions seems to focus down on "i don't like records like 7/11" :|

lmao at Ebro referring to "Latch" as a dance remix and saying very confidently that "the original was a straight R&B record"

Lmao @ someone citing We Found Love's "timeless" lyrics. Also weird that it got brought up in a discussion about R&B when that song is pure dance on every level.

Also in what world are R&B artists servicing smart R&B to mainstream radio while handing over trendy "ratchet" songs to urban radio? If that is happening, radio clearly isn't picking them up, because it's like looking for a needle in a hay stack trying to hear R&B on a pop or HAC station.

Also a lot of that low-key sounded like respectability politics.

There's an element of that but I think there's also an understandable frustration about artists giving their best work to pop radio

Ebro and Rosenberg sound like they literally have no idea what they're talking about

the people in that video are imperfect messengers but i think it's a convo worth having. R&B on urban radio right now is, aside from "Earned It" and a couple other big records, overwhelmingly leading in a certain direction (7/11, Bitch Betta Have My Money, Post To Be, Usher and Ne-Yo's stripper songs). even Ciara's ballad has trap drums and faux-Future ad libs.

Beyonce released an incredibly varied album, and the urban radio campaign for it ended up being the 2 most overtly sexual songs, a Nicki Minaj remix, and then a full-on ratchet bonus track, when every other Beyonce album had a singles campaign that went all over the map and had different kinds of hits.

There's an element of that but I think there's also an understandable frustration about artists giving their best work to pop radio

― Keith Mozart (D-40), Saturday, May 30, 2015 5:12 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm having a difficult time thinking of a recent specific example of a core r&b artist's 'best' songs being serviced to pop while substandard material was left to r&b radio tho. meanwhile there have been about a million cases in the past 3-4 years of r&b and rap artists having to record mediocre, generic edm tracks that many of pop's core artists were already basically doing in order to even have snowball's chance in hell at having one of their songs climb up a pop radio playlist.

the gulf between what pop and r&b radio have been playing lately has been rather wide, and the exceptions that happen to coexist in both spaces somewhat have been white artists' interpretations of classic r&b and a couple 'adult r&b' records that sounded just enough like cee-lo style self-consciously retro cartoon-soul to be embraced w/ little hesitation at pop. (as desperate as it was and as funny as it was to see it flounder, i don't blame usher at all for trying an sos-band-interpolating "blurred lines" knockoff last year before apparently deciding to scrap the album and start afresh.) the 'ratchet' music that rico love is so dismayed is popular at r&b radio at the moment was represented on the pop radio side almost solely by igloo australia doing her whole routine over a fake mustard beat. indeed, it is rather astonishing that "earned it" managed to do as well as it has -- i still find myself wondering sometimes how it would have fared without being on a big movie soundtrack. i even found "don't tell 'em's" crossover success last year surprising.

re: beyoncé, part of what allowed her singles campaigns to be diverse in the past was that she could count on airplay from more than one format, and would often have multiple singles solicited to different ones to cover all those bases clamoring for new music from her. she tried that strategy again this time around, but "xo" was only half-heartedly embraced for about 5 minutes and "pretty hurts" was a flat-out non-starter. i imagine an alternate universe in this that wasn't the case and even a song like "jealous" could've gotten a little pop play. (as well as one where "rocket" wasn't just getting a little unsolicited (?) adult r&b play.)

Yeah, every other Beyonce campaign could rely on pop radio playing some of it (or urban radio taking up enough space that they could still be hits even without pop support. But radio has only become more fragmented, to the detriment of R&B artists, so Beyonce will send something like XO to pop and watch it peak just inside the top 40 before falling.

Meanwhile Hot 97 will cape for the likes of Sam Smith and Lorde saying we should give their music a chance because they're really R&B/hip-hop records at heart. So I'll hear Stay With Me and Royals all summer no matter where I go including urban stations, while there's no reciprocation from pop radio which seems reticent to play even the bounciest of R&B and still will cut rap features out of pop tracks in some places. Oh and then artists like Jodeci or Jazmine Sullivan or Mary J. Blige or Toni Braxton put out the kind of classic R&B stuff these dudes want to cry isn't on radio anymore but then their music basically gets relegated to the oldies stations. That's a programming decision, not a case of artists not sending in the right kind of songs (as if radio is limited to only playing what an artist sends them).

Yeah, every other Beyonce campaign could rely on pop radio playing some of it (or urban radio taking up enough space that they could still be hits even without pop support. But radio has only become more fragmented, to the detriment of R&B artists, so Beyonce will send something like XO to pop and watch it peak just inside the top 40 before falling.

eh, pop radio didn't play anything from 4, but urban radio played "Best Thing I Never Had," "Party," "Countdown," "Love On Top," and "Dance For You." that's a way more varied slate than "Drunk In Love," "Partition," "Flawless (Remix)" and "7/11" imo.

Beyonce released an incredibly varied album, and the urban radio campaign for it ended up being the 2 most overtly sexual songs

Ha, not that this changes your point at all, but didn't "Blow" get nixed as a single for being literally too overt?

i am still mad that that happened with "blow"

Oh and then artists like Jodeci or Jazmine Sullivan or Mary J. Blige or Toni Braxton put out the kind of classic R&B stuff these dudes want to cry isn't on radio anymore but then their music basically gets relegated to the oldies stations. That's a programming decision, not a case of artists not sending in the right kind of songs (as if radio is limited to only playing what an artist sends them).

this is so otm. while i like to think that urban radio would have played basically anything that bey chose as a single from that album, something gives me the feeling "rocket" for instance could have easily been relegated almost wholly to adult r&b/oldies stations rather than the currents-based ones had it been promoted. otm also about radio playing songs that aren't even solicited to them -- while pop radio rarely ever does this anymore, it still happens fairly often at urban radio (w/ nicki being a recent example), which is one big strength of the format imo.

the thing w/ "Blow" was weird, like it was gonna be the pop radio single instead of "XO," which was never gonna work but i guess they thought it sounded enough like "Blurred Lines" to win that crowd

country music borrowing from r'n'b

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6582974/country-music-plumbs-the-history-of-soul-in-search-of-a-new-direction

See the first comment

cf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr8fdnjDclU

the article gets at it, but country has long been super-appropriative of pop at the crossover level (two of Kenny Rogers' biggest hits were by Lionel Richie and Barry Gibb). in a sense i'm surprised it's taken country so long to have an overt hip-hop element. My suspicion is it has to do with Eminem hitting that 10-15 anniversary stretch.

fyi this song is 11 years old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_and_Over_%28Nelly_song%29

so's "save a horse (ride a cowboy)," almost!

to be clear, not saying country HASN'T acknowledged hip-hop until now, just that its getting kinda omnipresent rather than a novelty

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_%28Kid_Rock_song%29

hell, if you want to be cute about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Went_Down_to_Georgia

not being entirely serious obv

i was gonna say, i couldn't tell what you thought i was saying where any of this would be contradicting it

one hope is that with 2000 back in fashion kid rock will be inspired to relax his "boring son of ted nugent & bob seger" shtick and maybe write some funny raps again

Toby Keith's "I Wanna Talk About Me" came out in 2001 and is pretty much a rap song

and McGraw worked with Nelly again in 2012.

(at that point I wasn't sure who was doing whom a favor)

to be clear, not saying country HASN'T acknowledged hip-hop until now, just that its getting kinda omnipresent rather than a novelty

but if we're playing the "who remembers a country song with a hip-hop element in it" game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtQJ9fqdV28

http://www.spin.com/2013/04/rap-country-uncomfortable-history-accidental-racist/

okay "We got a funky new tune with a fly banjo" made me lol

also what the hell: 1997: Spearhead feat. Joan Osbourne - "Wayfaring Stranger"

spoken-word country songs have been a thing since the dawn of country music

My head spun when I saw the words "Imani Coppola"

http://www.imanicoppola.com/

lol

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

^^ defines "check out my fly banjo"

was putting "i poop in a clam" on her website her own decision?

that DJ Quik sounds more like a santur than a banjo