Lorde (from New Zealand)

Huh, if this is #3 on the US Hot 100, does that mean it's surpassed "How Bizarre" and poised to beat "Don't Dream It's Over"?

I'll bite: I find (what I think is) max's reading to be tenable but even assuming that the song is 'anti-bling', is that a terrible thing? When blingy hip-hop and pop are everywhere, why is it a problem for someone to write a song about growing up poor and not being able to relate to those themes? (I assumed "tripping in the bathroom" was a Miley/pop reference?)

Like, it's not like the song is saying e.g. "talking in rhythm isn't music" or "they don't even play their own instruments".

"Every song's like gold teeth, Grey Goose, tripping in the bathroom." I literally do not know what else this could be shitting on besides hip-hop, especially when you throw Maybach in as well. It makes the song very disingenuous when she sings "we didn't come from money."

Yeah, I agree that "gold teeth, Grey Goose" is probably about hip-hop lyrical themes. I'm more interested in this question (regardless of whether or not the rappers themselves came from money):

When blingy hip-hop and pop are everywhere, why is it a problem for someone to write a song about growing up poor and not being able to relate to those themes?

I don't listen to a lot of hip-hop by ILM standards so assume that you need to explain this to me.

It makes the song very disingenuous when she sings "we didn't come from money."

Why?

I don't know if it's so much "shitting on hiphop" as the mere presentation of a juxtaposition. Like, there isn't necessarily pejorative in there.

It's more like "I am a teenager from New Zealand, I hang out with my friends for fun, and from my perspective hiphop and bling culture is a surreal thing"

Maybe that's naive, IDK. But i'm very hesitant to tar her with the same brush as macklemore given that she's a kid from NZ as opposed to an American dude who's been kicking around the hiphop scene for the better part of a decade.

I mean, nobody on top 40 is going to come out and say "I will make it my goal to KEEP HIP HOP DOWN!" -- actually, no, I take that back because I would not be stunned if someone ever decides to -- but songs don't exist in a vacuum. It is not an accident which artists cross over to Top 40 (I don't know whether this is there or not) and which don't. (Literally, it's not an accident thanks to the Billboard changes.) And when one of the songs that has crossed over, possibly in lieu of hip-hop, explicitly draws lines like "our friends and I, we've cracked the code" and "that kind of lux is not for us, we crave a different kind of buzz," I don't think it's a mistake to question how exactly that will be received.

(And, like, everyone in hip-hop was also a teenager??? And their experience of growing up poor would probably be a lot different than Lorde's musical frowny face about counting her dollars on the train.)

Also, an acoustic Kanye cover is evidence of something, but maybe not of what you say it is? (

And it's disingenuous when she sings "we didn't come from money" because she is setting up an analogy in which rappers are landed old-money nobles and she and her friends are the downtrodden, poor, scrappy underdogs, but underdogs who are secretly knowledgeable about THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE -- and if you don't instantly see how that is a fucking stupid analogy then I have no idea what to say.

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room...
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.

man those blood stains and ball gowns!! such an obvious and biting criticism of hip hop!

well you're right, it's definitely not wrong to question how this will be received -- even based on its positive coverage i'd say there's a questionable relationship between the song's reception and hip hop. and yes, systematically songs like this will be favored candidates for crossover over even the biggest rap hits at the moment for regrettable reasons (that i am glad ilm discusses at length). but i'm still unsure of whether this is actually inherent to the song's lyrical content.

but again, if it requires this much defense, maybe there is a problem? it's like how so many people were doing those critical interpretations of "blurred lines" as promoting rape culture that involved actually misreading and selectively quoting the lyrics -- and yet there was probably still something to be said about that angle, given the way the song was promoted.

the reason "blood stains, ball gowns" is a non-sequitur out of context is because it is a non-sequitur in context, because "Royals" is poorly written and isn't entirely clear what it's about, because it was written by a 16-year-old. it isn't like blurred lines at all because at least blurred lines had an, uh, consistent throughline, whereas Lorde is just throwing images around, the largest category of which are clear "Price Tag"-like digs at hip-hop.

And it's disingenuous when she sings "we didn't come from money" because she is setting up an analogy in which rappers are landed old-money nobles and she and her friends are the downtrodden, poor, scrappy underdogs, but underdogs who are secretly knowledgeable about THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE -- and if you don't instantly see how that is a fucking stupid analogy then I have no idea what to say.

OK, I see what you're saying there. Fair point.

It's likely naive rather than disingenuous, from Lorde's end of it, but yeah.

Hey some doodle. Yes she did and then listed her issues with her shortly after But I take your point that she is indeed 'openly influenced' by ldr even if she does not really seem to respect her all that much.

― Hinklepicker, Saturday, September 14, 2013 11:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

damn, chill. all i'm saying is, my post was about there being a LDR song and a song that is literally 'post-Lana Del Rey'/LDR-infleunced song in the top 10, which i don't think can really be argued against if Lorde said she was listening to a lot of LDR when she wrote her hit. whether or not she thinks Lana is a genius or was offering a rebuttal/critique.

idk though, i guess you see what i meant, n/m. but whether or not the song is necessarily bashing hip hop/materialism, i find its sentiment kind of corny.

"idg the Lana comparison at all. Seems really tossed out there."

her voice and phrasing are very similar at times, also

"But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room...
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash."

vs

"Swimming pool glimmering darling
White bikini off with my red nail polish
Watch me in the swimming pool bright blue ripples you
Sitting sipping on your black Cristal
Oh yeah
And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers
Chasing me all over town"

etc and hundreds of other lyrics on the LDR album that celebrate decadence

I agree that they have utterly and totally different takes on this though (Lourdes being a critique and LDR seemingly a celebration, although I don't actually think it's a celebration)

well yeah LDR also has a... fraught relationship to hip-hop images

yes definitely

I like "Royals" and I think it's more a reaction to the pop-hedonist fantasy than anything else -- like, that's your fantasy, not mine, your fantasy's boring and we've heard it a million times. I agree that it's more a generational thing than a genre thing. For a kid, I'm guessing all that Cristal-Maybach stuff registers not as hip-hop culture but as pop culture, albeit the somewhat embarrassing pop culture of, if not your parents, at least your older siblings.

But of course I was sold on her when I heard the Replacements' cover, so my own biases are in play here too.

I feel like somewhere around the early-to-mid 2000s, hip-hop culture and general pop culture were the same thing or at least pop borrowed pretty liberally from it, so the "it's just pop culture, not hip-hop" response doesn't really work for me, because where do you think the pop cultural interest in Maybachs, grey goose, gold teeth, Cristal, etc. came from? C'mon.

extend that to mid-to-late 90s too.

Right, but that sort of makes the point -- for someone born in 1996, the distinction between "hip-hop culture" and "pop culture" may be meaningless.

If she gives some interview talking about how the Mumfords play real music, then I'll bite. But on the basis of this one song, all I hear is a kid taking some jabs at her elders.

It isn't an all or nothing thing. She's taking jabs at rap's more hedonistic elements and at the establishment's culture of excess at the same time, and uses this to set up a really disingenuous paradigm.

I do have to give it to her for the "counting dollars on the train" line tho. That's real as fuck.

as grating as the royals/rappers conflation is, the "driving cadillacs in our dreams" bit annoys me even more

what i do like about the song i already got from The Blow's "True Affection"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyWoZD5xfM8

i think i read somewhere that the song was at least partly inspired by hearing "watch the throne"

dunno if she deserves 100% of the blame for setting up the rappers-as-old-money paradigm you know

i like the song

i honestly don't care if she's a racist or just a clueless millenial or what - whether or not i'm offended, it's a stupid association delivered in a slow preen

For a kid, I'm guessing all that Cristal-Maybach stuff registers not as hip-hop culture but as pop culture, albeit the somewhat embarrassing pop culture of, if not your parents, at least your older siblings.

otm

And if it was partly inspired by hearing Watching the Throne, why is her critique less valid than all the reviews (eg Hua Hsu's great Grantland one) questioning that album's wealth porn? It's pretty clear that she likes some hip hop but not certain tropes - big deal.

yeah but what's good about it

It's a clever catchy song with an interesting POV. If you don't like it fine but gtfo if you're even implying racist undertones.

what's clever or interesting about it? the defense is that she's a kid who doesn't know the difference between new and old money and thinks rap culture is upper class culture. sounds like an idiot.

though actually i think the song is fairly ambiguous (or just sloppy) when it comes to making clear what she's dismissing and what's the "fantasy" she wants to live. but if it's a "let me have my rap iconography cuz i'm lower class" explication, that's corny. and if it's "fuck rich rapping royals, i'm better than prince harry and kanye" gibberish, it's even worse.

And if it was partly inspired by hearing Watching the Throne, why is her critique less valid than all the reviews (eg Hua Hsu's great Grantland one) questioning that album's wealth porn?

I thought the bulk of those reviews were myopic shit, so she's still not in great company then.

Obv there's a complicated context to Watch the Throne that makes it different from some theoretical album about the awesomeness of being rich by white bond traders' kids. But it is still an album by two multi- millionaires that (among other things) celebrates the awesomeness of being rich. I can understand a kid being turned off by it, and a non-American kid in particular neither knowing nor caring about the complicated context.

I mean, one price hip-hop pays for global saturation -- like rock n roll before it -- is a loss of control over its own narrative. People are going to hear it on their own terms.

i'm not even a WTT fan but not because it's wealth porn. it's not even context, it's right there in the most prominent line of the album's biggest single: "if you escaped what i escaped, you'd be in paris getting fucked up too"

Eh. What I hear in "Royals" is just someone bored with the stuff she's hearing on the radio (or YouTube or whatever).

I think Lorde crossed over from alt radio, not rock.

It has a stranglehold on every rock songs chart fwiw:
http://www.billboard.com/charts#id-chart-category-rock

"someone bored with the stuff she's hearing on the radio"

and the kicker is Lorde gets on the radio and the stuff she's shitting on does not.

(and yes, I know, she's 16, but still)

(apart from that I just find the production on the album so... listless. which can work, but it doesn't here.)

I haven't heard the album, I like the EP pretty well. I don't really think it's listless, though obviously she's going for a certain anomic vibe. I mean, unlike the above-referenced Blow (who I also like, at least some tracks) she has some actual grooves.

(Tbh, a lot of what's on the rock/alternative charts doesn't seem particularly rocking to me.)

and the kicker is Lorde gets on the radio and the stuff she's shitting on does not.

What radio stations are you listening to?

American ones? I'm not there to listen to them, but she's #3 on the Hot 100 and short of a viral video that takes a lot of radio support.

I'm sure the UK will catch up in a few months.

No, I know Lorde is on the radio - I just don't know how anyone can say mainstream hip hop/R&B/pop about club VIP rooms is not also being played on the radio.

Where I live, and in many places in America without large black populations mainstream rap and r&b barely get played on the radio at all anymore, and if they do, it's only the same few superstars who have been around forever. This definitely was not the case ten years ago when rap and r&b ruled the airwaves. The same station here that ten years ago played the Youngbloodz and Ashanti every hour and wouldn't touch Justin Timberlake for being too pop-leaning now plays Maroon 5 and err..."Royals" and will barely play any rap song without a white person on it, while a top 40 station that happily incorporated Beyonce and Nelly into their playlist in that timeframe has more or less purged itself of black artists altogether.

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

Interesting, and depressing vis a vis black music. It changes the context of the song if you hear someone complaining about a dominant sound (which it certainly is in the UK, and presumably New Zealand) that doesn't actually appear to be dominant to the listener, although singing about wealth isn't exclusive to black artists (and certainly doesn't just appeal to black audiences) and I don't think Lorde thinks it is either - Lana Del Rey being one of the people she's criticising. Although actually I'd say "criticising" because she isn't really saying that people shouldn't sing about these things, only that those topics are alienating to her. I hear a more personal expression than some people itt - not so much finger-wagging, just an honest observation that those songs don't speak to her.

Also when lords wrote this she would have had no idea that the song itself would be one those tunes 'dominating radio'the tune was very personal like poster above said

She's been signed to a major label for like 25% of her life, I'm sure she was gee golly amazed that her little soundcloud EP yielded a radio hit

the thing about apologetic/sympathetic explanations that deflect the possibility that lorde sucks for making the song, it doesn't actually contradict the possibility that the song sucks