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

Heh, and after the talk about KUBE in Noz's comment section, they're JUST NOW adding "My Hitta"

i kinda want "Talk Dirty" to be #1 more than "Happy." back-to-back Juicy J and 2 Chainz features at #1!

Balkan Beat Box song "Hermetico" sampled in "Talk Dirty." "Happy" is getting lots of D.C. urban radio play.

i hear "happy" all the time. mostly on pop, occasionally on rhythmic, maybe just once or twice on r&b/hip-hop. i assume once it gets performed on the oscars it is practically guaranteed #1.

hope it wins tbh though i can't imagine it'll beat u2 doing a song from a mandela biopic

http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/toni-braxton-babyface-and-billboards-black-pop-problem

good piece

Excellent

"Happy" is definitely in heavy rotation on urban radio. it's having a "Blurred Lines"-like ascent on multiple formats - #12 on R&B/hip-hop airplay this week and #15 on pop.

Pharrell's second act continues to blow my mind. Has anyone ever had two imperial phases?

oh c'mon, plenty have. and his second wind hasn't exactly had Aerosmith-like longevity yet.

OK, who? My memory's failing me. I'm not talking two periods of success - I mean two periods of can-do-no-wrong centrality. Following a key role in the two biggest hits of 2013 with a solo hit from a kids' movie seems remarkable to me.

timbaland in 2006?

I guess so, though I never felt like he fell off as dramatically as the Neptunes so the comeback felt less surprising.

kind of ironic given the thread topic, but the obvious one is max martin

I could say that Martin is a backroom songwriter rather than a performer but that's cheating because Pharrell is both so I'll just concede that my sweeping generalisation is probably wrong.

i really like the piece lex posted, both as a summary of recent trends and why they are regrettable but also as a description of that album ("Braxton and Babyface’s voices move around each other like smoke drifting up towards a darkened ceiling")

not sure pharrell's had one imperial phase as performer tbh

yeah...there was the run from just before "Frontin'" where he was getting star billing on other people's hits a lot (as opposed to just singing or rapping a hook without necessarily getting a feature credit) that started to slow down a couple years later when he tried to do a big solo album and In My Mind was kind of a disaster.

eh feature muddles it but i think crediting pharell w/ an imperial phase for a bunch of features is like crediting nixon w/ four terms in office or saying will perdue is twice the player hakeem olajuwon was. how many solo #1s did he have?

i mean the term is somewhat nebulous anyway but you're not really emperor if you're in a triumvirate imo

Zero, though "Happy" may change that.

His #1's as a feature are "Drop It Like It's Hot", "Money Maker" (lol) and "Blurred Lines"

How "Money Maker" got to #1 is something I'll never understand.

If you want to see something truly perplexing, just look at the US chart positions of all of Ludacris's singles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludacris_discography#As_lead_artist

it's especially funny because his album sales went down as his single chart positions went up for a while there

Also I'm not sure if Happy will get to number 1. It kind of feels like one of those pleasant throwback hits with a lot of cross genre and cross genrational appeal that fails to break it to number one much like "Get Lucky" or "Fuck You".

Yeah that's about as perplexing as when I found out that prior to Beyonce, DMX held the record for the most consecutive number one album debuts.

yeah that's 'zero' imperial phases also. producer/performer makes it difficult to define also - dre and puffy had an imperial phase yes, timbaland and pharrell i'd argue no. how do you guys define imperial phase, in terms of numbers? seems like there should be something beyond mere 'very solid hit cycle for an album', some degree of crazy dominance and omniscience is implied as well as a certain degree of prolificacy in a concentrated period of time. maybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song) - 'oh sheila' and a million prince productions and cowrites as evidence of his imperial phase, john cafferty and rick springfield's 'bruce' as evidence of springsteen's (have always enjoyed mouse & the traps 'a public execution' as evidence of what a factor in pop dylan was at the time). if your b-sides are getting heavy airplay...you might be in an imperial phase.

number one album debuts prior to soundscan were virtually unheard of. ppl lost their shit when elton john pulled it off.

Also I'm not sure if Happy will get to number 1. It kind of feels like one of those pleasant throwback hits with a lot of cross genre and cross genrational appeal that fails to break it to number one much like "Get Lucky" or "Fuck You".

― MarkoP, Thursday, February 13, 2014 12:22 PM

o man this is just a trend piece waiting to be written

to be clear i wasn't agreeing w/ the use of 'imperial phase' at all

that luda #s look completely insane ('what's yr fantasy' didn't even go top 20??? also apparently 'welcome to atlanta' not nearly as big a hit outside atlanta) though i do recall being annoyed at the time that 'move bitch' did so much better than his other singles to that point.

Imperial phase denotes a cultural ubiquity, where even castoffs and b-sides become hits too (Elton John 1972-1976, Wings/Macca 1973-1976, Madonna 1985-1991, you know the deal). I don't see Pharrell's as ever having one.

yeah i see 'imperial phase' sometimes used to just mean 'a period where the act managed multiple hits, possibly off multiple albums' and i'm like 'so you're saying chicago had two imperial phases???'

and then you have weird situations like beyonce that past couple of years where it sure as hell feels like an imperial phase but the actual hit singles aren't there

aybe also a requirement that yr dominance leak out into records that aren't yr own (albeit maybe you produced them/wrote the song)

A key tenant. Again: Prince, Madonna, PSB, Babyface, Bowie in England 1972-1976.

You don't think the Neptunes had "some degree of crazy dominance and omniscience" during the early 00s? Maybe "imperial phase" was a bad choice if you're talking producers rather than perfomers but he was knocking out hits on a monthly basis.

Pharrell is only half of The Neptunes, though.

like saying the beatles had one career long imperial phase is true enough but saying the beatles had huge hits their entire career but their imperial phase was 63(64 US)-65 conveys that there was something different about their dominance relative to their peers during this period (and in 64 so complete it's difficult to name a peer), that they were unavoidable in ways they weren't quite in 1969 or even 1967. elvis presley is the second best selling artist of the 60s but maybe doesn't have an imperial phase there.

yeah i think different terminology is probably more useful for producers/songwriters, maybe midas phase.

iirc the classical definition of imperial phase is "the Pet Shop Boys have some hit singles for a few years"

like a midas phase can amplify an imperial phase maybe - dre/puffy again, kanye circa college dropout felt like some kinda hit phase - but you still gotta be able to do it on yr own, the ppl still gotta love you specifically, not just love what you've done w/ someone else they love. ie all those brill building ppl that had megasmashes as performers in the early 70s - neil diamond, carole king - they (maybe) get one imperial phase, not two.

goddamnit crut

have you never played jenga???

michael jackson post-Thriller is the definitive imperial phase, tho, right?: you've got 5th and 6th singles off Thriller, the Jackons' Victory crap, old solo stuff reissued as hit singles ("Farewell My Summer Love"), the songs MJ guest-appears on (Macca and Rockwell) and then all the stuff that's ripping him off, too.

yeah plus that's useful in denoting how mj dominance circa thriller differed from mj dominance circa bad even though in terms of just hit singles they're pretty comparable. mind you bad could be called an imperial phase i guess (or just lumped in w/ thriller's imperial phase though i wouldn't do that, it definitely felt like he went away and then came back at the time), but there wasn't the level of omnipresence that he had w/ thriller.

well i'm gonna step outside and try to do something useful today

I really like Midas phase as an alternative. I'm enthralled by anyone who can set the tempo in pop for a few years, whether that's Burt Bacharach or Dr Luke, but usually once it's gone it's gone. It's virtually impossible to nail it twice, especially once you're in your late 30s. Back when the Neptunes were on the third NERD album and trying to make Kenna happen and dropping the ball on a Madonna record, I would never have predicted that Pharrell would have his fingerprints on two monster hits and one pretty big one in 2013/14.

real cool semantic argument itt

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/chart-alert/5915592/notice-to-black-artists-behind-rbs-struggle-at-radio-the

i am glad that billboard is acknowledging the phenomenon in some way but it would be nice if they also acknowledged their own significant role in it beyond barely mentioning the portable people meter