rae sremmurd - sremmlife (6 jan 2015)

oh yeah i forgot about swang. i don't like that song at all

😕

lol "crack a bottle". idk, i'd say the main historical distortion comes from the general lack of willingness to let go of peak chart position as the proxy for how 'big' a song or album was and therefore To What Extent It Reflected And/Or Defined The Zeitgeist.

like, if you look at how "crack a bottle" did on the charts week-by-week, you can see the history pretty accurately: it sold a ton for one week (its first) then receded to obscurity quite quickly. same for, like, taylor hicks's "do i make you proud" and so forth. the charts were not really inaccurate to have these songs near or at the top of the charts on the weeks that they peaked, but the general fixation on peaks does lead us to inaccurate conclusions in such cases.

there was a time when chart runs pretty much all had the same 'shape' -- debut at a low-to-moderate position, rise a fairly steady number of positions each week until a plateau is reached, then tumble down rather quickly -- so peak position pretty much could tell you all you needed to know about how well a single performed. that period ended in the 90s, post-soundscan, but our favored ways of representing How The Culture Evolved has not really progressed past the joel whitburn book approach (debut date/peak position/weeks on chart). (the most commonly viewed repositories of distilled chart info, wikipedia articles, have narrowed the focus almost entirely on peak position.)

anyway! i need to spend some time with this album.

The new Swae Lee is full-on afropop, produced and co-written by Tekno:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBioIsLoXoE
Swae Lee ft. Drake • Won’t Be Late

black beatles holds up i think

i miss being excited about Rae sremmurd. The combo of absurdity, suaveness, and unhinged energy was really something when it all lined up.

Loved This weird one off trippie redd Collab

https://youtu.be/ZIPCLWqcYo0

The album hold up.

album yes, black beatles still sounds bad to me.

the "no type" beat is still one of my favorites, that decaying keyboard sound at the beginning that gets swallowed up by the bass

back together again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwra2z-OwB8
Rae Sremmurd • Denial

not loving this tbh

i feel like these guys were ahead of their time but when the moment for their kind of music came it passed them by instead of them grabbing it with both hands

yeah kinda boring

it's a nope from me

Swae Lee seemed like such a ready-made star, but, for whatever reason, apart from a few successful features (and yes, “Unforgettable” with French Montana and “Sunflower” with Post Malone were real blockbusters) he never took off as a solo artist. his promised album has yet to materialize.

this feels like a retreat, and it’s a bit sad to watch, especially since the song isn’t anything special.

I was really hoping for Swae Lee to succeed, all the more so because he was one of the first US artists to try and ride the incoming afropop wave: “Unforgettable” again - which was originally recorded with post-“One Dance” Wizkid - and “Guatemala” in its wake - and “Won’t Be Late”, which had Tekno involvement).

There was also this great afro-adjacent UK remix of “Unforgettable” by producer Jae5 with J Hus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxmZNqqLRV0

i think this song is cute. kind of forgettable and low key for a comeback single, but also the moment (in general) has probably passed them by so i'm not sure our expectations will ever be met... hard to turn back the clock a half-decade plus and still feel fresh and current. but i'm happy they're back

As somebody who tends to enjoy them far more than I should, this is sort of nice. Real low-key... not gonna win anybody over... but not a mess or anything.

It seemed like they had everything lined up for a minute there prior to SR3MM bricking (relatively speaking). But then the choice of singles leading into that project were perplexing and a bit meh (i like pegasus and t'd up just fine, but did somebody think these were hits?)... the album itself was ok but felt a bit loose compared to their best work (or to the then current-ish Ransom 2). This was even before you add in the attached Slim Jxmmi record nobody has listened to since 2018 and the Swae Lee record which felt mostly like him rambling over chill grooves. Powerglide ruled though!

“Powerglide” was awesome, yeah, but I am not sure if I was more into Sremm or Mike WiLL on the first two albums. “Throw Sum Mo” and “By Chance” probably my faves.

Same. "By Chance" is great.

Feel like they both hit a wall (commercially at least) by 2018 or so. Like, they lost some sort of energy or something.
Still some decent tracks, but nothing undeniable after that.

i'm not sure rae sremmurd/mike will lost anything so much as rap started to move away from melody/pop songwriting and towards harder, lyrical, street style rap. out of sheer popularity rap music charts as pop music right now but artists like lil durk, lil baby, gunna, moneybagg yo, polo g make music that is pretty far from i.e. "no type," "black beatles" etc. you can see it too in the way that music by ppl like drake & future have evolved over the same time period.

Yeah. There was certainly a sea change post-Lil Baby/Gunna that knocked a lot of the class of '15/'16 down a few rungs.
I guess I hoped they (Sremm and Mike Will) would find a way to adapt and pivot better than they have (and like MW had done before that).
I like ridiculous just as much (more than?) the next guy, but, interpolating Elvis with Diplo probably ain't the way back to the top for Swae Lee... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6mEXWXeolk

The new album sounds fresh.

I just played “YMCA” (yes, because of its title, what of it?) and I liked it

that flaunt it - sexy - ymca run is good

I like them in general, so YMMV, but there's a lot to enjoy on the new record.
Much better than I thought it would be at this point. Thumbs up.

The main problem with Sr3mm was how unfocused it seemed: a few v high highs but a whole lot of filler. This one sounds tight and plays to their strengths.

47 minutes long? I'm here.

listening now, mostly pretty good (i had to skip "lean so cold," sheesh), especially like when they use older school sounds, like the miami bass touches that pop up in "tanisha" and "sexy" and the amen break-driven electro at the beginning of "flaunt it."

i am less interested in their straight trap stuff, they don't have the same energy and the hooks aren't so sticky. "royal flush" is good tho

ooh yeah also "mississippi slide"

Yeah. Lean So Cold is a brutal clunker coming that early in the record.

i need a model right next to me, i'm talkin lisa leslie

pretty funny to me that rae sremmurd and they. dropped an album on the same day

I'm obsessed with "Flaunt It."