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deadcactuswalking · 16 days

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 11/05/2024 (The Drake & Kendrick Beef Analysed in Detail. And Dua Lipa, I guess)

Yeah, yeah, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, whatever, we have more pressing issues. Sorry to break the format again so soon, but I don’t really know in what other context I can talk about all of these outside of just dumping it all together so… consider this a prologue, perhaps. I’m cactus, and before we get to the rest of the chart, I guess it’s time to discuss the you-know-whos and whatever impact this has. If you don’t care, skip to the rundown.

Part I: Okay, but what does J. Cole think of all of this?

content warning: language, abuse

The songs did not debut in exact chronological order, so that’s why I’m separating this into a different section - it allows for a cleaner timeline of what’s actually going on and allows me to develop some more cohesive thoughts. I assume everyone reading this already knows what’s going on and has probably heard the tracks or most likely even consumed some opinion pieces on it before, and that’s why I’m not doing a stricter, review-format lyrical analysis like I would for any other lyrical rap songs that appears on the chart. There’s already so much out there, and so many double-triple-quadruple-quintuple entendres on both sides, some vile accusations plastered onto both mens’ legacies and crews, and a concerning amount of discourse surrounding all of it. Am I here to contribute to that discourse? Yes, but even this soon, it just feels a bit tired, right? Pitchfork had Alphonse Pierre writing incessantly about how much he hated it before any woman-beating or child-endangering allegations were in the fold. Rap beef existing in the 2020s, the “thinkpiece era”, I don’t know, it’s exhausting. That doesn’t change the quality of the tracks though, and even that has been discussed to death, including by me - in the past few months, I’ve already reviewed “Like That”, “Push Ups” and “euphoria”, as well as touching upon “6:16 in LA” - so I won’t be retreading my steps, I’ll be attempting to give my unique perspective outside of a timeline or rundown of events, gathering thoughts on ideas I don’t really see brought up as often.

So, where were we? When I last released an episode, it was Friday and the latest diss was Kendrick’s cryptic Instagram posts where he claims he has a mule in OVO feeding him information about Drake and his crew. He’d just dropped “euphoria”, one of the best diss tracks of all time, and whilst “Push Ups” was good, I don’t think Drake really had it in him to respond to such an evisceration. I half-expected him not to acknowledge “euphoria” at all, but sadly, he did, and famously, “meet the grahams” was released just half an hour later to squash the potential legacy of Drake’s new track, which was titled “Family Matters”. The popular consensus seems to be that if Kendrick hadn’t swooped in with something “Story of Adidon” level, Drake’s “Family Matters” would be considered an excellent diss track… and I completely disagree, that shit is trash. Here’s why.

“Family Matters” is a clear emulation of “euphoria” - if Kendrick can release his seven-minute multiple-part diss track, why can’t Drake? He spent as many days as he needed to curate a very similar song - no, I’m not saying Kendrick created the idea of beat switches or long songs, but when the two are dropped directly in relation to each other, it’s difficult to summise from that, that Drake isn’t coming to battle in a very similar way to Kendrick purposefully, using his formula and structure. The problem here is focus. Kendrick, since he’s only focusing on Drake, can outline his issues in such a streamlined and digestible way that offhand remarks are catchy and memorable but hit hard within the context of the full song. All three beats are given room to breathe and transition very smoothly into each other, and the first beat even predicts Drake’s moves over a jazz beat to make the track appear condescending, defining the song’s mood from the start. “euphoria” is a tightly-constructed evisceration of Drake, that Drake simply cannot come back from, because he isn’t fighting one side. He could shut up about everyone else and leave the bars to Kendrick, but he simply doesn’t have enough about Kendrick to do that for a substantially long amount of time, and if he comes back to “euphoria” with just a three minute diss track, he looks like a clown, not that he doesn’t already if he doesn’t acknowledge Rick Ross, Future, Metro, Rocky… or at least he thinks he would look silly not dismissing them, even though realistically, that’s what we all want him to be: focused, not spraying shots at people who no one legitimately wants to see win or fail. Like who cares if The Weeknd wins or fails a rap beef? He’s not even a rapper.

The beats don’t have any thematic purpose, the first beat is one we’ve already heard before, and whilst there are plenty of disses to chew on, a lot of it is actually just completely substanceless garbage. When he’s not repeating himself, he’s whining about how YG or whoever is ACTUALLY gang-banging as if YG wouldn’t hop on “Not Like Us” today. Sure, there’s menace in… the intro, because the only time Drake sounds energetic and venomous is when interrupting his mother - classy - but it’s weak apart from a few lines poking fun at his conscious personality which are somewhat funny if not just… strange considering Kendrick being private leads to Drake spreading rumours regarding women and children on the idea that well, if Drake says it, everyone will believe it’s true! Also, it’s telling that Drake, after failing in “Push Ups” to prove he was a better rapper or a harder, more authentic image, all he has on Kendrick revolves around women, children and gay jokes towards The Weeknd. He spends damn near a whole beat out of the three on the side characters, which I know must have been, in Drake’s eyes, a demonstration of how he just doesn’t care about those guys… but you still rapped about them for a whole song’s length and the tightest bars come from that section, primarily because they’re easier targets. It also is pretty telling that Drake, who sounds increasingly bored over cheap beats the whole time, attempts to switch the “white boy” insult into a “white flag” wordplay but he still ends up saying “Ross callin’ me the white boy and that shit kind of got a ring to it”, without ever negating it in the punchline. He still ends up calling himself white. What is this?

Regardless, “Family Matters” debuts at #17 on the UK Singles Chart this week. It was produced by Boi-1da, Tay Keith, Fierce, Kevin Mitchell, Dramakid, Preme, Jordan Fox and… Mark Ronson of all people, who I assume had something to do with the third beat, since it’s the only one that actually sounds good. Minutes after Drake dropped, we get “meet the grahams”, produced by The Alchemist and well, it left a lot of people speechless. Once again, Kendrick goes for being condescending and systematic instead of the unfocused slop we get from Drake, directing his disses not for Drake initially, but directly addressing each member of his family. It’s not the most replayable in terms of its beat bouncing or having much in the way of a hook, of course, but it is villainous and deceptively straightforward in ways. The beat is basically one loop from Alc with basic but eerie piano and one of my favourite details in this entire beef: that yelping scream in the distance. For drumless jazz beats like this, those atmospheric intricacies are so necessary, and the instrumental break refrain that separates verses, something Kendrick would do again on the second track, is too cold. I’m not a lyrical analyst, I’m not a sociopolitical analyst, so here’s why “meet the grahams” makes J. Cole look like a fucking idiot, actually.

Cole stepped out of the beef before it got personal, probably because ScHoolboy called him up and said it wasn’t about rap, and since then, if anything, Kendrick has been slightly defending Cole in his raps whilst Drake has been dismissive and insulting. Again, telling! This should make Cole look smart, slick and the bigger man for apologising and not getting himself involved in the personal, frankly gross allegations made by both men against each other, and whilst we’d all like to hear Cole and Kendrick go back and forth on bars alone, what we got was much more impactful and cinematic, something that just wouldn’t fit Cole’s homegrown image. Whilst this is true on the surface, I beg you to go back to Might Delete Later after all of that. After all the talk about how he doesn’t take Ls, about how he’s taking everyone’s girl, about how his bars are like clips or whatever, all of his boast talk - and then he slides out of this beef before shit gets venomous. Then consider all his talk about how he can’t get cancelled like Dave Chappelle and how it’s all politically correct these days, and that trans… “fellas” are still pussies… given what’s been addressed here, with a back-and-forth by the two ACTUAL members of the big three involved essentially TRYING to cancel each other, the mixtape becomes dated and purposeless so quickly that it gives credit to its name. Cole has always seen himself as the “middle child” of rap, but really, his dichotomy isn’t between mumble rap and oldheads, it’s between being pretentious and anti-intellectual, simultaneously. At least Drake embraces that he is an asshole, which is the one reason to root for his character - I don’t like “Family Matters”, but it pretty effectively places himself as the villain of the story, at least if we’re willing to accept this as a narrative, and “meet the grahams” does an even better job at that than Drake could! Cole decided to align himself with the anti-intellectual crowd whilst being all intellectual about that approach, and let’s just say that when Kendrick is winning a beef, it looks really idiotic to be blissfully ignorant. I’m sure Cole has written a few songs about all of this, but what’s telling is that Kendrick and Drake will never delete these records, because they’re a cemented part of history in their careers and really, hip hop culture. I don’t like “Family Matters” or really, “Like That”, but there are moments in those tracks now iconic and quotable that Cole has completely lost out on. Drake got his ass handed to him, but it would be even more of a loss for him economically and in the media to delete those diss tracks. Kendrick, I would assume, somewhat regrets some of the statements made because his last album presented him as slightly above it all, and he does face an increasing number of abuse allegations now that whilst I’m sure he doesn’t sweat too hard, really aren’t great for you to have around. And sure, whilst Drake might be bringing up the size of his penis in “Family Matters” for no reason, the most homoerotic moment in this dick-swinging context might be the fact that Kendrick’s biggest song in years is focused entirely on another man’s sex crimes. Neither come out clean, but they come out with more dignity than the guy who thought he was hot shit and ended the beef with less streams, less name-drops and less tracks on his album because I bet you forgot, but he’s actually started to back track and delete the records. The only person to see this as a genuine stain on the legacy, a genuine piercing of the armour, is Cole, which is why he can’t be in that big three. Because he cares too much to prove he’s there in the first place.

On the UK charts, “meet the grahams” debuts at #28, but it doesn’t matter because the night after, he drops “Not Like Us”, a DJ Mustard banger, beats Drake at his own game and has people all across the world in clubs singing “OV-HOE”. It debuts at #10 and is co-produced with Sounwave and Sean Momberger, but the idea that Mustard is on the beat, giving Kendrick a classic West Coast banger to end out the beef whilst Drake is stuck with a myriad of identity-less tracks (ironically, one wherein he shouts out YG), is a diss in itself. Nobody cares about how much of this is true, if any of it is, because people believe that reckoning with that fact takes us out of enjoying music, which I think it’s silly but also a story for another day. I don’t idolise either of these guys - Hell, I preferred Drake’s last record to Kendrick’s - but through sheer lyrical dexterity and chess moves, Kendrick won the beef and shattered Drake’s PR statement of a comeback, “The Heart Part 6”, into pieces before it could even be rebuilt from the fragments of Drake’s pride. You can’t release a diss track that has you defending yourself against false allegations, if 1.) you yourself made false accusations and 2.) no one cares if the accusations are true, just who says them louder and harder, which is exactly why Kendrick knew “meet the grahams” wasn’t enough and that’s why he needed to drop the Mustard joint. Drake may be calculated, and a master manipulator, but he cannot out-guess the biggest hypocrite of 2015. And 2024. And maybe forever, I don’t know, he could drop something tomorrow. Now let’s shut my hoe ass up and review some charts.

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Part II: REVIEWING THE CHARTS

content warning: The Chainsmokers

So, Kendrick has four songs in the UK Singles Chart right now as a primary artist, which shouldn’t be allowed according to OCC rules normally, but I guess even the Official Charts Company just wants to see blood. As for the songs that actually dropped out of the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after spending five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40, we say farewell to “II MOST WANTED” by Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, as well as Bey’s cover of “JOLENE”, “if u think i’m pretty” by Artemas, “Wasted Youth” by goddard. and Cat Burns (shame that one didn’t reach a higher peak, I really like it), “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and, perhaps most vindictively for this week, “H.Y.B.” by J. Cole featuring Bas and Central Cee. Ha.

We see two kind of inexplicable but also irrelevant returns with “Whatever” by Kygo and Ava Max at #74 and “As it Was” by Harold Styles at #41, but otherwise we do have a handful of notable gains, including “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers once again at #65, now the biggest song ever to never hit #1. It just never dies. Aside from that, there are boosts for Dua Lipa’s “Training Season” at #61 thanks to the album, more on that later, “Love Me JeJe” by Tems at #52 - a little detail I missed with the debut last week is that the phrase in the title was adopted from a well-revered track in Nigeria of the same name by Seyi Sodimu, which I thought was notable enough to consider sn error of research. Whoops. Put that in the corrections column. We also see “Slow it Down” by Bento Box at #23, some boosts for Kendrick as “Like That” with Future and Metro Boomin and, Ye I guess now, is at #20 whilst “euphoria” stalls at #11, and finally, Tommy Richman gets his first top 10 with the smash hit “MILLION DOLLAR BABY”. Really can’t complain.

As for our top five, it consists of “Fortnight” by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone at #5, “Beautiful Things” by Benny the Butcher at #4, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey at #3, “Too Sweet” by Hozier and #2, and finally, for a second week, Sabrina Carpenter is at #1 with “Espresso”. We still have five new songs debuting this week that aren’t disses, so let’s have some fun with songs that hopefully won’t be as heavy, and we start where every good night of fun starts. With the Chainsmokers.

New Entries

#75 - “Addicted” - Zerb, The Chainsmokers and Ink

Produced by Zerb and The Chainsmokers

Zerb is a Brazilian DJ who’s found his way into a collaboration with everyone’s favourite duo The Chainsmokers and smooth R&B singer Ink, with a Joel Corry remix probably helping this one end up at the bottom of the chart here. Now I do like The Chainsmokers, but not necessarily their work with other vocalists, as they’re not nearly as willing to experiment when it’s not just the two boys embarrassing themselves. Ink, who really just sounds like a BTEC The-Dream on here, doesn’t command much of the track due to that wispy tone, but Zerb being on board probably helps the squibbling synths spiral into more of an intense, detailed drop that traces bassy future house amidst some genuinely weird and oddly full percussive elements and sound effects, especially that incessant shaker in the pre-drop. You can tell these guys are professionals, as the sound design is very intricate and makes so much use of its available space whilst not being too fluid or syrupy, it goes decently hard, and whilst Zerb may not be The-Dream, he gets close. And I like The-Dream. I like this too. It’s a jam. Give it a chance, it kept growing on me like a brain parasite as I was listening.

#71 - “Right Here” - Becky Hill

Produced by Chase & Status

Whilst rap rivalries are brewing, EDM DJ duos seem to be having a good week by sticking together - with Chase & Status on board, this is pretty much confirmed to be at least decent before taking a listen and, well, obviously it’s good. At this point, I might just like Becky Hill’s output overall, at least from this upcoming album, and the decision from the boys to position an 80s pop rock melodrama with the soaring synths and plastic guitar below an absolute rolick of drum and bass feels very much like a throwback to the dancefloor DnB era from the early to mid 2010s, and I may like more atmospheric drum and bass tracks a lot of the time but I’m not above some unabashed pop, and this really has the momentum and kick to justify itself. Sure, the mix is a bit awkward, but the same can be said for a lot of drum and bass, and it’s not like that genre has ever suffered from being loud or overwhelming, especially not in festival mood, and the layering of Becky’s belting over those classic 90s hardcore pianos is an interesting touch compared to what I probably would have done, drowned her in reverb and echo like they sometimes did back in the day. The explosive approach taken here backs up an already infectious hook and results in yet another damn good track by Becky Hill, which would be a foreign idea to me throughout the rest of my time doing this show.

#68 - “The Door” - Teddy Swims

Produced by Julian Bunetta and Ammo

I didn’t even think we’d get a second song from Teddy Swims, but I was wrong about that when it came to David Kushner, Noah Kahan and that Boonetown Rat over at #4 so maybe this is just the year of the edged-up white boy. I still think “Lose Control” is okay, and in terms of pure singing process, Teddy’s got a lot more soul and presence than them. That’s really carrying this one though, and whilst the groove’s a solid throwback, the reverb dampens its impact and it sounds like he’s recording the whole thing from a cave, but not a vintage chasm like Spector’s best stuff, just… a small cave near a river or some swampland. The songwriting also feels a bit basic, it isn’t all too compelling and goes for some very typical tropes, predictable rhymes, even if the “oh no!” is a bit of a fun inflection. Bunetta and Ammo also don’t let the song progress much, even just from verse to chorus, it feels stuck. I figured that when that soaring disco string section came in, we’d get a proper bridge that made it all feel satisfying, but it does tampers off into a post-chorus and we get a basic repetition of the chorus again. If you’re going to try and replicate a vintage sound, at least show respect to how they composed their tracks too, not just cosplay within their soundfont.

#67 - “Risk” - Gracie Abrams

Produced by Aaron Dessner and Gracie Abrams

Producing for Taylor Swift is the best idea the Dessners had ever. Now these indie folksters are going to have labels calling for them to prop up their attempts at making pop stars - I don’t like The National, like… at all, but get the bag, guys, I prefer them over The Monsters & Strangerz, or God forbid Julia Michaels. The largely-failed Gracie Abrams experiment has been an industry push for five years now, but the daughter of film director J. J. Abrams finally has a hit of her own and… okay, maybe calling her “own” hit was a misnomer, because this has O-Rod and T-Swift written all over it. You could genuinely run the whole thing through a Taylor Swift AI filter and I’d believe you, I imagine this is like hearing the track the “Heart on My Sleeve” guy recorded before he put the Drake effect on. It has Olivia’s wordy teenage anxiety and acoustic tones, but to be fair, Abrams is a lot more optimistic than her inspirations, with her breathy pleading that this relationship is going to work out over acoustic guitars that don’t feel relentless, but do feel like they never end, just keep going, and the song keeps on adding elements that don’t stop them or alleviate the anxious playing at all. The same thing can be said about Gracie’s vocal take, or the wonky synth subtly placed into the chorus - classic Dessner - and the little lyrical details that make this feel as real as it does - if she’s invested, then damn, so am I, it feels like my friend is rambling or venting to me about the “tea” as the kids say and I’m on the edge of my seat. Surprisingly enough, of all things that sold me on this ballad, it’s the intensity, and the drums ramping up by the end into a rolick makes me forgive how derivative this feels… mostly because it’s doing a better job at this sound and concept than Swift is, statistically, half of the time, and emulates O-Rod’s youthful authenticity a bit less obnoxiously than she typically pulls. I know that’s a feature, not a bug, but I still prefer when it’s patched out. Excellent song.

#40 - “These Walls” - Dua Lipa

Produced by Danny L Harle and Andrew Wyatt

I wasn’t over the Moon with Radical Optimism the way I was with Future Nostalgia, mostly because outside of a nice vibe, the songs felt artifically short, awkwardly constructed and not nearly as adventurous or even cohesive as the people involved, or “Houdini” as a lead single, would have suggested. I wrote about her latest #1 album more at length on my RateYourMusic listening log - account name’s exclusivelytopostown, check it out if you care - but this was an obvious choice for the next single, because it’s one of the album’s tightest, with that psychedelic guitar lick blossoming amidst a mixture of trinkling keys before we slap right into an actually fittingly stiff pop rock groove, with a nice, subtle crunchy drum fill in the mix that I find a really interesting, distorted inclusion. It really helps the song feel claustrophobic and fed up, as the content is about the pre-empting of a breakup wherein both Dua and her partner are stuck in a frustratingly disappointing relationship where the love just… isn’t really there anymore, but they don’t want to face the reality of separation because that might be harder to grapple with than just keeping silent. For once on this album, the bridge doesn’t feel smashed in post-haste, Hell, it might not even need a bridge, and Harle’s attention to detail is on full display here, as the post-chorus keeps the dissonance going by making Dua just slightly off-key, it’s brilliant. A very tightly written and composed pop song, as well as possibly the record’s most vulnerable and honest moment, in an album that otherwise coasts off vibes. I definitely think this one could help a great deal with the record’s success later down the line.

Conclusion

Whoo, that was a lot, huh? Well, Best of the Week goes to Kendrick Lamar, obviously, for both “meet the grahams” and “Not Like Us”, but it was closer than you’d expect for Gracie Abrams who takes the Honourable Mention with “Risk”. This was actually a pretty great week overall for song quality, at least within the new tracks, so despite Teddy trying to hold his ship together, it still sinks and grants him the Dishonourable Mention for “The Door”. As for the Worst of the Week, I’d say I feel bad for Drake considering he got destroyed this week already but if what Kendrick is saying is true, I think I’d rather not say I feel bad for him at all. And if what Drake is saying is true… well, let’s just say “Family Matters”. Thank you for reading, rest in peace to rock engineering legend Steve Albini, Eurovision next week, and I’ll see you then.