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Where "Galaxy," naturally enough, means "Italo" (Top Singles, First Third 2019)
Was going to use the title "Trap Hegemony And The Italotrot Question" because I knew it would make Chuck Eddy smile; but I decided "Where 'Galaxy,' naturally enough, means 'Italo'"* was funnier, though maybe David Frazer will be the only one to smile. David's the person who came up with the genre title "Italotrot" to describe Hong Jinyoung's "Love Tonight." I wouldn't say that "Love Tonight" poses a deep question, really: But why is it this song, a trot song — as opposed to, for instance, a K-pop song ("trot" being Official Old Person's Dance Music in Korea**) — that's pulling into itself deliriously catchy freestyle and Italodisco riffs, as if to declare that being trot is no barrier to incorporating any coin and color that makes Frank Kogan feel good? I mean, this is something K-pop itself used to be so good at, insinuating disco and freestyle and Italopop into itself without making a fuss over it or sounding the least bit retro. K-pop still pulls in music left-hand, right-hand, and back-hand, but it's more of a drag these days. See quasi essay below the list.
In the video Jinyoung turns into a cat, or a cat turns into her. —Yes, T-ara did that too, and so I'm sure have many others, that's what comment threads are for if you're so inclined. (Inclined to tell us of other performers who've turned into cats, that is; not inclined to turn into a cat yourself.)
From China, meanwhile, Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco," where "Galaxy," naturally enough, means "Italo":
Sounds just like the music on Italodisco comps out of Singapore and Hong Kong that populated the three-for-a-dollar cassette bins in SF's Chinatown back in the '80s and '90s. I'd assumed then that most of the music was produced originally in Italy or Germany (with input from Miami and Toronto and Montreal: Tapps and Lime were all over those stores, Tapps with not-quite-so-cheap compilations of their own), but there'd be remixes and mashups and stuff — an impressive version of "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" that in a later day would have been screwed and chopped but this used amphetamines rather than cough syrup — and uncredited performers and unknown vocalists, and I was guessing or hoping that some of the talent was Asian. Anyway, "Galaxy Disco" sounds so much like that stuff*** that I wonder if it's actually a cover. It's so familiar. The sound is spot-on, from the reed-thin riffs to the dental-floss vocals.
Of course, most of what's coming is hip-hop, the so-called trap hegemony of my rejected title: though the list itself — here it is! a playlist followed by the list itself, and more commentary below the cut — starts with gqom [UPDATE: now song 3 on the playlist], which is generally considered more a derivative of house.
1. Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"
2. Bhad Bhabie ft. Tory Lanez "Babyface Savage"
3. Jvcki Wai, Young B, Osshun Gum, Han Yo Han "Dding"
4. Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"
5. Lil Pump "Butterfly Doors"
6. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie "Look Back At It"
7. DALsooobin "Katchup"
8. Gasmilla ft. Mr Eazi "K33SHI"
9. Loopy&nafla "Ice King"
10. Marilina Bertoldi "O No?"
11. Rich The Kid "4 Phones"
12. Gunna "Big Shot"
13. KeshYou "Уят емес"
14. Kim Bo Kyung "It's Not Discarded"
15. Lil Pump ft. Lil Wayne "Be Like Me"
16. Gasmilla ft. Kwamz & Flava "Charle Man"
17. Solange "Binz"
18. Brooks & Dunn ft. Luke Combs "Brand New Man"
19. Kidd Kenn "'Next Song' Freestyle"
[UPDATE: Kidd Kenn's "Next Song freestyle" was deleted from YouTube - fortunately, Marcus Life does a reaction vid where he plays the whole thing starting at about 2:07, pretty good fidelity with only a bit of bkgd sound from Marcus.]
20. Rema "Iron Man"
21. Sofi Tukker "Fantasy"
22. Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco"
23. Bad Bunny "Solo De Mi"
24. Blueface ft. YG "Thotiana (Remix)"
Trap Hegemony:
Back in March I created my latest Eardrums playlist ("Having A Rave-Up With Arling & Cameron," here). I'd originally intended it as a sort of essay on grooves and rave-ups but it morphed into my making the case that current trap and Soundcloud rap is as good or better than any greats of the past at creating a twisty undertow, and right now this is what I'm grabbed by most in music, and what I once upon a time tried and gave up trying to do as a musician. It's not a hegemony that rules my head, exactly — trap and drill and so forth. Emotionally they're a throwback to my late 1970s/early 1980s. Pulling people into a twisted and twisty undertow kind of isn't what I want to do these days in my life or my art. But this is the music with the greatest musical pull out there.
"Love Tonight," as the world's one and only Italotrot song, having nothing whatsoever to do with trap, maybe represents the normal humming-along workaday happiness of music. Maybe there's a question it poses to trap, and trap poses to it, by the two having nothing to do with each other. (Question: do they say anything to each other?)
In "Babyface Savage" Bhad Bhabie's still-young voice is contending with this massive dissonant bass sound, is a small asteroid shining through a massive shadow, makes me think of Ronnie Spector's naked vocals afloat in Phil's vast orchestrations. Anyway, Bhad Bhabie's patter still contains a kid's charm. This maybe explains why it isn't the usual drag, hearing a babyvoice claiming to be the big boss. "I don't play pattycake." It sounds like you could play pattycake, if you wanted.
Kidd Kenn, 15 or 16, is about the same age she is but seems like a young man on the rise in comparison to her tentative teen, probably because he sounds more sly than tough in the cheerful way he worms and slithers around all those grim beats. (And notice the difference between his "Next Song" and DaBaby's brutal, boring original.)
Jvcki Wai – She's socially and politically on a good side, calling for anarchy and calling out capitalism and religion, trying to be smart while not miring herself in worthiness; a lot of it seems like acting out, which maybe helps it not feel like worthiness, and acting out is what you want artists to do, it's their job, some of 'em, some of the time. "Dding" lyrics are comparatively disappointing, too much trap bullshit, ice on the neck and all that though played for a double metaphor (not just diamonds but keeping her head cool while she makes everyone else crazy).
Loopy&nafla: More ice; the video implying that this could be daydreaming and sarcasm like "Gangnam Style"; but maybe that's my wishful thinking and this is just straight-ahead aspiration.
(I'm assigning this stuff in my head to "hip-hop" rather than "K-pop." It seems pretty far from the latter, despite the latter's being saturated in rap.)
Stuff that sounds like other stuff:
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie "Look Back At It." There's this kind of 5-tone-scale modal warble**** that trap vocalists have been doing, whereas A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie finds his way to a more conventional melody and chord progression. Anyway, even though I used to play and write songs I never really did master chord progressions, so correct me if what I'm hearing is wrong: but "Look Back At It" is from the same tonal stamp as Judy Torres's "Come Into My Arms" and the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin," both of which reminded me back in 1987-88 of Cat Stevens's "Wild World." (So here's a coincidental hip-hop connection to freestyle (Torres) and '80s disco dance (Pet Shop Boys), though via melody rather than riffs or beats.)
Up On Cripple Creek:
Sofi Tukker: I'm sort of up on cripple creek with this duo, except in reverse: I can't take the way they talk but I love to hear 'em sing. (Yeah, okay, I sometimes like the talking a lot (e.g. "Johny"), but I won't let that stand in the way of my wisecrack.)
Historical Essay:
In the late '80s, hip-hop and electronic dance each would crash styles and signifiers into each other like crazy, so Seo Taiji was true to the time in 1992 when he did the same in hatching K-pop; meanwhile in America the early '90s new-jack-swing/hip-hop/r&b moment cooled things down a bit and, for instance, steered away from incorporating freestyle's and Italodisco's delirium of wild riffs and sad melodies into its synthesis. Whereas, Seo Taiji threw the pang and beat techniques of freestyle right atop the new-jack-swing rhythms. But I can't speak with any kind of knowledge or authority on 1990s K-pop overall. My vague sense of east Asian dance in the '90s has Japan incorporating Italy's wild riffage (or Italian producers targeting the Japanese market with "Eurobeat"); and I know for a fact that 1980s Italodisco was a living presence in 1990s Chinese-American bargain bins; and in 1993 Chuli and Miae hit in Korea with "Why You," which surreptitiously sampled American freestyle act the Cover Girls; in any event, by the time I heard of K-pop fifteen years later, freestyle and disco were part of its basic day-to-day language without seeming retro or being particularly pointed to.
I wouldn't say this sound is gone in K-pop, but the feeling kind of is. I hope I'm wrong. This summer I plan to trawl through more of the year's releases, come up with a better earscape. K-pop still has a varied and open palette, but the colors are autumny, mature, to the music's detriment. That's a cliché of course. Maybe I'm just overreacting to my disappointment with the new Oh My Girl track. [Spaceholder for why I don't like the new Oh My Girl track. Also for why I'm not quite on board with Momoland, who are all spring and sunshine and playground and stuff.]
Hanging back in boom and doom:
A phrase from my notes: "hanging back in boom and doom." Refers to trap's strength in being admirably not eclectic — though to say so, I have to claim that Soundcloud rap's grunge fascination is an odd, tunneling into-the-muck eclecticism that counts for some reason as anti-eclectic; ditto J.I.D's bug excavations. And anyway Sexyy Red and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Lil Pump are probably conduits to workaday reengaging with everything else and pull-it-all-in humdrum happiness and unhappiness etc., for better or worse (we'll find out).*****
[UPDATE: I'm posting Chuck's Pazz & Jop Product Reports for January through June in the comments. And in the 4th comment down I've linked some classic "freestyle" tracks for those readers who aren't familiar with the genre and are struggling to make sense of what I mean by that term and by the term "Italodisco."]
*And "first third" equals "first five-twelfths," just as it did last year.
**Again, I'm talking through my hat here (a straw fedora) regarding my "knowledge" of who listens to trot and how this is viewed in Korea.
***Other than the words being Chinese rather than English, and a K-poppy rap in the middle. Subject For Further Research: David informs me that Asia in the '80s did indeed create vintage Italodisco; he's found several examples (Jessie from Taiwan, Crapas and Bunny Girls from South Korea) at the ultradiskopanorama YouTube channel. I'd expect a lot more was produced. Japan?
****I don't really know what that phrase means but I hope Dave Moore shows up in the comments to explain it to me.
*****I'm referencing acts on my last year's list (which still hasn't gotten my writeup), and some of their last-year's tracks may get on some people's or even my own this-year's lists as album tracks get their singles and singles get their vids and so forth.
Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"
Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"
In the video Jinyoung turns into a cat, or a cat turns into her. —Yes, T-ara did that too, and so I'm sure have many others, that's what comment threads are for if you're so inclined. (Inclined to tell us of other performers who've turned into cats, that is; not inclined to turn into a cat yourself.)
From China, meanwhile, Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco," where "Galaxy," naturally enough, means "Italo":
Sounds just like the music on Italodisco comps out of Singapore and Hong Kong that populated the three-for-a-dollar cassette bins in SF's Chinatown back in the '80s and '90s. I'd assumed then that most of the music was produced originally in Italy or Germany (with input from Miami and Toronto and Montreal: Tapps and Lime were all over those stores, Tapps with not-quite-so-cheap compilations of their own), but there'd be remixes and mashups and stuff — an impressive version of "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" that in a later day would have been screwed and chopped but this used amphetamines rather than cough syrup — and uncredited performers and unknown vocalists, and I was guessing or hoping that some of the talent was Asian. Anyway, "Galaxy Disco" sounds so much like that stuff*** that I wonder if it's actually a cover. It's so familiar. The sound is spot-on, from the reed-thin riffs to the dental-floss vocals.
Of course, most of what's coming is hip-hop, the so-called trap hegemony of my rejected title: though the list itself — here it is! a playlist followed by the list itself, and more commentary below the cut — starts with gqom [UPDATE: now song 3 on the playlist], which is generally considered more a derivative of house.
1. Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"
2. Bhad Bhabie ft. Tory Lanez "Babyface Savage"
3. Jvcki Wai, Young B, Osshun Gum, Han Yo Han "Dding"
4. Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"
5. Lil Pump "Butterfly Doors"
6. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie "Look Back At It"
7. DALsooobin "Katchup"
8. Gasmilla ft. Mr Eazi "K33SHI"
9. Loopy&nafla "Ice King"
10. Marilina Bertoldi "O No?"
11. Rich The Kid "4 Phones"
12. Gunna "Big Shot"
13. KeshYou "Уят емес"
14. Kim Bo Kyung "It's Not Discarded"
15. Lil Pump ft. Lil Wayne "Be Like Me"
16. Gasmilla ft. Kwamz & Flava "Charle Man"
17. Solange "Binz"
18. Brooks & Dunn ft. Luke Combs "Brand New Man"
19. Kidd Kenn "'Next Song' Freestyle"
[UPDATE: Kidd Kenn's "Next Song freestyle" was deleted from YouTube - fortunately, Marcus Life does a reaction vid where he plays the whole thing starting at about 2:07, pretty good fidelity with only a bit of bkgd sound from Marcus.]
20. Rema "Iron Man"
21. Sofi Tukker "Fantasy"
22. Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco"
23. Bad Bunny "Solo De Mi"
24. Blueface ft. YG "Thotiana (Remix)"
Trap Hegemony:
Back in March I created my latest Eardrums playlist ("Having A Rave-Up With Arling & Cameron," here). I'd originally intended it as a sort of essay on grooves and rave-ups but it morphed into my making the case that current trap and Soundcloud rap is as good or better than any greats of the past at creating a twisty undertow, and right now this is what I'm grabbed by most in music, and what I once upon a time tried and gave up trying to do as a musician. It's not a hegemony that rules my head, exactly — trap and drill and so forth. Emotionally they're a throwback to my late 1970s/early 1980s. Pulling people into a twisted and twisty undertow kind of isn't what I want to do these days in my life or my art. But this is the music with the greatest musical pull out there.
"Love Tonight," as the world's one and only Italotrot song, having nothing whatsoever to do with trap, maybe represents the normal humming-along workaday happiness of music. Maybe there's a question it poses to trap, and trap poses to it, by the two having nothing to do with each other. (Question: do they say anything to each other?)
In "Babyface Savage" Bhad Bhabie's still-young voice is contending with this massive dissonant bass sound, is a small asteroid shining through a massive shadow, makes me think of Ronnie Spector's naked vocals afloat in Phil's vast orchestrations. Anyway, Bhad Bhabie's patter still contains a kid's charm. This maybe explains why it isn't the usual drag, hearing a babyvoice claiming to be the big boss. "I don't play pattycake." It sounds like you could play pattycake, if you wanted.
Kidd Kenn, 15 or 16, is about the same age she is but seems like a young man on the rise in comparison to her tentative teen, probably because he sounds more sly than tough in the cheerful way he worms and slithers around all those grim beats. (And notice the difference between his "Next Song" and DaBaby's brutal, boring original.)
Jvcki Wai – She's socially and politically on a good side, calling for anarchy and calling out capitalism and religion, trying to be smart while not miring herself in worthiness; a lot of it seems like acting out, which maybe helps it not feel like worthiness, and acting out is what you want artists to do, it's their job, some of 'em, some of the time. "Dding" lyrics are comparatively disappointing, too much trap bullshit, ice on the neck and all that though played for a double metaphor (not just diamonds but keeping her head cool while she makes everyone else crazy).
Loopy&nafla: More ice; the video implying that this could be daydreaming and sarcasm like "Gangnam Style"; but maybe that's my wishful thinking and this is just straight-ahead aspiration.
(I'm assigning this stuff in my head to "hip-hop" rather than "K-pop." It seems pretty far from the latter, despite the latter's being saturated in rap.)
Stuff that sounds like other stuff:
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie "Look Back At It." There's this kind of 5-tone-scale modal warble**** that trap vocalists have been doing, whereas A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie finds his way to a more conventional melody and chord progression. Anyway, even though I used to play and write songs I never really did master chord progressions, so correct me if what I'm hearing is wrong: but "Look Back At It" is from the same tonal stamp as Judy Torres's "Come Into My Arms" and the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin," both of which reminded me back in 1987-88 of Cat Stevens's "Wild World." (So here's a coincidental hip-hop connection to freestyle (Torres) and '80s disco dance (Pet Shop Boys), though via melody rather than riffs or beats.)
Up On Cripple Creek:
Sofi Tukker: I'm sort of up on cripple creek with this duo, except in reverse: I can't take the way they talk but I love to hear 'em sing. (Yeah, okay, I sometimes like the talking a lot (e.g. "Johny"), but I won't let that stand in the way of my wisecrack.)
Historical Essay:
In the late '80s, hip-hop and electronic dance each would crash styles and signifiers into each other like crazy, so Seo Taiji was true to the time in 1992 when he did the same in hatching K-pop; meanwhile in America the early '90s new-jack-swing/hip-hop/r&b moment cooled things down a bit and, for instance, steered away from incorporating freestyle's and Italodisco's delirium of wild riffs and sad melodies into its synthesis. Whereas, Seo Taiji threw the pang and beat techniques of freestyle right atop the new-jack-swing rhythms. But I can't speak with any kind of knowledge or authority on 1990s K-pop overall. My vague sense of east Asian dance in the '90s has Japan incorporating Italy's wild riffage (or Italian producers targeting the Japanese market with "Eurobeat"); and I know for a fact that 1980s Italodisco was a living presence in 1990s Chinese-American bargain bins; and in 1993 Chuli and Miae hit in Korea with "Why You," which surreptitiously sampled American freestyle act the Cover Girls; in any event, by the time I heard of K-pop fifteen years later, freestyle and disco were part of its basic day-to-day language without seeming retro or being particularly pointed to.
I wouldn't say this sound is gone in K-pop, but the feeling kind of is. I hope I'm wrong. This summer I plan to trawl through more of the year's releases, come up with a better earscape. K-pop still has a varied and open palette, but the colors are autumny, mature, to the music's detriment. That's a cliché of course. Maybe I'm just overreacting to my disappointment with the new Oh My Girl track. [Spaceholder for why I don't like the new Oh My Girl track. Also for why I'm not quite on board with Momoland, who are all spring and sunshine and playground and stuff.]
Hanging back in boom and doom:
A phrase from my notes: "hanging back in boom and doom." Refers to trap's strength in being admirably not eclectic — though to say so, I have to claim that Soundcloud rap's grunge fascination is an odd, tunneling into-the-muck eclecticism that counts for some reason as anti-eclectic; ditto J.I.D's bug excavations. And anyway Sexyy Red and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Lil Pump are probably conduits to workaday reengaging with everything else and pull-it-all-in humdrum happiness and unhappiness etc., for better or worse (we'll find out).*****
[UPDATE: I'm posting Chuck's Pazz & Jop Product Reports for January through June in the comments. And in the 4th comment down I've linked some classic "freestyle" tracks for those readers who aren't familiar with the genre and are struggling to make sense of what I mean by that term and by the term "Italodisco."]
*And "first third" equals "first five-twelfths," just as it did last year.
**Again, I'm talking through my hat here (a straw fedora) regarding my "knowledge" of who listens to trot and how this is viewed in Korea.
***Other than the words being Chinese rather than English, and a K-poppy rap in the middle. Subject For Further Research: David informs me that Asia in the '80s did indeed create vintage Italodisco; he's found several examples (Jessie from Taiwan, Crapas and Bunny Girls from South Korea) at the ultradiskopanorama YouTube channel. I'd expect a lot more was produced. Japan?
****I don't really know what that phrase means but I hope Dave Moore shows up in the comments to explain it to me.
*****I'm referencing acts on my last year's list (which still hasn't gotten my writeup), and some of their last-year's tracks may get on some people's or even my own this-year's lists as album tracks get their singles and singles get their vids and so forth.
Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"
Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"
no subject
But the notoriety of an R. Kelly or a Seungri distorts the discussion somewhat, in effect puts what they now represent in place of what the music had previously represented and what the social styles surrounding the music represent. That is, in the normal course, people almost never base their liking of a song, or whether they think the song is good or not,* on "What sort of person does this make me, that I like this song?" They might ask that question of themselves once they've figured out that they do like the song, but the liking itself is already in place, comes prior to the question, not after it.** But nonetheless, the songs they like and dislike form the kind of personal and social footprint that would have arisen if they had based their likes and dislikes on "What tastes would be appropriate to the sort of person I am?" And this becomes even more pronounced once we start adding up the various tastes of the people and social groupings an individual hangs out with or near.
It's as if our ideas and perceptions and feelings regarding music do a kind of psychosocial sorting for us (and against us, too, if it keeps sticking us in the same old milieus and reinforces the same old class hierarchies), despite this sorting having nothing to do one way or another with our intentions. And believe me I'm not being crude here. "The sort of person I am," or you are, or anyone is, has a lot of facets: temperament, personality, style, and where one locates oneself — or gets located — on various social maps. Social location is underrated as a factor precisely because, while we may notice when our tastes match or put us at odds with the people around us, we're not liking or disliking something in order to match or oppose them, nor to make sure we identify with one group of them and not another. And anyway it's not as if what you praise and deride in music ever exactly matches what your buddies praise and deride. What a group of people argue about is as defining as what they think they hold in common: one thing they hold in common is what they think is worth arguing about, as opposed to what they let slide or ignore; another is that, in Western culture, anyway, we wouldn't trust anyone who lacked idiosyncrasies.
Even in the case of a Seungri*** — and let's say he weren't a musician, that you're talking about a neighbor or something — your opinion of who he is and what he did isn't based on how that opinion will rearrange your sense of self (which it won't) or your sense of how others will see you (which it also probably won't, but you never know). Not that you can't or shouldn't rethink your opinions and change how you hear the music in response to blowback from others or your own self-questioning. That's what a lot of thinking is: responding to dissonance. But what's changed here isn't you, it's just your perception of Seungri and ilk, and with it your perception of K-pop. And maybe that'll change how you hear K-pop, even down to the level of beats and melodies.
*These are two different things, how much you like something and how good you think it is, though they often run close to one another and I'm not bothering to separate them out in this comment.
**The public display of the liking can be a different story, but let's put that aside for the time being. And once you learn what others think, how you hear the music can change, but again the change won't be in order to align yourselves with others — but that's often the result.
***As you say, it's not just Seungri; but I'm using him as a metonym or synecdoche (not sure of the right term) for all the related and similar scandals.