Rap

There are relatively few Netflix documentaries – even in this increasingly sensationalized and prurient age – that have made anything like the splash that the new show about the artist formerly known as P. Diddy has caused. Sean Combs: The Reckoning isn’t just hard to watch, but positively mind-blowing in its account of the imprisoned mogul’s actions and predilections. Although he was acquitted of the most serious charges that he was on trial for this year, Combs will not be released from jail until May 2028. Given the number of allegations and civil suits pending against him, any comeback for the disgraced musician looks impossible – even in an era when Kanye West is, apparently, given second chance after second chance.

A male British rapper who is unafraid to show tenderness and vulnerability is not a particularly new phenomenon: Dave, Stormzy, Headie One and Kano have all walked this path in recent times. None, however, has made emotional fragility his USP to quite the same extent as Loyle Carner, who writes about his children, his masculine role models, mental health, race and inherited trauma in an unthreatening sing-song style which has made him both a pop star and a bit of a poster boy for Feeling Things. His tour is named after his fourth and most recent album, hopefully!. To his credit, he has put his money where his rhymes are. Carner has preached about knife crime from the stage at Glastonbury. He was talking about his ADHD before it became the topic du jour for celebrity over-sharers.

Amid the hullaballoo that surrounded Charlie Kirk’s memorial service last weekend, seemingly virtually every figure associated in any way with the MAGA movement appeared – yes, even Elon Musk, who was filmed shaking hands with President Trump in one of the more unexpected rapprochements of the year. But one man who many might have expected to be present was nowhere to be seen. The rapper, producer and professional controversialist Kanye “Ye” West, who might have added a certain grim luster to the predominantly Christian music played at the memorial, was absent, and so the potential for the carefully choreographed event being thrown into chaos was avoided. It might sound unlikely that West would ever have been invited, but a new documentary about him, In Whose Name?

Grade: B Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are down, kid – shove a fiddle in the next one. And a pedal steel. And git some of those country dudes to collaborate. Especially Dolly. But also Hank Williams Jnr, if you can. Makes them look hip, makes you look real down home. So it is with the agreeably slobbering rapper Post Malone, born in NYC, raised in LA but here sounding like he jes swung in from some roadhouse barstool outta Shreveport, with bourbon and country blood trickling down over his stupid tattoos. His career has hit a hiatus of late and so this is an attempted revival.

It is always interesting to observe the ways in which pop stars try to negotiate first growing up, and then growing old. From teen scream to respected mainstay to elder states(wo)man is not an easy path to walk without a few stumbles. At certain times, it requires making some blatantly strategic moves. Cabello wants so badly to grow up that she evolves from a past incarnation practically into thin air Few readers will remember that the first solo single George Michael released after dissolving Wham! was called ‘I Want Your Sex’, a forgettable bump-and-grind with a steamy video designed purely to shift audience expectations away from all things teenybopper and towards a more adult-orientated market. The song was banned by the BBC during daylight hours.

Last May, a rapper who performs under the name Young Thug was arrested and named in a gang indictment in Atlanta. Right now, the trial relating to that arrest, the YSL RICO case, is underway. Fellow rapper Gunna and no less than twenty-six other young men associated with their Young Slime Life music collective, have been arrested and charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization, or RICO, statute for “alleged gang activity.” In the post-Black Lives Matter era, the case has become something of a cause célèbre, with prominent figures in the entertainment industry and beyond arguing that Young Thug and Gunna are essentially on trial because they are flashy young black men – who, in Thug’s case, may also be gay or bisexual.

Azealia Banks is taking a break from digging up her dead cat and returning to music after signing with major label Parlophone. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Banks spilled the beans on her very public breakdowns, Kanye West and, weirdly enough, Ron DeSantis. (Naturally, she used rather colorful language in doing so: Cockburn urges the faint-hearted to skip over the following quotes.) Banks, the New York rapper and singer who first gained popularity eleven years ago with her hit "212," claimed that she felt safer after her move from Los Angeles to Florida. She said that people “mind their fuckin’ business” and claimed that the media lies about the Republican haven. Part of that, she said, is down to the governor, Ron DeSantis. “He’s focused on the basic shit.

Here are the facts: Kanye West should be in a psychiatric hospital. Instead, he’s speaking his mind, or what’s left of it. For what it’s worth, Kanye West should not be tweeting or going on podcasts. Unlike the side effects of a prescription drug, the results don’t vary. No, the outcome is usually the same, in one form or another: career suicide. Kanye West’s artistic legacy is undergoing seppuku. We've seen this movie before. Remember Roseanne? After a racist tweet in 2018, ABC immediately canceled her show (it was going to be her comeback). Hulu followed up by removing every season of Roseanne from their streaming service.

The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music critic I saw an awful lot – was Kanye West at Glastonbury in 2015. Perhaps he was making some kind of ironic statement on the nature of celebrity and fan expectation: blinding lights all focused on himself; no attempts to engage with the crowd; relentless, mechanical rapping but with most of the amusing samples and catchy hooks removed, the better to punish us all by ordeal with loud, righteous verbiage.

In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, James R. Hagerty and Anne Steele argue that pop artists are using more imperfect — that is, half or slant — rhymes than before because of the pressure to be original in the age of Spotify. This, plus the influence of rap, which “requires verbal virtuosity,” they argue, “has upped the ante on originality in rhyming.” Color me unconvinced. Olivia Rodrigo rhymes “smart” with “car” in “Brutal.” Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” rhymes “full 180” with “crazy.” For Hagerty and Steele, these are examples of stunning creativity. But lyricists have been using slant rhymes for a long time. Why? Mainly because they are easier than perfect rhymes, at least in English.

In the latest episode of Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America, Louis asked a rapper called Broke Baby if ‘it’s important to keep it real’. ‘You have to play your role,’ replied Broke by way of apparent agreement. Given how stoned he was, this neat paradox — that you keep it real by pretending to — mightn’t have been wholly intended. Either way, however, it was hard not to apply it to Louis himself. More than 20 years into his TV career, does anybody know for sure whether his familiar schtick is genuine or faked? Certainly not, I’d suggest, Louis — whose elaborate stage-English courtesy, wide-eyed bemusement and spectacular naivety are now so practised as to have become completely ingrained.

The new music economy relies on cross-promotion and artists reaching out to different scenes. And the rise of streaming means everyone can hop between audiences with ease, hence those singles apparently by one person but with a cricket team’s worth of other names credited. As the Beach Boys once sang, ‘you need a mess of help to stand alone’. Alongside the featured artist sausage factory there are musical patrons. Take Damon Albarn, who has spent much of the past 20 years elevating the work of other artists, using the strength of his own name — made, of course, as the frontman of Blur — to promote music that might otherwise slip past his core audience.

In Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy, an early over-the-top indicator of future Earth’s stupidity is the number-one movie in the country: eight-time Oscar winner Ass, which is nothing but 90 minutes of its title proudly displayed.It turns out, though, that Judge’s vision of the future was not over-the-top at all. In fact, it was shockingly tame. Idiocracy took place in 2505, but Ass only took until 2020.The most popular song in America right now is Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’. The title is short for ‘wet ass pussy’, and the lyrics get even less Shakespearean from there. The song is accompanied by a big-budget, hyper-sexualized music video that has already been viewed on YouTube close to 100 million times in five days.