Not everyone is buying it. Despite the study’s findings, “I don’t think hip-hop lyrics are any angrier,” says Dame Aubrey, director of A&R at CMG Records and Management, a music label that represents rappers Moneybagg Yo, BlocBoy JB and GloRilla. In any case, Aubrey says, the changes we hear are a product of as music has expanded. It’s simple, Aubrey says: more people, more perspectives. The medium is more accessible now thanks to the technology available. “There are just a lot more artists with opportunities to be heard because it basically became a trend to make music.”
An important adjustment in all of this is the mechanics of how a song becomes popular and what generates its popularity.
In the age of social media, that can often translate into more of the same. guys of sounds, although this is not always the case. So when Lamar takes shots at Drake, calling him one of the “fools with a check” and then says “Before they bury all your dogs / That’s a K with all these nines, he’s gon’ check out the pet cemetery ”, the verses gain traction in
Rap has always had, well, a bad reputation. Ego, anger, arrogance: those emotions are part of the genre’s strident identity. Since the founding of hip-hop 50 years ago, artists have used those feelings to illustrate their realities. Rap is sport. It’s theater. It’s precisely the kind of music that encourages the style of intense interaction that is increasingly common among online fans.
Are less positive song lyrics actually increasing, or is the popularity of a certain type of song simply a reflection of what we think the algorithm wants to hear? Streaming transformed the music industry in every way possible. Creating hit songs is easier but just as difficult. The winds of virality can still be unpredictable. Although it’s not an exact science, what is evident is how streaming playlists help get a song to large audiences in a way that analog media couldn’t.
“While there are certainly trends in organic popularity, a unique feature of playlists is the meaning and importance of context,” says JJ Italiano, head of global music curation and discovery at Spotify. “Even the most popular songs can vary wildly in their performance, depending on the playlist they are in and the other songs surrounding them in that playlist.”
Dasha’s recent viral hit “Austin” had around 10,000 streams when Spotify editors started scheduling it for their playlists, Italiano says, and it worked best when paired with similar pop songs that span country and pop. , sequenced between summer songs with guitars. melodies (like Noah Kahan), narrative-rich country songs (like Zach Bryan), or similar heartbreaking tracks from a different genre (like Mitski). “Eventually, the song became so popular on Spotify that it made it to our most popular playlist, Today’s Top Hits,” he says. But over time, Italiano notes, sequencing becomes less crucial to a song’s lifespan as listeners develop a “deep familiarity” with the song.
Artists, then, find themselves making music in line with trends, trying to achieve the same level of reach that songs like “Austin” or “Like That” achieved. In years past, everything from war to heartbreak influenced the music of the day. That’s still true, but now TikTok, X, and other platforms drive the conversation as much as anything else. “Social media definitely plays a role in songwriting, just like community, movies and television once did,” Aubrey says of rap. And social media is often crazy, a cycle that leads to angrier songs dominating the conversation. Taylor Swift’s most popular online topics are usually the ones that detail her disdain.
Even an artist like Milwaukee rapper Khal!l, who told WIRED in August that he wanted to “create an atmosphere where we can mosh pit but then also cry and hold hands and shit,” finds himself indebted. with the algorithm. He became famous thanks to TikTok and you need to feed him with content that resonates: “We have to ride this horse until our hooves fall off.”