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Chapter 477 Meme Divine Comedy (Part )

The two labels that dominated the hip-hop music scene in 2016 were undoubtedly Trap and mumble rap.

The most typical examples are the two rappers in Han Yi Music Group - Desiigner, who signed an performing contract with UTA, and Lil Yachty, who has a 360-degree contract with Han Music.

These two newcomers achieved unexpected success with lyrics that were difficult to understand at first glance.

Desiigner's "Panda" has won the singles chart twice in a row, and Lil Yachty's "Broccoli" is still at the fifth place on the singles chart.

With such popularity, Lil Yachty became one of the few artists of Han Music who did not show up at 864 Stradella Road today to celebrate the boss' birthday. He just finished his Northern California tour with Rae Sremmurd at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco on November 11, and is now rushing to Arizona. On November 10, they will perform in Tempe, a satellite city east of Phoenix, and go to Tucson on November 11. After the performance, he will take the tour bus back to Los Angeles overnight to complete the performance at The Novo Theater on November 12...

With the shows being held so densely, tickets for the tour are still hard to come by, which shows Lil Yachty's strong appeal among hip-hop fans.

Of course, his tour partner Rae Sremmurd also did their part. Produced by the famous producer Mike WiLL Made It, Rae Sremmurd's "Black Beatles", which also belongs to Trap and mumble rap, reached No. 22 on the Billboard Singles Chart last week.

This shows how popular mumble rap is.

Although, to use the words of Pete Rock attacking Lil Yachty on Instagram, the tone of mumble rap is not much different from "sucking mud on a rainy day", and although Han Yi himself actually agrees with this evaluation, it does not mean that he will not go against money or the trend that will help Han Music further increase its market share.

Since this era likes mumble rap, he will promote mumble rap to the extreme - anyway, he doesn't care too much about which direction hip-hop culture should move in to develop in a healthy way, or whether mumble rap will be a harmful product that will poison a generation of young people in Europe and the United States.

After all, this is a hot trend that European and American society has voted for with their ears. In fact, isn’t the entire so-called Western popular culture just a pile of cheap garbage that is sensationalistic, experiential, thematically exaggerated, and driven by consumer purchasing desire?
In the early 20th century, there were pulp magazines that attracted readers with sensational headlines. Starting in the 1980s, with the rise of cable TV, Dr. Phil, The Jerry Springer Show, and their successors Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Real Beverly Hills Housewives became popular, which are symbols of "trash TV". At the turn of the century, there was "chick literature" represented by Bridget Jones's Diary and The Devil Wears Prada... How much higher can these things be than mumble rap in terms of artistic value?
Therefore, when Han Yi asked the team to focus on promoting "Bad and Boujee", he did not have any psychological burden at all.

If he had to say something, he felt that he was helping to legitimize mumble rap. After all, the overall quality of "Bad and Boujee" was already quite good in this field.

The two singers, Lil Uzi Vert and Migos, are both important figures who have had a profound impact on the hip-hop industry in the future. Metro Boomin, the producer behind the songs, is a milestone figure that cannot be avoided when talking about contemporary rap music.

You can say that what they make is materialistic, full of sexism, empty, meaningless, and full of foul language, but when these three groups get together, they can definitely accurately grasp the pain points and pleasure points of today's young people.

Excellent production quality, controversial lyrics, and one or two catchy phrases are the key to hip-hop works breaking through the circle in this era.

In terms of production, the song samples multiple works, including "Bad at Craftin'" by Bleach Clorox, "FIZ" by Skeme and Lil Uzi Vert, etc. These sampling elements enhance the layering of the music and the diversity of street culture. Combined with Metro Boomin's iconic minimalist arrangement style, it adds a touch of ease to the whole song, with a sense of relaxation and dominance.

In fact, the accompaniment production model of "Bad and Boujee" has become the object of imitation for many subsequent rap works.

In terms of lyrics, "Bad and Boujee" focuses on showing off wealth, gang life and materialism, combining slang and metaphors to show the duality of street culture. "Bad" refers to rebellion and unruliness, while "Boujee" (derived from "bourgeoisie") is a satire on the middle class's pursuit of luxury goods. The combination of the two creates a contradictory tension, reflecting the identity of struggling from the bottom to becoming rich.

The two combined create perhaps the most classic chorus in mumble rap history.

"Raindrops, drop tops..." With its repeated rhymes and brainwashing rhythm, it has become the most recognizable section of the entire song, showcasing Migos' iconic "triplet" rap style, and also making "Bad and Boujee" possible to spread at a phenomenal level.

This is the promotional path Han Yi has chosen for it - to make it a meme hit just like the original time and space, and with the help of a communication matrix that transcends the times, let its commercial performance reach new heights.

So-called meme songs are musical works that have gained widespread popularity and recognition on the Internet through emoticons, viral videos or social media posts. These songs usually have catchy melodies, repetitive lyrics or unique hooks, making them easy to remember and share.

The number one phishing tool on the Internet is "Never Gonna Give You Up". Every movie commentary account on TikTok will use "The Next Episode" in the future.

The background music of the black man carrying the coffin is "Astronomia".

These are the most familiar meme songs.

But don’t think they are vulgar, and don’t underestimate this seemingly nonsensical attribute. If a song can be labeled as a "meme hit", it means that it has transcended the single dimension of a musical work and has been completely integrated into becoming a part of popular culture and social trends.

This will give it a life cycle and value curve that is completely different from that of ordinary songs.

Take "Never Gonna Give You Up" as an example. Netizens who are keen on pranks will use a fishing-style title as bait, such as "Latin mature woman's big ass sat on a hippopotamus to death", which makes people want to find out the truth. But when others click in to check it out, they find that they are actually redirected to the YouTube MV page of this song.

This is the famous "Rickroll".

It was such a simple and somewhat silly prank that brought 16 billion views to the song's MV, which is equivalent to about 1920 million US dollars in revenue for YouTube creators.

Remember, this was a single released in 1987, and when it topped the Billboard singles chart as a hit, it was a full five years before the World Wide Web was opened to the public.

In other words, the vast majority of Never Gonna Give You Up’s online revenue is due to its memetic properties, not its musical properties.

In the era of free music listening, the most advanced way to play is this - using the zero threshold of the streaming platform to make music gain attention beyond the music itself, making it a hot trend that non-core music fans are also willing to spend thirty seconds listening to for fun.

Over the past week, Han Music has gone to great lengths to tailor-make this hot trend for "Bad and Boujee".

Unlike the distribution strategy of Migos' former label Quality Control, Han Music did not release the single for free on SoundCloud for the core hip-hop fan group two months in advance. Instead, it made a grand debut on Spotify and Apple Music on October 10.

After nearly a year of development and accumulation, Han Music can directly control more than 480 playlists, of which 160 are dedicated hip-hop playlists, and another 200 can also put "Bad and Boujee" as music of the same type or theme. At the same time, Han Music has obtained the recommended position on the homepage banner from Apple Music, and Spotify has also reserved some good front-row positions for "Bad and Boujee" in the official playlist of the hip-hop category.

Although the relationship with Han Music is not as close as that with Apple Music, the former is, after all, a rising and rapidly developing new force in the music industry. It took only three quarters for the former to go from obscurity to having its singles all over the charts. Without anyone making a big effort to suppress it, Spotify is naturally willing to do Han Music a favor and give it a hand. After all, for streaming platforms, the most valuable are these content providers who can continuously provide traffic explosion points.

What's more, before the release of "Bad and Boujee", Migos had already become a well-known hip-hop group in Atlanta with several mixtapes. It was reasonable to provide them with some promotional resources as they were on the rise and their number of fans and playback volume were steadily increasing.

The increasingly mature publicity and promotion matrix of the group, the resource support from the two platforms, and Migos' debut of the new song in front of 75,000 spectators at the Las Vegas festival venue on the day of the single's release, led to over one million plays of "Bad and Boujee" on the day of its release, which marked a good start for the single's sprint to the charts.

But this is only the first foundation that Han Yi has laid for "Bad and Boujee". If he wants to really build a tall building on the ground, make this song a Billboard champion single, and further ferment it into a meme song that is in sync with the pulse of the times, he needs to rely on two other promotional tools.

First, it’s the Twitter hashtag.

The second is that he is accelerating the acquisition process of Musical.ly through Joshua Kushner.

(End of this chapter)