Several years ago I spent some time living with my brother and then-new sister-in-law. Probably because I felt somewhat awkward with them in a one-bedroom apartment, I would whistle so that they would be aware of where I was. Not that I was some sort of great whistler (in case you are, you might want to know that The Masters of Musical Whistling Competition will be held in Hollywood in September), but I figured that it both served its purpose and was somewhat tuneful.
But then my sister-in-law said to me one day, “Don’t you ever whistle a song?” and that essentially ended my whistling then and pretty much since. After all, I thought that I was sufficiently melodious, riffing on well-known songs of the day. To her it was nothing but a series of high-pitched undifferentiated sounds emitted by my lips.
ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has released an AI model called “Ripple.” Apparently one can sing or hum something into the app and then the AI expands that with an instrumentation. Suddenly, everyone is a musician of sorts.
Realize that during Q1 of this year there were 120,000 music audio files uploaded to streaming services each day, according to Luminate. Ripple was released at the end of Q2.
Presumably a non-trivial number of those 120,000 files made my whistling sound like I was channeling Molly Lewis, not making perceptually random toots.
Now imagine what is going to happen now that there is the opportunity for people to go “hnnh, hnnnh, hnnh, hnnnnnnh. . . .” and achieve orchestration for their efforts, slight those they may be.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z have, it is reported, as who can really be certain about hot celebrity goss, bought a house in Malibu for $200 million. It measures 30,000 square feet. Or about half the size of a football field. Apparently a Roomba i7 can clean as many as 2,500 square feet. So arguably the Carter family might need 12 of the devices. However, the battery charge would be such that a given vacuum can handle 1,000 square feet before a need to recharge. So it could be that they need 30. Which probably wouldn’t be much of a problem. And while the $200 million for a house is something that probably none of us has a good metric to compare it to, know that Oprah reportedly (remember, the factual uncertainty of things) bought her digs in Montecito—about 60 miles up the coast from Malibu—for a mere $52-million. Of course, it is smaller, though not exactly a starter: 23,000 square feet.
All of which is to say that doesn’t it make you wonder whether you should have actually listened to your parents and instead become a musical sensation such that you could have wed another musical sensation so that now you’d have to ponder the potential annoyance of a fleet of robot vacuums?
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Jay-Z spent some $1.1 million in 2015 to purchase TIDAL, the streaming service that had been founded a year prior. Timing is everything, it seems. He sold the company to Block (previously known as “Square”) in 2021 for some $300-million. (Yes, even with COVID-caused inflation, the value of that $300-mil would be more than enough for a manse and a phalanx of i7+ models.) However, Jay-Z and Beyoncé—as well as performers ranging from Arcade Fire to Madonna, Chris Martin to Rihanna—continue as stakeholders.
“We make a mean team, my Adidas and me”—Darryl McDaniels, Joseph Simmons, Rick Rubin
One of the things that got a big buying boost during the lock-down portion of the pandemic was all manner of leisure wear, including the sort of things that were on offer by companies including Adidas. This was a function of people looking for casual comfort, but rather than picking up something from the Scoop or Free Assembly brands from their local Walmart, which would allow them to “Save Money. Live Better,” there was a propensity, in many instances, to opt for something from the Adidas offerings from Yeezy or IVY PARK.
The former, of course, was the line that Adidas created in collaboration with the performer known as Ye. Adidas ended that relationship last October after he made several anti-Semitic remarks. At the time, the athletic apparel brand released an announcement that said, in part, “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.” Two years earlier, his then-wife had come out to defend her then-husband’s bizarre rants, noting that he, according to her, suffers from bipolar disorder. But Adidas was making some serious returns on its investment with the man whose music has gone Platinum and with whom it had been working since November 2013, so until last fall the status remained quo.
How significant is the split for the Adidas?
Last week the German company announced that it is likely to lose some $1.3-billion in revenues and $533-million in operating product.
Apparently Adidas was bringing in some 10% of its total annual revenues—some $2-billion—in selling Yeezy stuff.
After eight weeks in the top spot of Billboard’s Hot 100, Post Malone’s terrible song “Rockstar” (ft. 21 Savage) has finally been dethroned by gnomey little Ed Sheeran and her royal highness Beyonce.
“Perfect” sold 181,000 downloads and 34.9 million streams in the week ending Dec. 7, with 102 million all-format radio audience impressions in the week ending Dec. 10.
It’s a pleasant enough ditty. Pretty acoustic guitar with Sheeran’s doughy vocals coming through so earnestly. When Queen Bey comes in, you wonder what she’s doing hanging out with a wimp like that. But what can you do? It’s pretty. A silly love song. You’d think that people would have had enough of them, but apparently it isn’t so.
This is guaranteed to be played at countless weddings for the foreseeable future. And why not? It’s completely inoffensive and expresses a very nice, loving sentiment in a format designed to appeal to as many human beings as possible. As much as I want to hate Ed Sheeran’s saccharine corn, I can’t. You’d have to be a real grouch to come up with the energy to actively hate this.
It was around 2:50 PM Eastern Time, I was in my room in front of my desk talking on the phone with one of my closest friends, Amo. We were talking about how to navigate workplaces, and other spaces we wanted to access as a Black woman. We talked about how we were learning how to be productive and how life was popping at the moment because we were doing so much. Also, how do we pick and choose battles? Which battles are worth fighting? To what extent are we willing to be uncomfortable until it’s acceptable to pop off? We needed to get employed and answer these questions in order to survive. As we’re talking about being the young, Black hustlers that we are, “Formation” interrupted our conversation and honestly, I couldn’t even remember what I was saying before the video dropped, all I remember after that is saying “I love Beyoncé” repeatedly as I watched the video and Amo was on the other side of the line wheezing.
“Formation” dropped at the perfect time for me, just as I thought that I needed to tone my blackness down, I was uplifted and encouraged to do the stark opposite. “Formation” was necessary and to underestimate Beyoncé’s timing on all this is to underestimate her ability to use the power that she knows she has. We’re talking about a woman here that works day and night and makes sure that every aspect of her artistry is perfection. She is known for this. “‘Formation’ is a late entry into the dialogue about black lives, and it largely sidesteps the politics. Still it feels essential.” But how? Do you really think she didn’t know that she was going to perform at the Super Bowl? Do you believe that she wasn’t preparing to release the video the day before she performed it in the Bay Area, where the Black Panthers Party was started? If you believe this a money-move, I worry about how someone like you exists among the human race.
Unapologetically celebrating your blackness isn’t palatable to a white gaze and Beyoncé is more likely to lose money by having done this. But she doesn’t need more money, and she’ll continue to make more money regardless of what some myopic, racists think of her. At this point in her career, she doesn’t need to care.
This song made a lot of people angry, people expect Black women to be inclusive. That everything Black people do needs to include everyone else even though Black people are excluded from most spaces. This video and song was exclusive, it’s the embodiment of the lyric “how you gon’ hate from outside the club—you can’t even get in.” An outsider looking in wouldn’t be able to understand all of the references in the song. “Formation” is a Black femme anthem. It’s not for all girls like “Run the World” was. She spoke about her experience as a woman. In “Run the World,” it was about how “we run the world”, but the specification of her black womanhood and her usage of the word “I” is important in this song. This song is made for Black femmes to chant in clubs, it’s not meant to be inclusive. If you don’t understand why she carries hot sauce in her bag, if you don’t have a negro nose—”Formation” was not written with you in mind and you better not be caught chanting that you like your negro nose, ever. What was interpreted by some as a display of grandeur was a gift to this Black girl’s Instagram captions, and more importantly, it was spiritually uplifting for me as a Black woman. Before Beyoncé even mentions that she’s the Black Bill Gates in the making, before she mentions that she works hard and she grinds till she owns it, she says: “Earned all this money but they’ll never take the country out me” and that’s followed by “I got hot sauce in my bag, swag”. You can’t take the country out her no matter how high up her paper stacks up because she’s Southern and Black AF and hot sauce in her bag, swag.
The median wealth for a single Black woman in the United States is $5. When people call Beyoncé a titan for capitalism, the only reason I’d understand why they’d call her that is because she’s worth millions, and when she says she just might be the Black Bill Gates in the making that isolates a lot of non-millionaires from relating to her. What I don’t understand is the unmitigated anger that people have for a Black woman getting her coin. People aren’t hiring Black women, and when they do they short us and we have to deal with microaggressions and not so subtle racism. So when Beyoncé says “I dream it, I work hard, I grind till I own it” she knows that every Black girl in the club on a Friday night after having that deposit hit is chanting this because we worked hard, and we need to grind for every. single. penny. we have. And when she sings “I slay” Black girls everywhere are feeling cocky fresh with their baby hairs and afros.
In the “Formation” video, the girls are lined up or, in formation with their afros and glistening melanin, not a non-black person is in sight, well except for the cops. Black women have been in the frontlines in every movement. The Black Panther Party wouldn’t be anything without the women involved, the Stonewall riots were started by a Black trans woman, the Black Lives Matter movement was started by Black women—black women get in formation and then get shit done. “Okay ladies now let’s get in formation” is a call to Black girls only, the “okay” gives us a sense of familiarity with this, we know what we need to do, we’re together in this struggle and together, in formation we run the world.
Najma Sharif is a Minnesotan living and studying in New York City. She likes her coffee like she likes herself— bitter and strong.
If there ever was an argument for the superiority of Dyson products, it was made earlier this week in Montreal at the Bell Centre when Beyoncé had her hair tangled in a fan. Had there been a Dyson Air Multiplier on stage rather than a thing with whirling blades, hair stylists everywhere wouldn’t have had a heart-in-the-throat moment. Still, credit must be given to the stalwart performer, who kept on keeping on, singing “Halo,” tonsorial issues notwithstanding.
There must be something about performers, hair, and a contract with Pepsi. Who can forget Michael Jackson in 1984, when his hair caught on fire during the third take of a Pepsi commercial? In Beyonce’s Pepsi spot, there are shattered mirrors, but no fireworks.
(Was Beyoncé’s hair mishap an accident. . .or something else of a more spectral variety, a thriller, as it were?)
While people might think that the life of a musician is all limos and lager, living life large, performing can be deadly. Like the case of Les Harvey, of Stone the Crows, who was electrocuted by a microphone in 1972. Or Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson who had a fatal gripper on stage in 1996, as did Miriam Makeba in 2008. And there are more who gave up their lives so we could be entertained.
Make no mistake: Performing can be hazardous to your health. Of course, if you’re a musician and not performing, it can be equally untoward (cf: Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison. . . .).
In addition to being a great repository of long lost videos and concert footage, YouTube was always a great place to find embarrassing footage of your favorite stars. There was a wasted Britney sputtering gibberish in a hotel room; there was Hasselhoff sloshed and sorting through a hamburger; Paula Abdul clearly off her rocker on morning news…
But with the sale of YouTube to Google, thus folding it under a massive corporate umbrella, how much longer can we expect these gems that humanize our heroes? Ok, nobody considers Paula Abdul a hero, but you get my drift.
A search today of “Beyonce Falls” leads me to believe our days are numbered. Notice that fan footage of Ms. Knowles face planting at a recent Orlando show has been removed from YouTube by dint of a “copyright claim by Sony BMG.” Copyright to what? Beyonce hitting the floor? The video I attempted to view was all of 13 seconds so I think any claim to the music could be written off as fair use. So why has YouTube caved? Because Big Business helps Big Business.
