021! Mini Digest: Bassline summer, Haitian Konpa and Grime in Roblox
Put a donk on those links
Good morning fellow readers. I’m working on some longer form content, which I am hoping to be done with soon! This week I was happy to see that some of the new UK music coming through feels decidedly British. Not in a nationalist way, just in a lovingly “this couldn’t have come from anywhere but Sheffield” kind of way. Will it be a bassline summer? Let’s find out.
Sound
Jamaican artist Masicka went on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning” show, in advance of his appearance at this year’s Summer Jam concert. In a discussion about dancehall and afrobeats, Ebro suggests that the “opportunity is really to ignore trying to chase North American stardom and just build between Africa, the UK, and the pan-African diaspora.” Given the platform they’re on, it’s a lil funny, but it’s hard not to agree with Ebro, at least culturally if not strategically.
Meanwhile, though, Burna Boy was posting on IG stories this week comparing streaming rates in Nigeria (Nigeria has the lowest subscription cost for Spotify in the world, at $0.56 per month) to those in the UK and the US, and encouraging fellow Nigerian artists to think bigger than the Nigerian charts. Of course, the US market is hard to ignore financially, Ebro! The African streaming market stands at around $370m, with the US at over twenty billion.
Related: Burna Boy has just featured on the remix of a big Haitian hit by Joé Dwèt Filé. Burna is the go-to feature artist for the afro-caribbean hit that’s looking to break into the bigger market (sorry again, Ebro) - having recently featured on huge amapiano hit “Tshwala Bam”, dancehall hit “Talibans”, and South African house hit “Jerusalema”. It’s a strategic decision, but Burna is also versatile enough to make them all work.
PinkPantheress has a new album coming and the first single is a bassline summer banger, with a video that is somewhere between Bridgerton and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
Jorja Smith has also teased a bassline hit to be released soon. A full summer of 4x4?! Related: Soundcloud just released their “Music Intelligence Report”, which said that UKG and Bassline was up 31% on last year.
You can always trust the UK charts for a crazy outlier, and this time it’s UK producer Sully making it into the Top 40 with his latest D&B offering.
UK dance act Sherelle surprise dropped a new album and the first single “Freaky” is fun.
Meanwhile in the US, Miley Cyrus has made an experimental record?! With nods to Phillip Glass? Seems a little on the nose to have the lyrics be “Let’s pretend it’s not the end of the world,” Is this anti-protest music?
Vision
Detroit Ghetto tech legend DJ Godfather made an appearance on The Lot Radio.
As I predicted, Vybz Kartel is making his way through the back catalogue of videos that came out while he was away, in a very strange order. Next up: Miami Vice Episode.
It’s hard to deny that “Nokia” is a great comeback for Drake. The video is out now.
A BBC documentary on UK clubs post-pandemic. A bit grim.
Thought
A quick video on how the tariffs will affect the music biz, by Kristin Robinson. TLDR: instruments, touring, and merch all affected.
Kelefa Sanneh was on the Search Engine podcast telling the story of one specific artist whose release got mixed up with another. If you know nothing of distribution, it’s definitely a compelling tale, but as additional information: this is so commonplace that I’m surprised it even made a story. I hadn’t realised, though, that Spotify has been deliberately down in Russia since the war started.
The latest Trapital podcast has Midia’s Mark Mulligan on to talk about streaming’s slowdown, the indie market and the future of music publishing.
Apparently p*rn is spiking up the Spotify podcast charts.