Radio Station Annoys Man Sitting In Car
I sat in a parked car for an hour this morning, waiting out the no-parking-for-street-cleaning window, listening to Hot 97. I know they're basically a top-40 station, dedicated to whatever's currently most popular in "blazing hip-hop and R&B." But, God, I wish they'd expand their playlist. It really seems like they keep to a rotation of the same five or six songs at any given time. (Maybe they're a top-5 station?) Today, for example, they played Fabolous' "Throw It In The Bag" remix, featuring Drake, around 8:45, and then again at exactly 9:24. Twice in forty minutes! That's ridiculous. (The most recent playlist at Hot97.com has "Throw It In The Bag" ranked 5th. Trey Songz' "I invented Sex," also featuring Drake, is no. 1. So they're playing that one every, what 12 minutes? We're going to run into mathematical impossibility here…) But I don't even mind "Throw It In The Bag" so much. Much worse is the new Young Money song that's also playing with great frequency (ranked 9th on the playlist.) Have you heard it? It's called "Bedrock" and it absolutely plagued my drive back home from Boston after Thanksgiving. (So Hot 97's counterparts in Massachusetts and Connecticut must share some blame.) Young Money is Lil Wayne's group, featuring, yes, Drake, but also Mack Maine, Gutta Gutta, Nicki Minaj and, usually, way too much autotune. But the real problem with "Bedrock" is the chorus.
A cooing, cloying melody, sung by middle-grade R&B vet Lloyd, it goes, "Ooh, baby/I be stuck to you like glue, baby/Wanna spend it all on you, baby/My room is the G spot/Call me Mr. Flintstone/I can make your bed rock."
First of all, as my wife pointed out, it's stupid to refer to anyone called "Mr. Flintstone." Who's ever known him as that? The guy doesn't even wear shoes when he's driving. It's "Fred." Secondly, comparing yourself to a Hannah-Barbera cartoon character is gonna get you laid? Maybe it would-I never understood all that Looney-Tunes denim that Iceberg jeans did in the '90s. But maybe only if you're already a blazing hip-hop and R&B star? More troubling though, the wordplay is just so thick and lazy. (Both Wayne and Drake have proved themselves way better than that in the past.) So pedestrian. How about "Call me Barney Rubble/'Cause I'll rub all over you"? Or "Call me George Jetson/I'll fly you on my jet, son." Or "Call me Scooby-Doo/I'll…" something about "shagging." I don't know.
The samey-sameness demise of hip-hop radio, of popular radio in general is old news. The big corporations, Clear Channel and Emmis Communications, ruined everything, blah blah blah. Nor should it be surprising that a 38-year-old man sitting in his car doesn't like all of the pop music popular with kids today. (How happy young Young Money fans will be to read this!) Especially the hyperproduced, super-futuristic robot-world stuff. (President Obama, another old, doesn't trust robots either, remember.)
And it's not like there's nothing out there for a guy like me. I mean, I listen to Hot 97 by choice, for fun, despite the horrible homogeny. And even within that homogeny, I like some of what I hear. There are three Jay-Z songs in the top 10 of that playlist, all of which I like quite a lot. But one of them is "D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)." Not that this makes it any less good of a song. But it doesn't seem like the kids are listening to the words.
not for nothin' we should all check out the Drake single "Successful". I listen to less of the pop version of his music–but this trak is revelatory and maybe signs of things to come when the child becomes a man. (sorry…was listening to it on the way to work this morning…soooo…)
Sell your car. No more waiting for parking and no more Hot 97.
I listen to A LOT of Hot 97 in the car and everything you say is correct however there are a few saving graces:
1. The throwback lunch.
2. The all live-mix holiday weekends. These are hit-and-miss and have gone down in quality but sometimes there are some really interesting sets of stuff that isn't in their typical insanely limited playlist (and not just throwback stuff either).
3. This is even more hit-and-miss, but sometimes the Saturday night sets by Funk Flex and a couple others go outside of the playlist.
But yes, 90% of the time the playlist is insanely limited and you can here the same (usually horrible) song multiple times an hour.
I talked to a guy in the music industry a couple weeks ago and he claimed that the number of spins per week of a track were the same as they ever were for Top 40 and rock stations but he doesn't know anything about commercial hip-hop stations. I feel like it's never been this bad.
The same as they ever were for Top 40 and rock stations? I don't know…I listen to WFNX in Boston fairly regularly and it seems like they play the same 10 new songs every hour or two, with some 80s and 90s stuff thrown in.
(Cue Gen X rant about glory days when alternative music was really alternative, etc.)
Yes: the live-mix holiday weekends are definitely a saving grace. On the way up to Thanksgiving, for example, we left NYC to the sounds of a set from the classic Bad Boy era. (So funny to type that.) "All About the Benjamins" (one of the top-10 rap beats of all-time? yes), "Hypnotize," "Mo Money Mo Problems," "Another." It was great! It was like classic rock radio. Which, despite the fact that is suffers its own samey-sameness problems (try not to hear Pink Floyd's "Money" during any hour-long stretch on any classic rock station anywhere in the country), i love. The Bad Boy was set had the same comfort-food quality as listening to Carol Miller get the Led. The song remains the same, I guess. But when we're talking about Zeppelin or Biggie, I'll never mind.
It's my mp3 player, NPR, or the community music station for me. I can not listen to commercials anymore.
Cam'ron namedropped Fred with much more panache –
Yellow diamonds in my ear/Call 'em lemonheads/Lemonhead, end up dead/Ice like Winnipeg/Gemstones, Flintstones/ You could say I'm friends with Fred
KILLA!
I had me an epiphany
got to get to Tiffany's
Pretty inconceivable to me to want to listen to D.O.A. instead of Bed Rock, especially at this point.
I realize that I'm in the minority on this one, but I really think "D.O.A." is pretty great. Hearing it yesterday, for the first time in a while, I found it sounding surprisingly strong and fresh. That beat is terrific, unlike anything else out. And Jay sounds engaged and committed in a way that I thought he might never again back around the "Kingdom Come" album. "Bedrock" has now been stuck in my head for 24-hours. And really not in a good way. How I wish I'd never heard that song.
HA HA I have never heard any of these songs and my life is superior because of it. Or perhaps not since it is 1044pm and I am in a hotel room commenting on The Awl.
REGARDLESS! You don't HAVE to listen to godawful radio music, you know. There are options.
I sold my old Accord to Big Bucks Auto because of their ad on Hot 97. Advertising works, folks. After I signed away my old car, the guy asked me where I heard about them and I said Hot 97. He said, "Well, you weren't our target demographic with that ad, but that's good to know."
I would have gone to my trunk,removed the garden hose I keep there for siphoning , put one end in the exhaust and the other in the crack in my window…
No Homogeny.
They played "Birthday Sex" 167 times (just that I heard!) over the course of my 10-week 9-5 summer job in earshot of another's radio. 167 TIMES.
God, yes. I remember that run. Surely no one in the tri-state area will ever want to have sex on his or her birthday again.
They need a new beef to referee. Jadikiss v. 50 was ridic. "You ain't the king of New York, you live in Connecticut."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AP0gRG4GnY