The Single Dilemma

There’s a gift and a curse that comes with what I do. On one hand, I largely get the chance to drop songs that I for the most part enjoy and hope others will as well. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the “business” (trust, there is a certain way about things, despite other sites suggesting otherwise) I drop cuts that I tend to forget about sooner than later.

It’s these songs that I fail to recall that sometimes end up being singles for many artists, indie and mainstream alike, and it makes me wonder why they were chosen as“lead singles” to begin with. The label glorified financial backer will pump thousands of dollars into a song, flooding the world with single artwork, remixes, behind-the-scenes videos, behind-the-scenes pictures, interviews and more before finally dropping a music video for the whole thing, only for the whole thing to crash and burn worse than any of those people who were dumb enough to mess with Sasquatch.

Meanwhile, some songs that get the least amount of attention from their benefactors end up making an even bigger impact than the designated cuts. A case study would be current femcee/oddball Nicki Minaj. Originally she started off as a Lil Kim clone, but I think she dropped that angle once she realized that she’d probably had to have sex with a fat Black guy with a wonky eye and dense lyrical dexterity. Now reborn as a surgically crafted, anatomically correct, urban Mattel doll, she dropped her formal commercial introduction, “Massive Attack,” which, more ore less, failed like that Nigerian who tried to blow up an airplane headed to Detroit and instead burned his balls off, despite the push it received. However, the single she let loose via the Internets, “Your Love” shot up the charts and gave her a number-one single for the first time with little to no fanfare promotion before a video ever surfaced.

Nicki’s not the only one; that type of support (whether or not you see it in this case) occurs all the time, even with artists we actually like. It’s just another sign that the people truly dictate the music, and that it can’t be forced on us to enjoy. Our power is what convinced Def Jam to take a chance on a Method Man, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon album. It’s how Jay Electronica briefly took over the world with “Exhibit C.” It’s the reason why many independent artists are sharing television time with the A-listers. It just proves that perhaps they should just listen to us more to figure out what we do and do not like, so they don’t lost a shitload of money promoting something that everybody avoids like the chick with a cold sore on her lip at a party.