'Cause when the roof caved in and the truth came out/I just didn't know what to do
The other day I went home with the express mission of making shrimp, and for some reason seasoning them lil’ sea roaches got me thinking bout how insane Jason Derulo’s 2009-2015 run was. I know you’re probably like “Cahleb, what?” but tell me I’m lying. It’s not just the volume of hits, but the market he penetrated. It is well-documented that Mainstream Top 40 radio is incredibly exclusionary to Black artists. Humor me for a bit while we talk about radio:
Some of the traditional radio formats include Country, Contemporary Hit Radio/Mainstream Top 40, Rock/Alternative, Urban, Rhythmic, Urban Adult Contemporary/Adult R&B (UAC), Adult Contemporary (AC) Classic Hits/Oldies. Classical, Christian Gospel, Smooth Jazz, Americana and more. These radio delineations tend to be dictated by race as much as they are by sound. This is well-documented and largely understood by anyone who analyzes the charts and understands how radio works. A 2017 piece by The Outline found that during the time frame of October 2016 - February 2017, 43% of the artists in the Billboard Top 40 were Black. On the American Top 40 charts, that number was less than 20%.
Billboard’s methodology is unpublished, but we can estimate that radio accounts for 30-40% of a song’s performance on the Billboard Hot 100 any given week—which is a lot. It’s also a significantly more label-controlled and much less consumer-influenced channel compared to digital downloads and streams, which make up the remaining 60-70%. And your radio numbers aren’t calculated by spins, but rather estimated audience impressions. So, based on what time of the day you play, and on what station, those impressions help calculate the score that decides your spot on the charts. As you might imagine, out of that above list, Top 40, Country and Adult Contemporary (Top 40 for white moms. No shade, the stations are kinda fire. I love P!nk) during rush hour has the largest audience numbers. With all of this in mind, can you see how radio manipulation might be a fantastic way to keep certain artists out of the mainstream music market? Anyway, I’m not going to do a full history on race and radio in the U.S., but here are a few more in-depth pieces you can check out:
“It’s Too Urban” – Systemic Racism in Top 40 Radio, by Canadian Radio Host Johnny Novak
The Very White Ways of the Top 40, The Outline
BUT back to my point, Jason Derulo. It cannot be understated how monumental it is that Jason Derulo penetrated the top 40 market with such consistency out the gate, in a format that’s historically been very difficult for Black people to penetrate especially the onset of their career (many crossover from other formats, or are featured artists on a Top 40 record after scoring a big hit on Urban or Rhythmic). He’s not the first or only, but I feel a need to emphasize this because his legacy (and I’m gonna call it that!) gets very overlooked because his career has aged in an…interesting way. We all know.
I feel like we talk a lot about artists who are “cancelled” for doing and saying incredibly problematic things and causing real material harm to people, but we don’t talk about the secret third thing: artists whose public personas are cringe. Many artists get a lot of shit simply because they do things that are deemed embarrassing, and it clouds people’s perception of their music—from Sam Smith to Chloe Bailey to Shawn Mendes to Demi Lovato to Charlie Puth to Meghan Trainor and more (and best believe you can find me putting someone on to a deep cut by any of these artists to prove this exact point, and watching them fall in love with it to their own surprise or simply remember how good it is). And so, I’m introducing Jason Derulo into the ring. Laugh at him all you want, but we can’t erase a musical legacy or totalize what we think about the music because of the image. Interestingly, this is an issue largely unique to today’s music landscape—social media and the internet in general give us way more access points to artists that allow us to (think we) know them and the weird, or stupid, or uncomfortable, or unfamiliar things they might do. How many artistic icons might we have written off if we had the ability to realize they were cringe? Do you think Anita Baker would’ve made annoying Tik Toks? Would Lil Kim have made the Lollipop-video? (iykyk. i refuse to bring attention to this.)
“Whatcha Say” is a brilliantly produced song, and executes an Imogen Heap “Hide and Seek” sample so tastefully—with a bridge that we could only imagine hearing on Top 40 radio today. 16 years later, it holds up. To follow that up with additional smash hits on radio—“In My Head” (2009), “Don’t Wanna Go Home” (2009), “Ridin’ Solo” (2010), “Trumpets” (2013), “Want To Want Me” (2015)—is nothing but impressive (and he slid “Swalla” in there in 2017) I’m not saying all the hits are perfect, that “Wiggle” (2014) isn’t a little ridiculous or that “Talk Dirty” (2017) isn’t a little racist, but “Whatcha Say” is a monstrosity of a song and a moment in Black pop history and we gotta acknowledge it even if my mans is a little cringe.
16th most followed on Tik Tok though, that’s crazy.
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CD Radio is a platform where I muse about the music I’m listening to it and why I love it. In this digitally gluttonous/hyperconsumptive/painfully oversaturated music and media climate, a lot of people are struggling to keep up with music or find good music at all. CD Radio is my answer to that problem— I’m helping you cut through the noise and not just discover but properly experience great music because there’s still so much of it, and not enough space and time to revel in it. Think of me as scraping off the top for you.