Menu Menu
[gtranslate]

when music is so bad it’s good

Sometimes music releases can be so horrendously awful that they somehow go full circle and become enjoyable. Is this musical brain rot for the masses? Probably, but I don’t mind.

Lil Wayne released ‘Tha Carter VI’ last week and the reviews have been…well…mixed, to say the least.

The series has been going for roughly two decades, with the first four iterations being critically acclaimed and commercially successful. They’re arguably what helped Lil Wayne to establish himself as one of the genre’s all-time greatest artists, and remain culturally relevant when new instalments drop, even today.

With that being said, the sixth and latest addition is a bizarre collection of tracks that have left many long-time fans bewildered and confused.

Take the song ‘Peanuts 2 N Elephants’, for example, a three-minute song with an instrumental that sounds like a dying Gameboy from 1996. It features frequent, abrasive elephant noises and was produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda of all people. Trust me, it’s weird. Listen for yourself below if you dare.

Elsewhere on the record, Lil Wayne flips a long sample of ‘Island In The Sun’ by Weezer and adds his own lyrics, including adlibs. There’s a lengthy guitar solo toward the end that sounds like the musician who recorded it had a stroke halfway through, while Wayne chants ‘sip sip!’ Again, it’s weird.

Both tracks have been receiving a fair amount of flack online from listeners, with jokes being thrown about in the comment sections on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Younger music fans are apparently sending the songs to older siblings and asking if this is really their favourite artist of all time. That’s when you know it’s bad.

The hoopla surrounding Lil Wayne’s new album reminds me of Eminem’s ‘Revival’ and Chance the Rapper’s ‘The Big Day,’ both of which were considered disastrous upon release. Eminem later brought out a record titled ‘Kamikaze’ that was mostly a response to the criticism brought about by ‘Revival,’ while Chance the Rapper has yet to release another project.

Bad music by massive artists has always been curious to me. When icons with seemingly endless resources and quality checks decide to release something that is objectively awful, it makes me wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Is it a result of having studios full of yes men? Rushed deadlines perhaps? Or just not giving a damn and being driven by a quick bag? Maybe it’s all three.

Sometimes music can be so terrible that it winds up being weirdly enjoyable in a perverse way. There are meme artists like Yuno Miles that cook up what can only be described as nonsensical brain rot. His latest ‘song’ is just ninety seconds of barking over a hip-hop beat. He has over 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube.

In fact, Lil Wayne’s newest release had me inspired to put together a collection of all the worst songs I’ve ever heard. We’ve thrown a few of them around in the Thred office over the years, singing them at pubs as a joke after a couple pints and blasting them out the Sonos speakers when it’s time for an end-of-week wind down.

Making music that is deliberately rubbish is quite a new phenomenon, and leans into the idea that any engagement is good. Thanks to streaming and online accessibility, actually producing songs and making them public no longer requires labels, materials, or CDs, which means that the experience can be far more transactional and fleeting. Make a bad song that becomes a meme, garner plenty of attention for fifteen minutes, and make some money.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and some of these songs I’ve included on this playlist have brought us moments of joy for just how offensively bad they are. Listen below if you’re curious, though don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I think the key to all of this is to not take things too seriously. Being a music snob is an exhaustive past time, and I’ve met plenty of people that place far too much emphasis on only listening to ‘quality’ musicians. Sometimes it can be fun to indulge in the depths of Spotify or YouTube – all those other, actually good albums are still waiting to be listened to later.

Have a laugh! In our current cultural climate, it can be easy to forget that not everything is meant to be significant or momentous.

Thanks for reading and make sure to subscribe for the latest news on Gen Z and youth culture. Also, don’t forget to check out The Gen Zer for a weekly roundup of more trending insights, stories, and discussions.

Until next time,

Accessibility