30 Day Song Challenge, Day 17: A Song You Hear Often On The Radio

Big Sean feat. Drake and Kanye, “Blessings”

I actually do listen to terrestrial radio when I’m driving around in my car. It’s one way I keep up with new pop music. I flip between the two Top 40 stations, the hip hop station, and occasionally the old school station (which is excellent). I also stream BBCR1, both because their Top 40 is about three months ahead of what I hear on the Charlotte stations (and doesn’t have all the awful commercials that US pop radio does), and because their Friday night dance music programming is really great to write to on what are my Friday afternoons.

I hear this track a lot on the hip hop station; I don’t think it has crossed over to the pop stations. I like Big Sean a lot–he’s one of my favorite current rappers, mainly because he’s really good at being funny. Like, this pun makes the WHOLE song for me: “I guess when your stars align you do like the solar system and and planet out.” Kanye’s verse is so…Kanye. He starts out with white supremacy and in the next line it’s about the size of his dick. Dude is never good at not conflating social justice with his own ego. Drake’s mention of Instagram and Kanye’s mention of Snapchat makes me wonder about the way social media platform use might work as a genre or sub-genre marker in pop music…

Runners Up: Duke Dumont, “The Giver“; Tove Lo, “Bodies” (it has that Lumiers-style “Hey!” that’s all over pop radio); Walk The Moon, “Shut Up And Dance” (I was driving to the gym when I heard the opening guitar riff come on the radio, and I seriously nearly swerved into oncoming traffic in shock and bewilderment that U2 had a song on Top 40 radio. Then I remembered Walk The Moon. This song is like U2 + The Killers.)