Post Malone is the Kid Rock of Today

Can you feel that chill in the air? And inhale the crisp aroma of depleted whip-its? For the third straight October, the song commanding Billboard’s Hot 100 as the autumn blows in is a damp, druggy bummer of a club track—a grim reflection of the season. Two years ago, the Weeknd’s spooky, coked-out and improbably massive “The Hills” owned the Hot 100 for all of October and part of November. Last year, the Chainsmokers’ wistful summer-into-fall EDM-bro reverie “Closer” was deep into a dozen-week run on top when leaf-peeping season began. And this year, we have perhaps the bleakest chart-topper yet, Post Malone’s “rockstar” featuring 21 Savage, a song so downbeat its title can’t even muster a capital letter. Now in its fifth week in the Hot 100’s top two, including a fortnight at No. 1, Malone’s hit (which we persnickety Slate grammarians will call “Rockstar”) is nominally a party track, but it’s the dreariest party ever.

That YouTube loop has been the subject of much controversy and side-eye since “Rockstar” ascended to No. 1 last week, with several reporters accusing Malone and Republic of chart shenanigans. Their tactic is, at the very least, diabolical and seemingly unprecedented—the chorus-loop mix of “Rockstar” is the only posting of the Post Malone recording on YouTube or Vevo (all other video searches of the track turn up covers by amateur artists). Visiting that YouTube page accomplishes two things for the record label and artist: First, because the full chorus from the original recording is what’s looped, according to Billboard policy it actually counts toward the song’s streaming data (not unlike the way a user-generated clip that uses at least 30 seconds of an original recording contributes to a song’s chart position). And second, right at the top of the YouTube page is a link from Republic to a “Rockstar” landing page filled with links to on-demand streaming services with better royalty rates than the notoriously low-paying YouTube. If you want to listen to the full song, complete with Post’s sung verses and Savage’s supporting raps, you’ll need to either buy a download or stream it on services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, or Deezer.

Those who would clutch their pearls at this gamesmanship—I chuckled at the New Yorker critic who gasped, “It would be sad to see labels start to game the numbers”—would do well to remember that this is the music business, which over the decades has tried everything from institutionalizing radio payola to pricing cassingles at 49 cents to dropping half-assed remixes of stalled pop singles to give their product that final push up the charts. As is true in Washington or your state congress, what’s shocking is not what’s illegal but what’s legal. Republic is not only playing the ball where it lies, they’re trying to address the so-called “value gap” that makes YouTube less remunerative for both labels and artists.

The value gap is such a serious music-industry controversy that in the next few weeks, Billboard will institutionalize new Hot 100 weightings to tilt the chart a bit more toward paid streaming services and less toward ad-supported services that pay lower royalty rates. In the meantime, Republic and Malone took matters into their own hands. And for the record, the roughly (at this writing) 65 million streams of the all-chorus “Rockstar,” spread over the five weeks the clip has been posted to YouTube, average out to about 13 million streams a week. That’s not nothing, by any means, but it’s probably not enough by itself to give Post Malone a Hot 100 chart-topper. At the very least, it’s no shadier than the late-issued Kodak Black remix of “Bodak Yellow” that nudged Cardi B from No. 2 to No. 1 last month.

So autotuned, yuck.

#1 song

Claims Justin Bieber gave 10 million dollars to a cult and has become super religious

Looks like he has rosacea.

Also, in the pic above he looks like some American convert to jihad.

GMMMMFFGGFFhmm

His new song “Jackie Chan” is lit! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

He is much more talented than Kid Rock

More depressing junk. At least he and the others are wearing suits in the video, though.

He looks like he smells.

He’s got a certain sexual heat

He sounds great

No he is not.

Interesting that they use him as the example, & give Cardi B who is much more manufactured, a one sentence mention. The "woke" wannabe press has gone after him since he dropped this on Soundcloud and it blew up.

Cheap Drake copycat. HIs vapid musings in this interview are hilarious, though.

Especially when he reveals that the government is going to stop payment on all the credit cards of urban masses then kill them if they don't get out of the U.S.A. in 3 days.

Did he grow up on Ruby Ridge?

At the link, there is a L'il Peep interview after that one. He actually seems more appealing than this guy. He would have been cute without all the tattoos, too.

An updated version of something no one wanted in the first place.

r16 raised in Texas, what do you expect?

I like him. I don't mind Cardi B either as a personality, but not in the music wing of the entertainment industry. Why couldn't she just have an IG and a snap, & be an "influencer" like all the other no talents?

Post has immeasurably more urban and hip hop cred than Kid Rock.

Kid Rock has a pretty fair amount of street cred back in '97-'98. That is forgotten now because of his shift into country-rock and full on redneckism. But the late '90s Detroit, black girlfriend having, rock slangin' , grits sandwich eatin' KR was a whole different animal than the 21st century product.

I was a big fan back then, and it all came to an end when he hooked up with Pam Anderson at the VMA's when he performed with Run-DMC. He lost every last drop of his cool, and even though there was a track or two on American Badass which were decent, I could see that hip hop Bob was gone and Skynyrd Bob had replaced him.

Maybe I am too old now to appreciate Post Malone, but in my opinion he doesn't have an iota of the dirty, sexy, completely wrong Bob Ritchie once had,

Kid Rock’s sound was never as deeply urban as Post’s traptastic sound

It’s intriguing that he bills himself as a conspiracy buff

Give this guy a makerover, stat!

R24, I doubt your proposed makeover will help him with his audience

No makeover if it ruins his raw sexual heat

I wanna live in a Post-Bump world

Posty fired up with Aerosmith tonight to close out the show

I have a feeling he will also turn back to his white roots. But those face tattoos aren't stickers. Hard to reinvent yourself with those.

He’s so gross. The sight of him playing guitar with Aerosmith gave me hysterical blindness.

Throw him into space please.

HAPPENING NOW: Rapper Post Malone’s Private Jet Circling NJ Airport To Burn Fuel Before Emergency Landing After Tires Blow - TMZ

Track and pray with his plane here

Hang in there, Posty

That’s Madonna’s latest look!

Bless him

Sunflower

he sure is ugly.

I still can't comprehend how Kid Rock was ever famous.

So if Post Malone is a new form of that, it doesn't seem to bode well.

R38 is Shug Avery

He seems nice enough.

Hey, Fugly! Look in a mirror and fix that shit or put a bag over it! Nasty.