Month: September 2022

The late PnB Rock’s streaming activity has surged as fans revisited his music after his shooting death on Sept. 12 at age 30. The rapper’s song catalog (defined as songs on which he was a lead artist) registered 30.5 million U.S. official on-demand streams in the week ending Sept. 15, according to Luminate, a swell of 651.9% from 4.1 million the week prior.

PnB Rock’s breakout hit, the 2017 track “Selfish,” was his most-streamed track of the week, drawing 7.7 million clicks in the week. Thanks to its nine-figure impact, the single returns at No. 17 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and at No. 13 on Hot Rap Songs. The new positions rewrite the peaks for “Selfish” on both charts, where it previously topped out at No. 21 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and No. 16 on Hot Rap Songs in its release year.

“Selfish” was the breakthrough single for rapper PnB Rock, born Rakim Allen, who was shot and killed in Los Angeles on Sept. 12. It was the first (and highest-charting) of his eight career entries on the Billboard Hot 100 and appeared on the first of his three charting projects on the Billboard 200 albums chart, 2017’s GTTM: Goin Thru the Motions.

Following “Selfish,” PnB Rock’s next-highest impact came through his featured spot on Kodak Black’s “Too Many Years.” The track, released in 2016, earned 3 million U.S. streams, a 314% surge from the prior week.

Here’s a look at PnB Rock’s most-streamed tracks in the week of Sept. 9-15 in the U.S., including lead and featured roles:

“Selfish” – 7.7 million

“Too Many Years,” Kodak Black featuring PnB Rock – 3 million
“Middle Child,” with XXXTentacion – 2.1 million
“Dangerous,” Meek Mill featuring Jeremih and PnB Rock – 1.9 million
“Horses,” with Kodak Black and A Boogie wit da Hoodie – 1.8 million
“Luv Me Again” – 1.8 million

Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai is certain to make a bold, unique impression on all types of listeners thanks to its new digital singles, which they released over a two-week period. The theme of “Shiboufuragu wo tatenaide (Don’t get marked for death)” which means to “don’t mark yourself for death,” is the trope in works of fiction in which it’s clear that one of the characters is going to be killed off. The band’s YouTube channel, “Tengoku Hosokyoku” (a play on words that roughly translates to “Heaven/Hell Channel”), is packed with fun videos linked to the band’s music videos, making it a must-see.

On Aug. 27, they released “Jimi na seikatsu” (“Bland Life”), a bold blend of samba and nu-metal. The lyrics, expressing the emotions people feel as they struggle with life in the pandemic, combined with Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai’s unique music, provide listeners with a visceral experience of the “down-to-earth, everyday life nu-metal” sound that the band has constantly striven to create. We talked to Atsushi Ohsawa, guitarist and vocalist for the band, about the songs.

The song “Shiboufuragu wo tatenaide (Don’t get marked for death)” is about people being “marked for death.” What led you write a song about that?

Ohsawa: I don’t even remember any more (laughs). But I do think the first stage was trying to link our YouTube show, “Tengoku Hosokyoku,” with our music videos. That led to the idea to make a music video that had a narrative, like a TV show. I’ve always loved murder mysteries, so I thought, “If we’re going to do something with a story, why not a murder mystery?”

Even in fiction other than murder mysteries, there are times when characters “mark themselves for death,” saying something that makes it clear they’re about to die, right?

Ohsawa: Right. There was a scene in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, maybe at the end of part 5, I can’t remember, where all of a sudden one of the main characters marks himself for death. It made a vivid impression on me.

In the lyrics to the song, you cover what I’d call the big three “marked for death” lines: “I’m going back to my room,” “I’ll stop him, you go on ahead,” and “If I make it back alive, I’m going to propose to my sweetheart.”

Ohsawa: It would actually be really surprising and fresh if someone said one of those lines and then didn’t die (laughs). But there are two patterns when it comes to “I’ll stop him.” In something like the Yakuza games, someone can say that and survive. I think in the games they want the protagonist to fight on his own, so they use scenarios like that.

From watching “Tengoku Hosokyoku,” I think you really communicate to your audience how much excitement you can generate through the choreography for “Shiboufuragu wo tatenaide (Don’t get marked for death)”. That choreography is really effective now, when people in the audience can’t really shout at shows.

Ohsawa: That’s right. It’s really hard to do songs that involve call-and-response now. Right before the pandemic, we happened to write a song, “Kinniku My Friend” (“My Friend Muscles”) which involves doing squats, so now it’s one of our main songs. It’s not like we made it because of the pandemic, though. When we released a video of our audience doing squats, it made a huge impression. People were like, “wow, that’s crazy.” Before that, we wrote “Toshitsu Seigen Diet o Yatte Mita” (“I Tried a Zero-carb Diet”), and zero-carb diets tie into weight training, so that’s what led to writing “Kinniku My Friend.” Also, playing in the Budokan in 2018 put me face-to-face with my physical limits, so in 2019 I planned a bicycle trip across Hokkaido and I joined the gym, thinking “It’s about time that I start working out.” All of that culminated in “Kinniku My Friend.”

When you think of something you want to do, you get straight at it and make it a reality. You’ve got so much power. When the first state of emergency was declared during the pandemic, you started streaming the “VR Music Club” in no time flat. You were also really quick to realize that Vimeo was the best platform for streaming your material.

Ohsawa: Yeah. At the time, everything went fine, but then shortly afterward Vimeo stopped supporting iPhone’s gyroscope… You can still see the videos, but the video viewpoint no longer changes automatically based on what direction you’re facing (laughs).

The pandemic led to the creation of a lot of different songs, right?  “Shingata Coronavirus ga Nikui” (“I hate COVID-19”), “Gyunyu Suisho Gekkan” (“Milk Promotion Month”), “Ashi no Kinniku no Otoroe Yabai” (“My Legs Have Gotten Crazy Weak”), “Ninniku wa Seigi” (“Garlic Is the Way”), “Asu no Keikaku” (“Tomorrow’s Plans”), these are all songs that were written because of the pandemic, right?

Ohsawa: We play down-to-earth, everyday life nu-metal, so of course our daily lives are really reflected in our music. If the pandemic hadn’t happened, I’m sure we would have written songs that reflected our lives in that COVID-free world.

“Jimi na seikatsu (low-key life)” is a song like that, right?

Ohsawa: To be honest, that song wasn’t really written as some sort of noble song, like “I know our lives may seem bland, but let’s keep our heads up.” We wrote it because I cracked up every time I pictured shouting “Jimi, Jimi” (“lowkey, lowkey”) over a samba rhythm. I thought it was funny, like, “this sound isn’t bland!” (laughs) I think of this song as being samba rap-rock.

You used Brazilian instruments in the recording, right?

Ohsawa: Right. I was talking to Natsuko Nisshoku, a singer-songwriter in the same music agency as us, saying that her percussionist had a really good reputation, and she told me that the percussionist’s specialty was samba. The percussionist’s name is Honami Kikawa. We got in touch with her about playing on the song and she agreed right away. The recording session was a lot of fun, too.

So the “Jimi na seikatsu – SAMBA MAX EDITION” brings out the most of Kikawa’s performance?

Ohsawa: Right. As soon as it hits the chorus, the number of sounds shoots up. Mixing it was hard. So hard. Personally, I would have loved to put the samba instruments front-and-center, but then all of the other instruments would have been overwhelmed, so I reluctantly lowered the levels.

Speaking of unique mixtures, “Kiwami meoto kaido (The Extreme Way of the Married Couple) ”, the ending theme of Way of the Househusband, has enka music blended into it, doesn’t it?

Ohsawa: Yeah, that’s right. I love mixing up genres. That’s one of the great things about Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai. Even if we do something that’s musically a little weird, everyone recognizes it as a Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai song because of the lyrics. That makes things very easy for us as musicians. In other words, even if we play jazz or blues, we can still be Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai. This is something that presents a dilemma to a lot of musicians, but nobody’s ever told us that we’re taking things too far. We really had a blast with “Jimi na seikatsu,” and I would love it if the music video got a lot of views in Brazil. Our previous song, “Natsu no Uta” (“Summer Song”) had elements of bossa nova, so a Brazilian bossa nova metal band got in touch with us.

Previously, your song “Futon no naka kara detakunai (I Don’t Wanna Get Out of Bed)” gained sudden popularity in China, and your music started getting played in other countries, right?  I’m sure they’ll enjoy “Shiboufuragu wo tatenaide,” too.

Ohsawa: I hope so. I think they’ll understand that “marked for death” trope. They might be like, “Oh, Japanese people have the same trope?” Like, there was a scene like that in Predator. He says something like “I’ll stop him, you go ahead!”…and, of course, he gets killed.

(Laughs). We’ve just been talking about comedic aspects of the band, but Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai’s trajectory is one of keeping on creating music, pushing steadily into the future, while having fun the whole way, right?

Ohsawa: It’s nice of you to say that. Luckily, there have been several times where things have gone a lot better than we’d expected.

So moving on to another one of your activities, touring. You’ve been on your “We HATE COVID-19 Tour” since 2020, through 2021, and now into 2022, so that’s roughly three years of touring.

Ohsawa: Yes. I didn’t want the tour to last this long (laughs). We started the tour out in 2020, feeling our way as we went, and then the final show got cancelled, so we announced “We’ll pick up where we left off in 2021!” And then when we thought for sure that we’d finish in late 2021, our drummer had to take a bit of a break, so then we were working on things with kind of a low profile for about half a year, and, well, here we are.

When Kawamoto was told by her doctor that she had to avoid strenuous exercise because of the results of her physical, she took part in the shows as a singer, right? Drummers from various other bands came in to provide support. That was a really innovative approach.

Ohsawa: People in the industry really liked it. No band wants to have one of their members missing from the stage. We got a lot of praise for coming up with a way to avoid that.

Uchikubigokumon-doukoukai has a wellspring of power that lets you turn even terrible situations into positives.

Ohsawa: We want to keep going no matter what happens. However, we do want to deal with the problem we’re grappling with now. We want to be like, “Okay, now it’s time for the final show of this tour!” (laughs) I think, a few years from now, when we look back, we’re going to see this as a very unique time in our history. Our melodies, like those on “Shiboufuragu wo tatenaide” and “Jimi na seikatsu” are very cheery. Originally, we played a lot of music in minor keys, but we’ve been writing more and more songs in major keys without even intending to. So at some point, the pendulum will probably swing back. Two or three years from now we may be writing really hardcore music (laughs).

—This article by Dai Tanaka first appeared on Billboard Japan.

J-Hope‘s debut solo album, Jack in the Box, was released a mere two months ago, but the rapper is already getting back out there and has providing an assist on a brand new track. The BTS member is featured on a new song by Crush — a South Korean R&B and hip-hop rapper, singer-songwriter and producer — titled “Rush Hour,” released on Thursday (Sept. 22).

The video for the jazzy track kicks off with Crush and a gang of fellow dancers chilling out in a big-city setting filled with yellow taxi cars, graffiti painted walls, scaffold-littered side streets and abandoned bus stops. Crush, along with the large group, perform hip-hop dance moves in the middle of the street before he launches into a catchy chorus: “So let me hear y’all scream, hibihibi hop, just like me/ Follow me, ain’t it pretty easy (Oh)/ Gather round like traffic jam/ Get up.”

After the first chorus, J-Hope hops in with classic rap braggadocio about his meteoric rise to fame as a member of BTS: “Yo, I’ve been walking on the streets, yo/ From Seoul Forest and around the block/ But wherever I go now, it’s a red carpet feel, yo/ Cameras snapping wherever I go, like flash-flash/ Crowds of people, feels like traffic.”

Crush spoke of how the collaboration with J-Hope came to be, and revealed that the BTS rapper was a natural fit for the song.

“J-Hope and I had been talking a lot musically before, but I came to know that the musical direction I was looking at while preparing this new song and the parts I sympathize with are similar to those of J-Hope,” Crush told South Korean outlet Naver. “So my suggestion to J-Hope, ‘Let’s work together,’ came true, so he joined as a feature. I thought that J-Hope would suit this song better than anyone else, so I really wanted to work with him.”

Watch Crush and J-Hope in their video for “Rush Hour” above.

Kanye West apologized for “any stress” he’s recently caused ex-wife Kim Kardashian over the rearing of their four children in a sit-down interview with Good Morning America on Thursday morning (Sept. 22). The chat also touched on his still-bubbling White House ambitions, his controversial Donda Academy “gospel school” and the end of his deal with The Gap.

“This is the mother of my children, and I apologize for any stress that I have caused, even in my frustration, because God calls me to be stronger,” said West (who now goes by Ye) about his recent comments regarding children North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm. “I need this person to be less stressed and of the best, sound mind and as calm as possible to be able to raise those children at the end of the day.”

Ye said that as a dad and a Christian, he has the right to weigh in on what his kids are wearing, watching and eating. “I have a platform where I get to say what so many dads can’t say out loud,” he told interviewer Linsey Davis; more of the interview will air on ABC News at 7 p.m. ET tonight, as well as on Nightline and A Conversation With Ye: Linsey Davis Reporting, a half-hour special on ABC News Live slated to air at 8:30 p.m. ET Thursday.

West recently revealed that he doesn’t read any books, comparing the act to “eating Brussels sprouts,” this despite running a “gospel school” in Simi Valley, California. The private academy named for West’s late mother, an English professor, is mostly cloaked in secrecy when it comes to what goes on behind its doors; parents reportedly have to sign a kind of non-disclosure agreements before enrolling their kids. Though reading is not mentioned, the school’s site says it places a strong emphasis on writing as part of a daily schedule that begins with a “full school worship,” followed by language arts, math and science classes, lunch/recess and enrichment courses including world language, visual art, film, choir and parkour.

Ye told GMA that he “absolutely” wants his kids to attend the school — which was originally called “Yeezy Christian Academy” — adamantly stating that their education is a two-person decision. “I’m their dad. It has to be co-parenting. It’s not up to only the woman. Like, men have a choice also. Men’s voices matter,” he said. The rapper said the school, which is reportedly in its third year of operation, gives the 82 enrolled students “practical tools that they need in a world post the iPhone being created… So many schools are made to set kids up for industries that don’t even matter anymore.”

West said the academy focuses on “practical skills” including engineering, computer programming and farming, with tutors who focus on specific lessons that he claims could “actually turn your kids into, like, geniuses.” He also boasted that if your children are indeed brilliant “they’re three grade levels ahead.”

The interview — West’s first time speaking to a major news network on-camera since Kardashian filed for divorce in Feb. 2021 — also found Davis asking Ye if social media has done more help than harm for his reputation. “That’s one of my favorite questions of this interview,” Ye said. “We could use a car to rush somebody to the hospital, or we could use a car and accidentally hit somebody while we’re rushing somebody to the hospital. It all in how we use it.”

After an erratic 2020 presidential run during which he loaned $6.8 million to his presidential committee and netted just 60,000 votes, West said he “absolutely” plans to give the White House another shot at some point. “That time wasn’t in God’s time,” he said of the third party bid that drew many more headlines than votes.

The interview also touched on West’s decision to terminate his partnership with The Gap after his lawyers claimed that the retail chain breached their agreement to open Yeezy Gap brick-and-mortar stores. Now, Ye said, he plans to open his own fashion chain called “YZY.”

“It was all kind of a disregard for the voice of something that I co-created. I co-created the product at Adidas. I co-created the product at Gap,” Ye said. “That means that I was there for some specific agenda, not for Yeezy Gap to be everything that it could be, or this dream that I had about what the Gap could be,” he said. “It’s time for me to make my own thing.”

Following his recent public battles with the Gap and another brand partner, Adidas, Ye said he’s going to be way more involve din everyday decisions. “We had to level up,” Ye said. “Really show ’em who’s the new boss in town, that I’m the boss of me. I’m no longer just the man ridin’ atop the polo horse. I’m not just a mascot in the middle of the games, gettin’ the crowd hyped up sayin’, ‘Hey, wear this, do this,’ but you know, just learn financial engineering. Learn how to — learn how to really run a company.”

When Davis cued up one of the most legendary Ye clips of all time — a 2013 bit in which he famously yelled “you ain’t got the answers!” at SiriusXM host Sway Calloway after the hip-hop radio legend suggested West just “empower” himself and not rely on other brands to boost his own — Kanye did the unthinkable: he admitted Calloway was right. “I will go ahead and say Sway had the answer,” West said with a smile.

Watch portions of the interview below.

The reviews are in: Don’t Worry Darling has officially passed the mom test. After seeing the film in theaters, Harry Styles‘ mom Anne Twist took to Instagram Wednesday night (Sept. 21) to praise the 28-year-old pop star’s performance in his first lead acting role along with the work of director Olivia Wilde — who just so happens to also be her son’s girlfriend.

“First time in the French cinema .. first day showing .. ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ you were excellent!” Twist wrote, captioning a trio of photos from the evening. “Really enjoyed from start to finish.”

In the photos, Twist poses with three pals outside the movie theater, smiles next to a Don’t Worry Darling poster with leading lady Florence Pugh’s face printed on it and celebrates the film with a big thumbs up. “Well done @oliviawilde and team for drawing us in,” she continued, later adding three applause emojis. “Well done baby @harrystyles for being a fabulous Jack. Very proud as usual.”

And while French moviegoers got a two-day head start, UK and North American viewers still have to wait a little over 24 hours before they’ll have the chance to see Don’t Worry Darling when it hits theaters Friday (Sept. 23). Some lucky North American fans did, however, get to see the film a little bit early when a special IMAX screening of the film was staged in 100 or so locations around the continent. The exclusive event featured a live Q&A with the cast, during which both Styles and Wilde answered questions about the movie.

The very first people to see the 1950s-set psychological thriller were those in the audience at its Sept. 5 global premiere at the Venice International Film Festival — at which the cast made headlines for perceived tensions between Wilde and Pugh on the red carpet as well as a since-debunked viral video in which Styles appears to spit into the lap of his costar Chris Pine.

Wilde herself addressed both the alleged feud between her and Pugh and the spit incident — deemed “Spit-gate” by the internet — during a Wednesday night appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the same night Styles’ mom raved about Don’t Worry Darling on Instagram.

“I think it’s a perfect example of, like, people will look for drama anywhere they can,” she told Colbert. “Harry did not spit on Chris.”

“I have nothing but respect for Florence’s talent,” she added. “I have nothing against her for any reason.”

See Harry Styles’ mom Anne Twist congratulate both her son and Olivia Wilde on Don’t Worry Darling in her Instagram post below:

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