![]() ![]() Skin color, in the eyes of these artists, is a secondary concern, a function readily dissolved in the heat of the mosh pit and the force of a tsunami of liquor. In short, the new figure of the rapper and the old image of the rock star converge without much difficulty. The rock star is famous lives in luxury spends an inordinate amount of time partying, so much so that the act of partying itself becomes associated with them has plenty of sex with women frequently indulges in uncontrolled, excessive, and drug-associated behavior defies the law. The sketches of the rock star in these songs coincide with the traditional view. Parallel to the one-hit wonder from Atlanta’s Shop Boyz, Chamillionaire from Houston also pictured himself as a “Rock Star” in 2007 Mississippi’s Soulja Boy, who burst into fame in the same year, released a mixtape titled Rockstar in 2016, its title single boasting stellar production from London on Da Track Future, the Atlanta don of recent years, went full “Rock Star” in 2014 on a Nicki Minaj–featuring outtakes from the Honest sessions. But in the eyes of rappers and their audience, the rock star, its meaning changed or perhaps just revealed, continues to live.Īs with much else in rap, the “rock star” song is primarily a southern phenomenon. As many of its own practitioners (Marilyn Manson, for example) acknowledge, rock, as both a musical genre and a central concern in popular music, is dead. It’s not an outlandish proposition in fact, given that younger listeners, by and large, are rap fiends with zero direct memory of rock’s golden or even silver age, it’s a fair approximation of the present cultural moment. Imagine for a second that every rock artist and rock song had been erased from human memory, and that listeners were left to puzzle out what a rock star was based purely on rap references. Given this development, and the fact that rap remains both the most verbally focused of musical genres and the one most reliant on “realness” to sustain its image, it might be interesting to examine that sliver of “rock star” songs by rappers and see if one comes any closer to the true meaning of a rock star. Following the lead of the guitar-powered Travis Scott, or of Marilyn Manson and pop-punk aficionado Lil Uzi Vert, younger rappers are routinely citing rock stars and rock subgenres as vital influences, even going so far, as with the brooding (and allegedly very brutal) XXXTentacion, to present their music not as rap but as alternative rock. ![]() In the past few years, there’s been a steady rise in the number of allusions to rock stars. Rappers seem especially eager in this regard. It seems as if anyone, not just rock artists, is free to recreate the mythical figure of the rock star in their own image. ![]() Though the songs aren’t all great, the concept behind them is playful and liberating. It’s an interesting mini-genre, the “rock star” song. Kelly called in Ludacris and Kid Rock for Double Up’s “Rock Star.” There are tracks by Hannah Montana and Poison, Jimmy Eat World and Willow Smith, plus countless other renditions from less prominent artists. Rihanna was the instructor on Rated R’s Slash-featuring “Rockstar 101” R. Beyond the top ten, there are plenty of others. 2 in 2007, itself broke the record set a year prior by Nickelback’s “Rockstar,” a quadruple-platinum hit that maxed out at No. It’s also the highest-charting single ever with the term “rock star” in its title, breaking the record held by the Atlanta trio Shop Boyz’s “Party Like a Rockstar,” which, peaking at No. ![]() As is typical in these cases, several records are tied to the triumph of “Rockstar”: For one, it’s the highest-charting single for both Post Malone and featured artist 21 Savage. Aided by a bit of YouTube skulduggery but mostly powered by its own sheer catchiness, “Rockstar,” the darkly zonked-out single from Post Malone, has, after weeks of jostling, finally replaced “Bodak Yellow” as the top song on the Billboard Hot 100. To borrow the title from another one of his songs, Post Malone deserves congratulations. ![]()
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