A guy who writes okay music and is lucky enough to have features with Quavo and 21 Savage. 22 years old, professing a sound with a different variance to that of your household rappers. At first listen it seems Post Malone is chasing a similar path to that of Frank Ocean in the sense that he attracts an altered type of listener to your mainstream Hip-Hop heads.
However, I’m hesitant to paint Malone with the same gold dipped brush that I do others such as Andre 3000, Frank and J Cole. Is he significant enough? Okay Candy Paint is a decent track, Congratulations probably the best out of the lot, but I don’t feel the same excitement as others do when listening to the remainder of his songs. Has Malone done enough for the Hip-Hop scene to warrant such hype and praise? If he were to answer, Malone’s ego would warrant a strong yes.
The type of character to have huge self-portraits within his house, brag about fans dressing as him, and accept interviews with food stains on his expensive clothing it comes as no surprise to me that Malone is soon to prove a problem to the world of Hip-Hop. A few weeks after America’s worst mass shooting to date, Malone showed off his gun collection with a throwaway comment of “they’re fun, they’re practical and bad shit happens.” In the same interview he boasts that his Rolls Royce Wraith is a “great drunk driver.” These are the callous and ignorant comments that do enough to put me off his mediocre music from now on.
The main point to make about Malone is that he is in the throes of a huge mistake. Utilising a genre to boost his mediocre talent and simultaneously snidely putting it down is a very risky game to play. Trying to climb the ladder to obtain the fancy cars sung about in Candy Paint is an amazingly stupid move to patronise Hip-Hop. “Whenever I’m trying to have a good time and stay in a positive mood I listen to hip hop because it’s fun.” With this flyaway comment Malone has hinted that Hip-Hop is shallow, with no deeper meaning that to encourage listeners to turn up. On the contrary, Hip-Hop lends a huge helping hand to highlighting the deeper issues rife in society today.
Not only has this been a prerequisite of the genre for decades, but I struggle to believe that Malone does not take inspiration from those that work extensively to bring these issues into the front line of today’s culture. This thereby portrays an astonishing level of ignorance by Post Malone, not only toward black music and culture, but those who create it. Add this to the dismissive and downright blatantly stupid remarks in a recent interview in which Malone complains of the hardships he’s faced due to his skin colour. The result of this mix of ill-advised and thoughtless commentary on the music scene is someone who has successfully talked himself out of a potentially extensive and far-reaching fan base.
You can’t claim to face difficulties and struggles for being white whilst utilising this fact to reach the audiences your peers cannot. Simultaneously you can’t discard the very culture that your success grew from, deeming it as unreal. Post Malone needs to be pulled up for these statements. He needs to be reprimanded for wanting the money and the recognition yet remaining unwilling to even acknowledge the deeper issues. Perhaps the reason he struggles to see anything of depth within hip hop is due to the sheer shallowness of his mentality. Unable to comprehend the life or death issues that face the communities in this culture on a daily basis, he bats it all away, labelling Hip-Hop as fun. Typical of an artist (this term is used very loosely here) capitalising on an audience’s culture as and when it proves rewarding, Post Malone’s undoing will be down to his own ill-advised comments and attitude toward the most fruitful and thriving genres of music within today’s society.
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