Ok ok I listened twice and won't listen anymore, but man i like it a lot. This will absolutely be the perfect album to lay out on the beach and just get lost in the sounds.

But Lorde is gonna have to push this release up man, still can't believe she is waiting till the end of August

Presumptuous statements are presumptuous statements, but it's not like we know Lorde personally, speculation about her personal life is gonna happen

Personally I want to enjoy everything, so if I don't like a track/album at first I give it a few more tries to see if I change my mind, talking about music, both positively and negatively on here is interesting to me, feels good to put your opinions into words and hear a variety of perspectives, KTT2 really is just posting into the void, it's not like anyone gets hurt based on opinions posted here, even if they are based on speculation, I'm all for correcting people but the whole 'just don't listen to it' thing feels pretty anti-discussion to me

Not yet but my take is it pretty much is, everything she's talking about is present almost exclusively in black music, but I think she probably didn't think it through that far, I see it as the consequence of being a blunt take on a nuanced issue from a New Zealand teenager, I don't think she'd make anything like it now

I bet she hates that song

Yeah because those signs of wealth are definitely tied to a single race, right? That’s what black people are all about, right? It’s definitely not a song aimed at criticizing these kind of extravagant behaviors which sell a purely artificial representation of what life should be, nope it’s about race.

You have to be playing intentionally obtuse here if you're really gonna bend backwards by trying to frame the lyrics in those songs as being overall anti-capitalist/material thing and not specifically referencing a group of people.

Because everyone was talking about gold teeth and Maybachs right??

Nope, this is the kind of s*** you see in early 2000 reality TV too. This isn’t specific to “black music” even if it’s also present in a lot of music videos.

I dont think it was intended to be racist, but having the line "It don't run in our blood" doesnt help it

It's more the specific cultural touchstones like gold teeth and Cristal, which in particular has a huge specific link to Hip-Hop culture, copying from the Wiki here but:

'In the mid 1990s and early 2000s, hip hop music discovered the brand, with several artists referencing the drink in song lyrics and as part of their public image, including Raekwon, 50 Cent, The Notorious B.I.G., R. Kelly, Sean Combs, Big L, Jeru the Damaja, Trina, and Jay-Z. Those in hip hop sometimes used the nickname "Crissy" for the drink.5 Tupac Shakur created a cocktail called "Thug Passion", which is a blend of Alizé Gold Passion and Cristal.

In an interview with The Economist in 2006, Louis Roederer managing director Frederic Rouzaud said he viewed the attention from rappers with "curiosity and serenity." Asked if he thought the association would harm the brand, he replied, "that's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business."'

It was so linked to black culture that the French managing director got all racist about it

If you want to take it away from just race, most of the things she chose to mention have very direct ties to hip hop culture. It comes off more as a critique of hip hop than Hollywood or general extravagance honestly

“Gold teeth” may be the only specific examples among others which aren’t specific. She was trying to talk about a certain hyperreality lifestyle promoted by spectacular media and she mentions the fact that there’s a clear dissonance between these vulgar signs of wealth and the simple, boring life she leads. It’s a class thing.

Spot on, cristal was a hip hop thing, not some MTV reality stuff

Cristal is equally specific

I think her point was for the song to be about class, but she picked so many references to Hip-Hop culture as examples that it made a track that at the very least SEEMS racist through today's eyes, I don't think her intention was to make a racist song at all, I think being young and naïve played a role here

Fine, cristal too… But so what? It’s part of a greater cultural landscape which promotes vulgarity and extravaganza… Which isn’t specific to hip hop at all. I mentioned early 2000 reality TV, remember Paris Hilton? That’s the kind of lifestyle she’d promote. Lorde probably grew up feeling a dissonance between these simulacrum and her own life (which was apparently quite privileged but not that rich either).

I really fail to see how this can be racist because it’s not related to black people themselves, it’s a sign among others which became apart of aesthetic codes in some music videos. What I’m saying is, black peuple aren’t inherently tied to these signs.

tigers on a gold leash, for instance is at least more of a reference more to rock and roll, same with the ball gowns and "trashing the hotel room."

i don't know how Lorde feels looking back on the song, but i do remember reading one thing about how some of the specific lyrics of the song make sense because in 2012 or whenever she wrote the song, its the pop stars and rappers who get projected, not rock stars. i think she mentioned drake and lana specifically when talking about artists who sell this lifestyle and her criticism wasn't necessarily with the artists themselves, but instead with how in the world are people like her listening to this when they are so far removed from that lifestyle

I thought she was talking about the Tyga album cover

lmaoo i wouldn't know tbh never seen a tyga album cover

i wish i remembered the example but the tigers thing was at least alluded to in a rock song or video from back in the day but you could be right too

I swear Born To Die by Lana has this

Edit: Yeah, at 0:25

is that what it was? s*** maybe

I want Lorde to f*** me up

Rewatching that vid and man do I miss the early 2010s, so much amazing music, that maximalist sound was everywhere, now everything's so tasteful

I wanna wait until California drops to hear it

this was never racist lol

wonder where the change started