Author: pr1ncess

  • Chappell Roan’s Grammy Speech Was a Trojan Horse

    Chappell Roan’s Grammy Speech Was a Trojan Horse

    The brilliance of this kind of indoctrination is that it does not rely on brute force or overt coercion. Cloaked in the language of progress, justice, or common sense, it suppresses dissent before it even forms—because what kind of monster would challenge something so obviously good? 

    In this way, we are persuaded to adopt a harmful agenda willingly, all while believing we are resisting it. The result is a culture in which millions of people fetishize their own disenfranchisement as a “virtue.” 

    Chappell Roan’s Grammy acceptance speech encouraged this kind of delusion. As a person not lacking in their own delusional weaknesses, I do not say this from a high horse. I am well aware that I am riding a flea-ridden donkey, or groveling in the mud like a pig, but I digress.

    Because I know someone will accuse me of attacking her from a place of pettiness or jealousy (in fact, they already have), let me be clear: I think Chappell is sincere—and I commend her for trying to leverage her platform for a good cause. 

    But sincerity is irrelevant when discussing the impact of ideas. Even the most well-intentioned rhetoric can ultimately serve an agenda that harms the people it claims to uplift. What matters is not her character but the implications of her words:

    “I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists […] record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance protection. Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”

    Commendable, right? In the era of Luigi Mangione, how could any reasonable person possibly oppose her brave call for major record labels to provide artists with a “livable wage” and “health insurance”?  As one Chappell fan messaged me, “find something better to hate on.”

    Yet, as an independent artist and student of music history, I cannot think of anything more important to “hate” on. It’s easy to point fingers at the obvious villains in society—the overt exploiters, the corporate overlords, the industry gatekeepers. But these targets are low hanging fruit. Few need to be convinced that they’re on the wrong side of history. 

    More critical to examine are the ideas that masquerade as solutions while reinforcing the very mechanisms they claim to oppose. I’m called to dissect Chappell’s words precisely because so many people think they deserve to be celebrated

    Sam Cooke’s manager lived by the following motto: “never take twenty percent of an artist’s earnings. Instead give them eighty percent of yours.” To this day, his (white) family collects royalties from Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” In begging major labels to treat artists like “valuable employees,” Chappell normalized the structures that allowed this to happen, because being an “employee” means that you don’t own the rights to what a business sells. 

    Her speech also perpetuated the idea that the right to healthcare ought to be tied to one’s employment status. By framing health insurance as something record labels should provide, rather than a basic human right independent of corporate benevolence, she reinforced one of the very mechanisms that keep workers—artists included—beholden to employers.

    Under this business model, healthcare is not something musicians should have by default as citizens or human beings, but something granted to us by record labels if we are deemed “worthy.” In other words, access to medical care (which is free in nearly 70% of the world) becomes yet another carrot dangled in front of struggling artists; another reason to sign shitty and exploitative deals. 

    She invoked the language of workers’ rights—“livable wage,” “health insurance protection”—not to challenge the industry’s exploitative foundations, but to reinforce them. Neoliberal progressivism, long since co-opted into the corporate sphere, cannot even imagine dismantling oppressive systems but offers feel-good catch phrases to make them seem marginally less cruel.

    When demands like these are framed as revolutionary, they distract from real systemic change, ensuring that people remain dependent on institutions rather than reclaiming ownership over their work, their labor, and their lives.

    At this point, you might be thinking, “You’ve listed out all the problems with her speech, but where are your solutions? Stop yapping and propose a concrete plan of action!”

    I hear you. Just hold on for a sec while I step onto my soap box…

    *Clears throat*

    For the first time in history, musicians no longer need to sign away their rights to build a meaningful career. Thanks to the internet, independent artists can cultivate an audience, distribute their music, and sustain themselves financially without the backing of a corporate machine. 

    “But artists shouldn’t have to do the work of running a business in addition to the work of creating their art!”

    My response to this common complaint is simple: no one is forcing you to rely on your musical talents to pay the bills. If your goal is to make art purely for personal satisfaction, without the pressure of financial survival or public expectation, that’s fair—commendable even. But call it what it is: a hobby. And if the word “hobby” feels demeaning to you, ask yourself whether that reaction stems from an internalized, capitalist tendency to devalue work that isn’t profitable.

    If you choose to pursue a career in this industry, however, be prepared to hustle—whether you get signed or not. The idea that a record label exec will recognize your God-given talent and make you a star overnight is as naive as it is disempowering. In a world where creative brilliance is as common as the air we breathe, feeling entitled to success because of one’s natural gifts is a narcissistic fantasy that keeps many artists from fully embracing the work, strategy, and dedication that are actually required to cultivate lasting success. 

    Let’s not forget that nowadays, major labels won’t even consider signing you unless you’ve already built a following online. In other words, they want to swoop in and claim a piece of the pie only after you’ve finished baking it. This is the reason why their primary selling point is no longer artistic development, but sheer visibility. The only real “benefit” they provide is a level of mainstream fame that, given its well-documented costs, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

    If you still believe that achieving megastardrom—the kind that makes it impossible to walk down the street like a regular person and alienates you from the rest of humanity—will fill that insatiable void in your heart, let me bring you back to reality. Even if you do get signed, there’s a 99% chance you’ll be dropped before you ever gain any recognition.

    Major labels operate on a numbers game—their entire business model is built on signing as many artists as possible, knowing that only about 1% will become profitable. The rest? Collateral damage. At this point, the question becomes: Why would you gamble your life’s work away on a system that sees you as disposable? 

    A few people have slid into my DM’s to argue that only the most privileged artists can afford to invest in their work without relying on the financial stability a record label supposedly provides.

    First of all, we’ve already established that labels don’t develop artists anymore. Whether you like it or not, artists must learn how to grow their “brands” before anyone else will consider investing in them. This is the work that separates an amateur hobbyist from a professional.

    More importantly, a record label advance isn’t free money; it’s a debt that must be recouped before an artist ever sees a dime in royalties. If you don’t believe me, take it from Frank Ocean. In a 2019 interview, he said, “I’ve been independent since 2016 […] I’ve got amazing credit, so if I need a loan, I’ll go to a bank.”

    While financially struggling artists usually don’t have “amazing credit” and often face immense pressure to prioritize immediate survival over long-term growth, that doesn’t mean signing a predatory record deal is the only option. The urgency of making ends meet can make exploitative offers seem like a lifeline, but better alternatives exist.

    As James Blake recently pointed out, groundbreaking new agencies and platforms now offer label services without the exploitative contracts, allowing artists to access funding, marketing, and distribution support without relinquishing ownership. Many of these teams operate on a fairer model, taking only a cut of what they help you generate. This means that there are ways to fund and advance your art without paying out of pocket or signing away your intellectual property. 

    The industry will always try to convince you that you need it more than it needs you. That without its approval, you will remain invisible and irrelevant. But the landscape is changing, and artists no longer have to choose between financial desperation and major-label exploitation. 

    Last year alone, 50% of Grammy winners operated independently of major labels. Don’t be the artist who sacrifices your future in exchange for mainstream clout. I beg you: don’t allow industry execs to build generational wealth for their families on the back of your work

  • THE MYTH OF PRODUCTIVITY

    THE MYTH OF PRODUCTIVITY

    When Conan O’Brien was working at The Simpsons, one of his dimwitted corporate overlords would become incensed if he didn’t hear the constant drone of keyboards clacking away in the writers’ room. “If these jazz-cigarette smoking, draft-dodging invalids expect to get paid just to sit around picking their noses, they are sorely mistaken,” he huffed and puffed, “these boys don’t know a damn thing about hard work!”

    Ok, he never said that. 

    But if he had, and if I could time travel back to this imaginary moment and respond to this entirely fabricated comment which nonetheless contains a seed of truth, I would retort, “if this buffoon in a fancy suit understood a damn thing about creativity, he would respect the fact that sitting and staring into space like a fool is an integral part of the process!”

    The fact is, great ideas don’t require great conscious effort to manifest themselves. The universe is infinitely generous. As that especially creative being named Jesus once said, “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

    Busy work, at its core, is a form of procrastination. It is a safe way for us to feel like we’re pushing the needle without ever having to take a risk. In the matrix of capitalism, it is the means through which we justify our value in the eyes of our employers. Call me conspiratorial, but it is no coincidence that in this system our sense of deservingness is directly tied to the very activities that keep us stuck playing someone else’s game. 

    Take a look at your to-do list (if you don’t have one, picture your daily schedule). Now, ask yourself seriously: how many of these tasks actually reflect a vision of your own? If the answer is few or none, it’s time to reframe your mentality from that of the menial employee to the visionary CEO. 

    I know the language I chose here is painfully corporate, but these terms reflect the context we live in. They also contain a more mystical element, if you look closely enough. In fact, I would argue that even the most lizard-like CEOs on the planet have an intimate understanding of mysticism. Read a couple self-help books written by billionaires and you’ll quickly pick up on it. They’re using corporate language to describe it, but there’s no doubt about it: manifestation is their bread and butter. 

    CEOs are able to ask the universe for what they want because they KNOW what they want. They can see it so clearly that it already exists (time isn’t linear, remember). Employees, on the other hand, spend their lives toiling away in service to someone else’s vision because their aspirations never transcend the vague world of abstract wishes.

    Pareto’s Law states that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. In other words, the quality of our efforts is much more important than the quantity. Until you know exactly what you’re working toward, until you humble yourself to a higher power that is more than willing to do the work through you, the boundless generosity of the universe will evade you.

    Most CEOs have mastered the art of joining forces with a higher power, but lack the wisdom to recognize that what they truly seek is love. It goes without saying that this is an extremely dangerous combination, and this is all the more reason the world desperately needs more visionaries who recognize that no goal is worth attaining if it isn’t serving the interests of love.

  • Payola: The Criminalization of Independent Artists

    Payola: The Criminalization of Independent Artists

    In the 1960’s, the supposedly shady practice of “payola” became so pervasive that President Eisenhower condemned it as an “issue of public morality.” Secretly paying commercial radio stations to secure the “organic” promotion of a new record obviously reeks of corruption, but the true source of that stench might surprise you. 

    As Andrew Hickey points out in A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, major labels had no need to resort to this method because they practically owned the radio stations anyway. Payola was therefore one of the few methods through which smaller labels like Sun and Chess were able to level the playing field. 

    Starting in the 1950’s, countless beverage corporations significantly increased their profits by transitioning from reusable to single-use packaging, causing America’s first serious waste crisis. To preemptively frame the narrative in their favor, these companies collectively funded an advertising campaign designed to portray litter as the consequence of irresponsible individuals’ poor decision making rather than a product of their insatiable greed. Culminating with the infamous “Crying Indian” advertisement in 1971, the key message read, “people start pollution; people can stop it.”

    The propaganda of redirecting accountability away from large corporations extends far beyond the greenwashed environmental movement. Major labels similarly launched a campaign designed to associate payola with criminality in order to snuff out competition and draw attention away from their own, much more insidious forms of corruption. While they shamelessly whitewashed the music of underrepresented black artists, they criminalized any attempts made by these same artists to get their music heard in a system that was designed to exploit and exclude them from the very beginning. 

    The decline of radio caused the practice of payola to die out, but Spotify’s meteoric rise has led to an extremely similar strategy: paid third-party playlist inclusion. This modern iteration is one of the only ways independent artists are able to attain spots on “popular” playlists, once again creating a pay-to-play dynamic. And while major labels regularly pay for fake streams to push their artists’ songs up the charts, Spotify ruthlessly punishes independent artists for doing the very same thing. 

    This double standard underscores the platform’s role in perpetuating an unequal music industry, where access and success are often determined by financial power rather than artistic merit. As independent artists struggle to be heard, the cycle of exploitation continues.

  • The Death Clause

    The Death Clause

    We’ve all heard of the 27 Club; a group whose suffering is so deeply romanticized that even their untimely deaths are somehow still associated with luxury and exclusivity. If you ask me, there is absolutely nothing glamorous about choking on your own vomit in a filthy tour bus, but I digress. 

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the emphasis placed on the supposedly “legendary” act of dying young serves as a major distraction from the economic conditions that ultimately led to these artists’ demise. 

    Enter the “Death Clause.” 

    Also known as a non-performance or failure of performance clause, this legal framework was apparently first instituted during the days when the mob held the music industry in a chokehold. And although some argue that mobsters were nothing more than peripheral figures in the music biz, such debates draw attention away from the crux of the issue: even if the law sides with them, record labels build and maintain their wealth through practices stolen directly from the mafia’s playbook. 

    The death clause essentially serves as an insurance policy designed to protect the bottom line should an artist die (a.k.a. cease to be profitable). Particularly notable is the fact that the payout on these policies usually exceeds the projected value of an artist’s career were they to remain living. 

    With this in mind, can you guess what Michael Jackson, Lil Peep, Amy Winehouse, Janice Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Pop Smoke all had in common? They were increasingly difficult for their labels to control. In other words, they’d be more useful dead than alive. 

    Before you call me a conspiracy crackpot, I’d like to clarify that I’m not necessarily suggesting that major record labels literally pulled the trigger on these artists. It’s more nefarious than that; more subtle and indirect. The culmination of a thousand tiny papercuts, exacerbated by a pattern of willful neglect. In the words of Lil Peep’s mother, his label created the circumstances that led to his death by throwing him “onto stage after stage in city after city, plying and propping him up” with illegal drugs.

    To add insult to injury, the same labels that routinely facilitate the environments in which young, vulnerable artists fade away from this world are raking in obscene amounts of money from haphazard posthumous albums released in the name of “preserving and extending their legacy.” 

    Nowhere is the lack of respect more evident than the release of a collaborative track between Lil Peep and XXXTentacion. According to Peep’s family and friends, Columbia Records’ shameless money grab clearly violates the late artist’s values. In the words of Fish Narc, “[Peep] explicitly rejected XXX for his abuse of women, spent time and money getting XXX’s songs removed from his Spotify playlists, and wouldn’t have co-signed that song. Don’t listen to it.”

    With this in mind, it brings me unbridled joy knowing that Anderson .Paak has a tattoo on his right forearm that reads: “When I’m gone, please don’t release any posthumous albums or songs with my name attached. Those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the public.”

  • Missy Elliott and Timbaland Embraced This Spiritual Truth

    I recently read an article detailing how Missy Elliott and Timbaland spent countless hours scrolling through thousands of sounds until inspiration struck.

    Music production is often envisioned as the process of wielding fancy effects and gadgets to beat a sound into submission, but one of the most underrated elements of good music production is the ability to hunt for sounds that are already perfect, exactly as they are.

    Instead of forcefully imposing their will upon samples, Missy and Timbaland listened intently, waiting for that magic moment when a sound resonated perfectly with their creative vision. This process is less about manipulation and more about discovery and alignment.

    Gurus spanning a wide range of spiritual and philosophical traditions all say something along the lines of:

    LOVE IS ATTENTION WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.

    In this sense, great music production follows the same ineffable laws as great love: it’s all about allowing a thing to be what it is – without trying to change it.

  • The Ink Spots Got Really Good at One Thing

    When most people of taste hear the phrase “formulaic music,” the first thing that comes to mind is the artistically malnourished corruption that plagues the modern music industry. But one could argue that formulas have been around for as long as music has.

    The meteoric rise of the Ink Spots, one of the most successful musical acts of the 1940s, testifies to this reality. Every one of their hit songs began with a variation of the same meandering acoustic guitar intro, followed by Bill Kenny singing the main vocals while others provided backing vocals. Hoppy Jones would then add a spoken-sung rendition in his deep bass voice, concluding with Kenny reprising the lead vocals. 

    Hits like “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “To Each His Own,” and “Whispering Grass” exemplified this formula’s effectiveness, consistently charting in the top ten, with some reaching number one on the pop charts, not just the R&B charts. You have to hear it for yourself, but the similarities between them are uncanny. 

    And while they did occasionally experiment with other variations, straying from their established style resulted in less monumental success. So the Ink Spots shamelessly embraced their formula, understanding its appeal and running with it. 

    Far from diminishing their legacy, this strategy was emblematic of an era where artists excelled by mastering a singular style. Like other contemporaries such as Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley, and John Lee Hooker, who honed their craft within a specific sound, the Ink Spots delivered hit after hit, captivating audiences worldwide.

    The moral of the story? Innovation does not always require complete reinvention. Sometimes, it means continuously refining a particular style or motif until you know it like the back of your hand. In a world where constant change is often equated with progress, the Ink Spots remind us that there is also value in consistency.

  • The Dakou Generation

    The Dakou Generation

    During the Great Cultural Revolution, the only music available in China was propaganda opera. Utilizing epic wartime narratives to convey themes of economic and ideological class struggle, these impressive spectacles were designed to indoctrinate the public with revolutionary Maoist principles, including the heroism of the proletariat and the virtue of sacrificing for the Party’s cause.

    Besides the 8 government-sanctioned operas circulating at the time, music was illegal and therefore extremely difficult (not to mention dangerous) to come across. But when the country began processing much of the Western world’s garbage in the 90s, used cassette tapes were shipped to the continent en masse. 

    What followed was an underground network of bootleg tapes, also known as Dakou tapes. Translating to “cut” or “gashed,” the term speaks not only to the government’s failed attempts to destroy all foreign cultural influences, but to the ingenuity of the rebels who developed a means of repairing them. 

    Suddenly, the radical youth of post-Tian An Men Square China, sometimes referred to as the “Dakou generation,” were introduced to multiple decades of foreign music with no contextual awareness of what they were listening to. Not bound by the boundaries between genres or any sense of the timeline in which they were developed, the Dakou generation was able to mix and match their influences in a highly original way. Because they didn’t know the rules, they had no qualms about breaking them.

    As Andre 3000 once said, drawing inspiration from exclusively one genre or time period is incestuous. Copying your peers will limit you creatively, make your work sound formulaic, and reduce its cultural impact. You already know that the music industry does not need any more poor imitations of something that’s already being done. The top charts already sound depressingly redundant as it is.

  • The Infamous Blurred Lines Case

    In his fascinating interview with Rick Rubin, Pharrell referred to music production as the process of “reverse engineering a feeling.” He made this point in reference to the lawsuit that was filed against him for supposedly copying Marvin Gaye’s song “Got To Give It Up” in “Blurred Lines.”

    What was interesting about this case was that the chords were different, the melody was different, even the BPM was different – yet he still lost the case. In Pharrell’s mind, the fact that the judge ruled him guilty represented a profound misunderstanding of the way music works.

    The way he saw it, he was paying homage to Marvin Gaye’s legacy by “reverse engineering the feeling” his music gave him. And whether musicians do it consciously or not,  this is ultimately what the creative process boils down to. All music is a conversation – between cultures, generations, world views – in which previous ideas are reimagined and re-contextualized. Artists are simply connecting the dots in a story that is much, much bigger than any individual’s contribution. This humbling reality raises important ethical questions about the limits of intellectual property. Should the emotional and atmospheric influence of a piece of music be grounds for legal repercussions, or should it be seen as a testament to the timeless impact of the original work?

    As musicians and creators navigate the fine line between inspiration and imitation, it becomes crucial to reassess how we define originality and ownership in the creative world. Ultimately, Pharrell’s perspective invites us to embrace a more nuanced understanding of creativity—one that honors the interconnectedness of artistic endeavors and recognizes the shared heritage that shapes our cultural landscape. 

  • Stop Doing Too Much

    I recently listened to an interview with Brian Eno and feverishly wrote down practically every other thing he said. I recommend you give it a listen as it’s full of golden nuggets, but this was by far my favorite quote:

    “Do as much as possible with as little as possible. I was never impressed by the kind of music that used complicated time signatures, amazingly brilliant playing and so on. It’s sort of impressive but for me there was not the same magic in that; you could see the trick being done… I’m always drawn to things that look like anybody could do them, where you think, I could have made that. But I fucking didn’t! Why didn’t I?”

    Novices often fall into the trap of doing too much. I used to fill my arrangements with as many flourishes I could squeeze in, and I now see that this kind of flexing comes from a place of insecurity. Hit-Boy noticed the same phenomenon in the early days of his career. Once he learned to “leave space in the mix for the vocals,” his beats became far more powerful.  

    In a world of unlimited possibilities, exercising restraint can be revolutionary. After all, there can be no climax without a tantalizing build. As artists, we often get attached to all the different parts in our arrangements, but exercising non attachment is one of the greatest practices for a music producer. Today, I am ruthless about removing everything that isn’t truly serving the song.

    I think this same principle applies to life more generally (as all music production laws do in my humble opinion). If something in your life isn’t serving your highest purpose, remove it. Clarity and space are the prerequisites of the greatest art.

  • INTUITION > KNOWLEDGE

    Imagine yourself traversing a vast, uncharted desert. An oasis awaits just beyond the horizon, and you have only 12 hours to reach it before dying of thirst. As the sands of time draw this dreaded fate closer and closer, a genie suddenly descends from the heavens, offering you a choice: he will either gift you a generous supply of water or a reliable compass. 

    The thought of cooling your parched lips is tempting, but as long as you remain lost, quenching your thirst will only delay the inevitable. You choose the compass.

    In music production, knowledge is like water. It is the fuel that enables you to get from point A to point B. But intuition—that quiet inner knowing—is your compass; your Northern Star. 

    Gatekeepers (a.k.a. insecure people who believe there isn’t enough success to go around) often overplay the importance of specialized knowledge. Wall Street sharks conjure up ridiculous jargon to make investing seem like rocket science (hint: it’s not), and countless music producers overhype the technical prowess you need to make a hit. 

    In an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, it comes as no surprise that intuition – the more feminine kind of intelligence – is usually undervalued. But without it, you may as well be walking in circles with a blindfold on. No amount of knowledge will save you unless you know where you’re going.

    The greatest producers understand that the technical aspects of music production are not an end in themselves; they are a means to an end. A shitty song that was produced with the fanciest gear and the most experienced engineers is still a shitty song. A great song that was created with the bare essentials, Steve Lacey style, speaks for itself.