The Scoreboard is Uproxx Music’s bi-monthly look at who is putting points on the board and who is taking major Ls in the music world over the past couple weeks.
Where does Yeezy Season fall in the timeline between winter, spring, summer, and fall? Apparently, it’s right between spring and summer, because we’re fully in it. Kanye West’s recent return to Twitter has sent the internet into a frenzy with every tweet about fabric swatches, his views on the human condition, or his new Tesla, and it’s as unpredictable as it is surprising. Justin Bieber, meanwhile, is taking a more brute force approach to life: If he catches you doing something bad, you can expect him to treat you more aggressively than his Canadian heritage might suggest he would. The internet also continues to invade real life, whether it’s memes via Father John Misty or a certain yodeling youngster, Eminem’s introduction to tweeting, or Wikipedia’s not-so-comprehensive rap coverage. Oh, and the best rapper might not be who you think it is.
Win: Kanye West, Twitter philosopher
I feel bad for other websites: Since Kanye is back on Twitter, that means that many stans have basically paused all other online activities in which they previously participated in order to surveil his account and make sure they’re not missing any of his missives. It’s like the modern equivalent of leaving your life behind to follow The Grateful Dead on a cross-country tour, but a far less committed and focused version of that… which I suppose makes it even more modern. Like the Dead, Kanye is giving his fans a lot to chew on: His Twitter, which is a philosophy book, features his thoughts on capitalism, his new music, his fashion, and whatever else you might suspect is going on in Kanye’s brain. This is all a reminder that no matter how long Kanye goes away for, he’s forever a part of us all and has so much real estate in our brains that he should do the millennial thing and pay rent.
Loss: Anybody who dares to do wrong in Justin Bieber’s presence
It turns out that Justin Bieber’s Canadian Superman character is more aligned with the actuality of Bieber than I realized: If you come around his way while disrespecting women, you will get clapped. Apparently, he was at Coachella, saw a drunk guy put his hands around a woman’s neck, and pounced to save the day, first demanding that he unhand her before punching the dude in the face. Non-violent conflict resolution is ideal and nice when it makes sense, but sometimes you also have to take things into your own closed hands. Talk about beauty and a beatdown.
Win: Memes IRL
Memes are fun, but they can quickly get super annoying if they blow up too big too quickly. The Walmart Yodeling Kid’s time in the non-obnoxious spotlight is drawing to an end now, but just before it did, he made some dreams come true: He went on Ellen, performed at the Grand Ole Opry, and dominated Coachella. He yodeled his little heart out on stage in front of thousands of people, and he even became pals with Bieber. We all know what the natural next step is: Punchout Bieber and the Yodeling Kid team up to promote justice and to whack the lights out of lady abusers everywhere. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch that if it was a show on E!.
Loss: Citation needed
One second: I’m not sure who Takeoff is, let me check Wikipedia to make sure he’s a notable person… and he’s apparently not, since he doesn’t have a page of his own, despite the fact that he’s in Migos (and the only Migos member without a Wikipedia page). Fans aren’t pleased, and since I’m feeling a little salt-in-the-wound-y, here are some Wikipedia pages that actually exist: Aglet (the thing at the end of your shoelace), List of The King of Queens episodes, and Speed glue (an adhesive used to affix a rubber surface to a ping pong paddle).
Win: Eminem enters 2018
On April 10, Eminem announced that he was going to actually use his own Twitter, instead of his being just a big PR machine for whatever projects he’s trying to promote. He hasn’t dropped any major bombshells since then, but there is one revelation, albeit one that shouldn’t be surprising considering that he’s about a decade late to Twitter: Eminem really doesn’t know how to take a selfie. He’s posted a few with the likes of Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent in the past couple weeks, and in every one, his framing is off or it’s blurry. It’s so bad that it almost seems like he has a level of self-awareness about it and he’s playing some weird joke. Or, rap gods just have a hard time with front-facing cameras.
Loss: Bad joke
Not all jokes are good: There’s a video that surfaced of XXXTentacion hitting a woman pretty hard in the side of the head, and after she released the clip and confirmed it was not, in fact, a joke, he decided to sue. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: This is very clearly not a good look, and if a joke it contains a level of violence that makes people uncomfortable and isn’t clearly a joke, it’s probably a shitty joke. XXXTentacion is supposedly a changed man now; let’s hope so.
Win: Beast Boy’s bars
Your favorite song can come from anywhere, and in this case, it comes from Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans Go!, courtesy of Beast Boy, a green-skinned superhero. A clip from the show went viral recently, of Beast Boy rapping “Catching Villains,” a surprisingly catchy and romantic rap tune that’s better than it has any right to be. Beast Boy has legitimate flow, the instrumental goes hard, and some label needs to sign him right now. At the very least, he’s clearly a better rapper than Takeoff, since he actually has a Wikipedia page of his own.
Loss: Please, just plug your ears up
This is a cause I’ll promote as often as possible: Wear earplugs, please. If you’re a musician or a regular concertgoer and you’re not protecting your hearing, you will lose it. Following in the footsteps of Eric Clapton and Roger Daltrey, Huey Lewis revealed recently that he too can’t hear as well as he used to, and it recently got so bad that he had to cancel shows. His hearing loss comes from Meniere’s disease and not necessarily from prolonged exposure to loud noises, but the message still stands: Wear earplugs, protect your hearing, and lead a happier, healthier life.
Win: Father John Memey
Father John Misty is one of music’s finest memelords: He’s funny enough to pen hilarious eulogies for the Chuck E. Cheese band, so of course he handled his album leaking with a tongue-in-cheek grace. Once he realized his album accidentally hit the internet over a month before it was supposed to (on June 1), he made Facebook lemonade by turning his album art, which is memeable on its own, into a meme, captioning his distressed expression in Impact font, “When your album leaks a month early.” It’s an admirable level of self-awareness from somebody who’s always had it, and just for that, I’ll respect the release date and not seek out an illegitimate copy of the album. Memes are powerful, man.
Loss: Internet insecurity
Everybody keeps track of their passwords different, and the less savvy among us will do things like put them on sticky notes, which is both convenient and not that smart, since it leaves your accounts pretty vulnerable. If you want more cyber security tips, don’t look to Lil Uzi Vert. He wrote his Instagram password down on the wall of a brothel, which doesn’t actually sound like the worst idea if you think about it from an alternate (and very flawed) perspective: When you’re in a brothel, are you really paying attention to the walls?
At least one person apparently was, since Uzi’s account was infiltrated and fraudulent posts were made. If you’re looking for other musicians’ passwords, check for Snoop Dogg’s in a dispensary bathroom, Jack White’s on the inside of a hand-upholstered couch, or Shania Twain’s on the inside of her Make America Great Again hat.
