6 — Friday, January 17, 2020
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
WHISPER
SUBMIT A
WHISPER
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
By David Van Houten
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/17/20
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
01/17/20
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, January 17, 2020
ACROSS
1 “__ Is Betta Than
Evvah!”: 1976
R&B album
5 “Disgusting!”
8 “The Real
Housewives”
series airer
13 Sprat’s choice
14 Slice of pizza?
15 Consuming
17 What dogs do to
set a tempo?
19 One making
amends
20 __ dog
21 Uproars
23 Miler Sebastian
24 Bartender’s
lager-serving
skill?
28 “Just __”
32 Creepy glance
33 Word said with
a sigh
34 School subj.
36 Self-service bar
offering
40 Convenience for
a fish traveling
around the city?
44 Join
45 Excavation
46 Green subj.
47 Barflies
50 Works free
52 Annoyed answer
to “How’s your
jobless roommate
working out?”?
56 Beer choice
57 Prefix with byte
58 Name on
Re-Nutriv
cosmetics
63 Sport played
on a variety of
surfaces
65 Malady that
accounts for four
Across puzzle
answers
68 V-8, for example
69 1979 Hockey Hall
of Fame inductee
70 Brest bestie
71 Mild oaths
72 Feed bit
73 Coffee __
DOWN
1 Italy’s Isola d’__
2 Blue-green shade
3 Cover during a
delay
4 Pharaoh’s
symbol
5 Gun designer
__ Gal
6 Beloved person
7 Follows
8 Babies leader?
9 Total mess
10 Words on the
first of a set,
perhaps
11 Leonardo’s
birthplace
12 Situation after a
leadoff double
16 One of the
Bradys
18 House of Dana
fragrance
22 Down (with)
25 Old map abbr.
26 Octa- plus two
27 Sour __
28 1995 Oscar-
nominated
animatronics film
29 Pizazz
30 Credits heading
31 Rate
35 Like Brahms’
Symphony No. 2
37 Tie (up)
38 “... __ is given”:
Isaiah
39 PC connections
41 Palomino pace
42 Missile site
43 Hunchbacked
assistant
48 Dissertations
49 Preacher’s msg.
51 Binged (on)
52 Quick meal
53 Capsize
54 Japanese comics
55 Large mackerel
59 Union member’s
nemesis
60 Great work
61 Academy
award-winning
director Kazan
62 Fall site
64 Diarist Anaïs
66 History book
chapter
67 Fine print, say
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WHISPER
50 Characters.
Bare your soul.
Introducing
“Where’s
Taco Bell?”
“I’m not
sure if I still
want to be
ur friend
(!!!)”
“Youtube
premium
needs to
chill out”
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
STYLE COLUMN
Listening to Pop Smoke:
an ill-advised decision
Consent and queer media
JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer
DANGER
KEEP OUT
HAZARDOUS MUSIC
As they say, “listening to Pop
Smoke is always an ill-advised
decision.” All right, maybe it’s just
me (I say it at least once each week),
but it’s true — the Brooklyn driller
has the ability (read: gift) to pull
listeners into his world and never
let go. This, of course, isn’t a bad
thing by any means, but it can create
some sticky situations for sure. In
the car, Pop Smoke can cause you
to miss your turn and get lost. At
a party, Pop Smoke can make you
ignore everyone around you and
exist solely as a body for the music
to move through. In short, Pop
Smoke can cause people to do some
pretty wild things, but why? The
answer, of course, is multifaceted,
but it all comes down to one thing:
808 Melo, his producer.
The East London producer
has been crafting beats for UK
drill and UK hip-hop acts for the
past couple of years, but he has
only produced a one-hit wonder,
“Know Better,” a disrespectful and
boastful track by Headie One and
Rv. The dissonant melodies, off-
kilter hi-hats and sliding 808s on
the vocal sample provide the two
men with the perfect sonic palette
to talk some greasy shit and spew
rude comments. Thanks to 808
Melo, “Know Better” has become
a quintessential UK drill song and
has even been used by Stormzy
in his disappointing Wiley send,
“DISAPPOINTED.”
Suffice to say, Melo’s time was
bound to come, but he’d need an
American to do it: someone with
global appeal and what is to some
a more tolerable accent. Pop Smoke
was that someone. From the get-
go, the two men were a match
made in drill heaven. Their earliest
collaborations
include
“MPR”
and “Flexin’,” two hard-hitting,
hard-nose, hard-ass songs that
immediately yanked listeners into
their frigid landscapes. Though the
sound had been popular in the UK
since around 2016, to Americans, it
was fresh and new. It was exciting
in the same way Atlanta trap and
Chicago drill were exciting when
they first exploded into the scene.
Now, all Melo and Pop would need
was a breakout hit.
“Welcome to the Party” was that
hit. When the track came out in May
2019, it immediately caught fire.
And for good reason. “Welcome
to the Party” is an absolute banger,
and I don’t say that lightly. It’s
the kind of song that commands
everyone’s attention for the track’s
entire three minute and thirty-four
second runtime. Pop Smoke is cold
as ice on the track, using a staccato
flow to deliver absurdist tough talk
like “Bitch, I’m a thot, get me lit /
Gun on my hip / One in the head
/ Ten in the clip” and “Don’t let
that Henny in my system / I catch
a body, next day I forget it.” In his
words, to be “welcome to the party”
is to do what he has already been
doing. The beauty of Pop Smoke is
how assured of himself he is, like
he knows he was bound to be the
first to blow up with this sound. His
charisma and energy is just plain
infectious.
However, 808 Melo is the
reason that Pop Smoke was able to
flex and move the way he does on
“Welcome to the Party.” Melo’s beat
is kicked off with what may be the
best producer tag of 2019: a female
voice slowly declaring, “Thisssss
issss a Melooo beat.” As soon as the
tag drops, you know both Pop and
Melo are going to go to work. Melo
does most of the heavy lifting by
crafting an expertly simple beat,
highlighted by reversed horror
movie piano slashes and pulsating,
gurgling 808 slides. Pop Smoke and
808 Melo prove on “Welcome to the
Party” that they’re the new rapper-
producer dynamic duo, and no one
is going to challenge them soon.
Pop Smoke, thanks to “Welcome
to the Party,” is on his way to
becoming a breakout star, the
harbinger of Brooklyn drill, similar
to how Chief Keef introduced the
world to Chicago drill. Hell, he was
featured on Travis Scott’s Jackboys
compilation on the song “GATTI,”
co-produced by (surprise, surprise)
808 Melo. Most of Pop’s other
songs are variations on “Welcome
to the Party,” but they all work so
well that it does not matter at all.
However, when Pop does break the
mold, he transcends. On “PTSD,”
from his debut tape Meet the Woo,
he does his best 50 Cent impression
and crushes it, delivering an
impassioned
and
emotional
performance. With time, hopefully,
he continues to both break the mold
while creating more drill classics.
What’s the point of all this? I’ll
tell you: Pop Smoke is a force of
nature, a veritable black hole. His
charismatic gravity is so strong that
nothing can escape him. He is one
man sufficiently compact enough
to disrupt the four dimensions of
the spacetime continuum. So, don’t
say I didn’t warn you when — not if
— Pop Smoke takes over your entire
world.
Trigger warning: This article
discusses issues of sexual assault
and violations of consent in the
media.
I’ve recently taken the plunge
into the Netflix original series Elite,
a Spanish demi-soap revolving
around
the
indoctrination
of
public high school students into
an exclusive private academy and
the lives of their opulently wealthy
classmates.
Over
the
course
of its current two seasons, the
round table cast find themselves
embroiled in the throes of a murder
investigation, a concurrent missing
person investigation, class and
racial tensions, relationship drama,
sex scandals and light incest (why
not pepper it in, right?). In many
ways, it uses similar tactics as its
most obvious predecessor, Gossip
Girl, to draw in its audience. While
it isn’t the same kind of buzzy
location and fashion behemoth,
it certainly offers an imaginary,
salacious peek into the lives of
the young, rich and powerful-
-subsisting viewers with high-
stakes, high-drama plot lines that
play on a simultaneous disgust and
fascination with extreme privilege
and the kinds of problems that
might come with it. My primary
interest in watching the show, of
course, is its undeniable queerness
(before actually watching the show
in earnest I just fast forwarded to
all of the gay stuff), but like Mikelle
Street of Out before me, I couldn’t
help but notice there were some
sticky dynamics going on around
issues of consent, as well as familial
and partner relations. This isn’t to
say that the show presented these
dynamics as acceptable behavior
or even that by enjoying the show
one is somehow co-signing them,
but they certainly fall in line with
how queer relations are often
represented in the media, especially
in content that’s marketed towards
young adults.
Some of the issues that I’m
referencing
specifically
have
already been touched on and I
worry about belaboring points
that have already effectively been
made, and those are the actions
of
a
bi-questioning
character
named Polo (Álvaro Rico.) In the
first season, Polo and his then-
girlfriend, Carla (Ester Expósito),
begin a three-way relationship with
one of the new students, Christian
(Miguél Herràn), and enter into it
by pursuing a cuckolding fantasy
without expressly telling him what
was happening. Later that season,
he establishes an imbalance of
power between Christian and
himself by offering him a modeling
gig, specifically the cover of his
mothers’ fashion magazine, and
then initiating oral sex with him
after his photoshoot with the
knowledge that Christian had not
expressed any interest in having
direct sexual relations with men. In
season two, he pressures his friend,
Ander (Arón Piper), into kissing
him and exchanging handjobs
in the same bed as their friend,
Guzman
(Miguel
Bernardeau),
who is passed out drunk. The first
two situations were presented
as something that wasn’t okay
and that Polo had to answer for,
and the third was used more as
a scandalous foreshadowing tool
for a dynamic between the three
that would slowly unfold over the
course of season two. Without
spoiling anything, Polo’s sexual
behavior can easily be seen as a tie
in to his violent and sociopathic
tendencies, and his actions are
by no means put on a pedestal by
the show, but I have complicated
feelings about the intersection
between budding queerness and
violation being treated so often as
an easy access point in seemingly
progressive storytelling.
For
one
thing,
the
show
brings up some very meaningful
conversations around what consent
means and what it means to violate
it. Across the board, the show very
aptly colors in several shades of
gray in what is often treated as a
subject involving only extremes.
Sexual assault is usually portrayed
as an overwhelming display of
physical violence, or as the old,
powerful boss attempting to coerce
the new, unsuspecting employee,
and not as something that can
happen between people who know
each other well, in a way that
involves more subtle methods of
coercion, coming from people that
might not understand (and, often
times not be willing to understand)
that what they’re doing is harmful.
The show goes a long way to show
that people have to learn how to ask
for it and give it, to set boundaries,
that it can take people time to
realize that their consent has been
violated, and that bringing it up
can be even more difficult when
the playing field isn’t even. Taking
an extremely sensitive topic and
showing how a conflict regarding it
might play out in a youth-oriented
context is sure to help create
internal dialogues about how it
might apply to one’s life in a way
that is, well, groundbreaking.
Any form of media that has the
smallest
potential
of
helping
people advocate for themselves or,
conversely, reflect on their actions
with that subject matter is one I
eagerly support.
Yet, my issue stems from the fact
that there are very few narratives
revolving around queer sex that
don’t involve an all encompassing
kind of existential pain, let alone
some kind of violation of consent,
either contained within the act
itself or by who has knowledge
of it. Even in Modern Family,
often considered a marvel of
social engineering for essentially
sanitizing a queer relationship
through the lens of an American
nuclear family, only ever hinted at
their two gay characters, Cam (Eric
Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse
Tyler Ferguson), having sex on one
occasion when they were being
walked in on by Cam’s parents
(which, if I remember correctly,
was a point of contention in the
episode). In Gossip Girl, the most
noteworthy on-screen kiss was the
result of Blair (Leighton Meester)’s
scheming,
manipulating
her
boyfriend, Chuck (Ed Westwick)
into kissing a faculty member
of NYU without his express
knowledge. The only other same
sex kiss in the show was in an
episode that treated public outing
as a punch line.
SAMUEL KREMKE
Daily Style Columnist
REPUBLIC RECORDS
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