D
Deleted member 21339
Onanon in the top two best songs on Take Me Apart? Surejan.gif
Great to see how well both Waitin and Frontline did, though.
Great to see how well both Waitin and Frontline did, though.
BLACK GIRL DEBUT MAGIC™ - WINNER
- Thread starter Mr.Arroz
- Start date
Y'all did the most with Onanon I see. Frontline and Blue Light deserved better.
I have a lot of comments but my main one is I want to double dutch to Heavy Metal and Reflective.
I love that my 11/10 has secured a top ten placing. All around a brilliant top ten.
He/Him
they&she
I love how two brilliant opening tracks to great 2017 releases include car noises: Frontline and
Footage of Kelela driving my wig into oblivion in Frontline's outro, 2017, decolorized.
I fear poor Santigold will miss out sadly.
Mr.Arroz
Staff member
he/him/his
#8
Soda
9.051
Highest score: 11 x 4
(@He, @Mr.Arroz, @Sanctuary, @beyoncésweave)
10 x 16 (@Petty Mayonnaise, @2014, @Vitamin, @TRAVVV, @theelusivechanteuse, @Jwentz, @CorgiCorgiCorgi, @Solenciennes, @R92, @lalaclairi_, @KingBruno, @happiestgirl, @Posh Spears, @A&E, @1991, @BML)
Lowest scores: 7 x 3 (@Bangers&Bops, @Remorque, @soratami)
6 x 2 (@Heaven on Earth, @Trouble in Paradise)
5 x 1 (@Sprockrooster)
ANYWAY
Track background: Azealia wrote “Soda” with Jack Fuller and SCNTST, the latter of whom produced the track in its entirety. It was at one point to be a single from her debut:
It samples Aphex Twin’s "Pulsewidth"
As well as Cassie’s 2006 R&B hit, “Me & U”
Upon release of Broke with Expensive Taste in late 2014, it was lauded throughout the blogosphere and even here on PJ. Britt Julious writes over at Noisey:
““Soda” is one of the best tracks on BWET, and it is one of the best examples of Banks’s charms. Here is a song that is tirelessly catchy, that is instantly danceable, and that is heartbreaking and raw in its vulnerability. I call these songs “Down Disco” (Gloria Ann Taylor’s “Love is a Hurting Thing” is the all-time best example of this) for they fulfill our multifaceted desires simultaneously. We are free to both dance in joy and cry in frustration.
In the song, she sings, "I'm trying to hide the untired eyes aside, I'm tired of trying to try to not cry, I might survive the night time or might die" over a bouncy, hybrid garage and house beat. Casual listeners might miss the lyrics, instead focusing on its perfect syncopation and intonation. But these words are a poignant, important look into Azealia, The Person. To me, it is the best example of two selves: the one we present to the world and the one we are deep down. And maybe I am projecting, but my connection to “Soda” feels made for my black womanhood, my need to present strength and resilience and my internal struggle of pain and sadness and frustration. This same push and pull of the danceable, the surface, and the deep, the uncomfortable, penetrates nearly every track on the album.”
Azealia herself had these words to give Rolling Stone in regards to “Soda”’s origin:
“Last year, she handed a completed album in to Interscope/Polydor. "I thought they were going to like it," she says. "But when I handed it in, they told me that I didn't have a hit." She went back to the studio and recorded "Chasing Time" – one of the most instantly appealing dance-pop anthems on the album – only to be told that the label preferred another song, the twitchy house groove "Soda," as a single. "I just spent a whole 'nother fuckin' four months in the studio trying to come up with some shit, and you want to go with fuckin' 'Soda'?" Banks says, still incredulous. "I really just lost it. That was the day you saw me on Twitter, like, 'The fuck? I'm tired of talking to these white guys about my shit.' It felt like they were playing some sort of head game. And you know I love conspiracy theories. I was like, 'They're trying to brainwash me! Fuck these guys!’””
In addition to her “16 Days of Azealia” commentary for “Soda”:
She even tweeted directed about “Soda”, in a now unavailable post:
"Soda is about self-medicating. Soda is about loneliness and depression."
Azealia went on to clarify further the roots of “Soda”, rather indirectly, as part of a post in late 2016, where she hit back at critics remarking on her run-in’s during that year:
And a music video was recorded rather recently, and even mentioned online, but as of yet, it remains unreleased…and may stay that way.
Sigh.
My thoughts:
Before 2018 @Mr.Arroz puts in his two cent, here are my feelings about "Soda" from the last time it was rated, back in 2015, with assistance from the fabulous @Laura Vanderbooben. It was my 11 there too.
“Soda” earned an average of 9.30 there, taking home that rate’s bronze trophy - but competition was perhaps not as strong, or as fierce, as it is here. And in the 2.5 years + since, my thoughts about “Soda” have not really changed - but instead, have evolved, into a beast of sorrow and a further shade of understanding for some of the trappings that Azealia expounds upon within the song. I can’t speak to the misogynoir present, just as I’ve never be able to, because as a queer, Afro-Latinx man, I've never had to contemplate that intersection; it’s not my story to tell. I can see it through the hurt I’ve watched my nana, my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my cousins all experience in the various social/personal ordeals that they’ve endured - but that's as far as my words can reach. Still though, that journey to find yourself, to escape yourself, to wish that maybe your chains were just bit lighter, specifically through a certain lens, has always hit home for me, especially since the beginning of 2016. In this case, it’s the turn toward the comfort of self-medicating; or rather, the so-called comfort that it can blindly offer. Sometimes our best way to remember who we are is to find a way to push out what the world tells us to be. Or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. I relate to “Soda”, not only through the scope of how it can be applied to the Black women that have impacted me - whether family, friend, or those in the present, the past, etc., but also for how it depicts some of how, and I mean here, how I’ve had to learn to cope and almost co-exist with our vices. How that time alongside them, however long or short it may be, affects us.
Do we win again?
Do we continue to fragment?
Or, are we somewhere in the middle, ambling through alternate moments of light and dark?
That again, is where “Soda” again becomes relevant, as it too alternates between the joy that we seek, that freedom, that “light”, as evidenced in the dance-y, almost jubilant video-game production; all the while weighed heavily down by the dressings of stark melancholy calling out from within its lyrics, before a rather abrupt end. It’s as if to say, that there is no solid ending, no definitive path away from that which haunts us. Every walk is different. Every heart weathers its pain in its unique way. Something about “Soda” has always resonated for me for this alone - in Azealia’s story, most definitely, as it speaks to the direct; but it’s also applicable for its listeners, for that which it implies rather abstractly. It’s been necessary for me for more than any single, solitary reason, and for that, I’ll always be grateful to Azealia for having the bravery to not just record it, but to share it with us so openly. Thanks again, Azealia. I really appreciate all of who you've allowed yourself to be.
Your thoughts:
@He (11) - The center piece of this album for me. A personal track from Azealia, who likes to keep opinions out of her music. It’s such a gorgeous and vulnerable metaphor about love and addiction. It’s so lush too. Just gorgeous all around.
@TRAVVV (10) - She really needed a video for this. This is some of her best wordplay. Is that Brandy sample? (NOTE: I TYPED THIS INTO EXISTENCE?!? I WROTE THIS COMMENTARY BEFORE SHE POSTED THE SODA BTS INSTA)
@Bangers&Bops (7) - To me one of the weaker songs on the album. A generic house beat with her singing has been done by her in much better ways.
@KingBruno (10) - Mega bop.
@happiestgirl (10) - This is one of the most fun songs I have ever heard. I listen to it whenever I need a mood boost
@Posh Spears (10) - The Super Mario 64 realness of the production is iconic.
@ohnostalgia (9) - Marrying deep weariness with suspicious whimsy, Soda fizzes at the point where optimists and pessimists meet, the glass half something or other. At least until you bully yourself into another, forcefully pouring happiness. Maybe one day it will stay.
@constantino (8) - I suddenly no longer detest soft drinks.
@Mr.Arroz sidebar:
err…
Azealia ha power. I adore how soft and introspective this feels compared to the other tracks on the album, there’s a really gorgeous energy to this.
@Solenciennes (10) - This is so carefree and light compared to the rest of the album, it’s an effective way to follow on from the insanity of Yung Rapunxel. Love the chorus.
@Trouble in Paradise (6) - First half is solid but the second half feels like she ran out of where she wanted the song to go
Live performances:
None, understandably, so enjoy the track's instrumental:
Yo, I’m OUT.
Soda
9.051
Highest score: 11 x 4
(@He, @Mr.Arroz, @Sanctuary, @beyoncésweave)
10 x 16 (@Petty Mayonnaise, @2014, @Vitamin, @TRAVVV, @theelusivechanteuse, @Jwentz, @CorgiCorgiCorgi, @Solenciennes, @R92, @lalaclairi_, @KingBruno, @happiestgirl, @Posh Spears, @A&E, @1991, @BML)
Lowest scores: 7 x 3 (@Bangers&Bops, @Remorque, @soratami)
6 x 2 (@Heaven on Earth, @Trouble in Paradise)
5 x 1 (@Sprockrooster)
ANYWAY
Track background: Azealia wrote “Soda” with Jack Fuller and SCNTST, the latter of whom produced the track in its entirety. It was at one point to be a single from her debut:
It samples Aphex Twin’s "Pulsewidth"
As well as Cassie’s 2006 R&B hit, “Me & U”
Upon release of Broke with Expensive Taste in late 2014, it was lauded throughout the blogosphere and even here on PJ. Britt Julious writes over at Noisey:
““Soda” is one of the best tracks on BWET, and it is one of the best examples of Banks’s charms. Here is a song that is tirelessly catchy, that is instantly danceable, and that is heartbreaking and raw in its vulnerability. I call these songs “Down Disco” (Gloria Ann Taylor’s “Love is a Hurting Thing” is the all-time best example of this) for they fulfill our multifaceted desires simultaneously. We are free to both dance in joy and cry in frustration.
In the song, she sings, "I'm trying to hide the untired eyes aside, I'm tired of trying to try to not cry, I might survive the night time or might die" over a bouncy, hybrid garage and house beat. Casual listeners might miss the lyrics, instead focusing on its perfect syncopation and intonation. But these words are a poignant, important look into Azealia, The Person. To me, it is the best example of two selves: the one we present to the world and the one we are deep down. And maybe I am projecting, but my connection to “Soda” feels made for my black womanhood, my need to present strength and resilience and my internal struggle of pain and sadness and frustration. This same push and pull of the danceable, the surface, and the deep, the uncomfortable, penetrates nearly every track on the album.”
Azealia herself had these words to give Rolling Stone in regards to “Soda”’s origin:
“Last year, she handed a completed album in to Interscope/Polydor. "I thought they were going to like it," she says. "But when I handed it in, they told me that I didn't have a hit." She went back to the studio and recorded "Chasing Time" – one of the most instantly appealing dance-pop anthems on the album – only to be told that the label preferred another song, the twitchy house groove "Soda," as a single. "I just spent a whole 'nother fuckin' four months in the studio trying to come up with some shit, and you want to go with fuckin' 'Soda'?" Banks says, still incredulous. "I really just lost it. That was the day you saw me on Twitter, like, 'The fuck? I'm tired of talking to these white guys about my shit.' It felt like they were playing some sort of head game. And you know I love conspiracy theories. I was like, 'They're trying to brainwash me! Fuck these guys!’””
In addition to her “16 Days of Azealia” commentary for “Soda”:
She even tweeted directed about “Soda”, in a now unavailable post:
"Soda is about self-medicating. Soda is about loneliness and depression."
Azealia went on to clarify further the roots of “Soda”, rather indirectly, as part of a post in late 2016, where she hit back at critics remarking on her run-in’s during that year:
And a music video was recorded rather recently, and even mentioned online, but as of yet, it remains unreleased…and may stay that way.
Sigh.
My thoughts:
Before 2018 @Mr.Arroz puts in his two cent, here are my feelings about "Soda" from the last time it was rated, back in 2015, with assistance from the fabulous @Laura Vanderbooben. It was my 11 there too.
“Soda” earned an average of 9.30 there, taking home that rate’s bronze trophy - but competition was perhaps not as strong, or as fierce, as it is here. And in the 2.5 years + since, my thoughts about “Soda” have not really changed - but instead, have evolved, into a beast of sorrow and a further shade of understanding for some of the trappings that Azealia expounds upon within the song. I can’t speak to the misogynoir present, just as I’ve never be able to, because as a queer, Afro-Latinx man, I've never had to contemplate that intersection; it’s not my story to tell. I can see it through the hurt I’ve watched my nana, my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my cousins all experience in the various social/personal ordeals that they’ve endured - but that's as far as my words can reach. Still though, that journey to find yourself, to escape yourself, to wish that maybe your chains were just bit lighter, specifically through a certain lens, has always hit home for me, especially since the beginning of 2016. In this case, it’s the turn toward the comfort of self-medicating; or rather, the so-called comfort that it can blindly offer. Sometimes our best way to remember who we are is to find a way to push out what the world tells us to be. Or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. I relate to “Soda”, not only through the scope of how it can be applied to the Black women that have impacted me - whether family, friend, or those in the present, the past, etc., but also for how it depicts some of how, and I mean here, how I’ve had to learn to cope and almost co-exist with our vices. How that time alongside them, however long or short it may be, affects us.
Do we win again?
Do we continue to fragment?
Or, are we somewhere in the middle, ambling through alternate moments of light and dark?
That again, is where “Soda” again becomes relevant, as it too alternates between the joy that we seek, that freedom, that “light”, as evidenced in the dance-y, almost jubilant video-game production; all the while weighed heavily down by the dressings of stark melancholy calling out from within its lyrics, before a rather abrupt end. It’s as if to say, that there is no solid ending, no definitive path away from that which haunts us. Every walk is different. Every heart weathers its pain in its unique way. Something about “Soda” has always resonated for me for this alone - in Azealia’s story, most definitely, as it speaks to the direct; but it’s also applicable for its listeners, for that which it implies rather abstractly. It’s been necessary for me for more than any single, solitary reason, and for that, I’ll always be grateful to Azealia for having the bravery to not just record it, but to share it with us so openly. Thanks again, Azealia. I really appreciate all of who you've allowed yourself to be.
Your thoughts:
@He (11) - The center piece of this album for me. A personal track from Azealia, who likes to keep opinions out of her music. It’s such a gorgeous and vulnerable metaphor about love and addiction. It’s so lush too. Just gorgeous all around.
@TRAVVV (10) - She really needed a video for this. This is some of her best wordplay. Is that Brandy sample? (NOTE: I TYPED THIS INTO EXISTENCE?!? I WROTE THIS COMMENTARY BEFORE SHE POSTED THE SODA BTS INSTA)
@Bangers&Bops (7) - To me one of the weaker songs on the album. A generic house beat with her singing has been done by her in much better ways.
@KingBruno (10) - Mega bop.
@happiestgirl (10) - This is one of the most fun songs I have ever heard. I listen to it whenever I need a mood boost
@Posh Spears (10) - The Super Mario 64 realness of the production is iconic.
@ohnostalgia (9) - Marrying deep weariness with suspicious whimsy, Soda fizzes at the point where optimists and pessimists meet, the glass half something or other. At least until you bully yourself into another, forcefully pouring happiness. Maybe one day it will stay.
@constantino (8) - I suddenly no longer detest soft drinks.
@Mr.Arroz sidebar:
err…
Azealia ha power. I adore how soft and introspective this feels compared to the other tracks on the album, there’s a really gorgeous energy to this.
@Solenciennes (10) - This is so carefree and light compared to the rest of the album, it’s an effective way to follow on from the insanity of Yung Rapunxel. Love the chorus.
@Trouble in Paradise (6) - First half is solid but the second half feels like she ran out of where she wanted the song to go
Live performances:
None, understandably, so enjoy the track's instrumental:
Yo, I’m OUT.
#8
Soda
9.051
Highest score: 11 x 4
(@He, @Mr.Arroz, @Sanctuary, @beyoncésweave)
10 x 16 (@Petty Mayonnaise, @2014, @Vitamin, @TRAVVV, @theelusivechanteuse, @Jwentz, @CorgiCorgiCorgi, @Solenciennes, @R92, @lalaclairi_, @KingBruno, @happiestgirl, @Posh Spears, @A&E, @1991, @BML)
Lowest scores: 7 x 3 (@Bangers&Bops, @Remorque, @soratami)
6 x 2 (@Heaven on Earth, @Trouble in Paradise)
5 x 1 (@Sprockrooster)
ANYWAY
Track background: Azealia wrote “Soda” with Jack Fuller and SCNTST, the latter of whom produced the track in its entirety. It was at one point to be a single from her debut:
It samples Aphex Twin’s "Pulsewidth"
As well as Cassie’s 2006 R&B hit, “Me & U”
Upon release of Broke with Expensive Taste in late 2014, it was lauded throughout the blogosphere and even here on PJ. Britt Julious writes over at Noisey:
““Soda” is one of the best tracks on BWET, and it is one of the best examples of Banks’s charms. Here is a song that is tirelessly catchy, that is instantly danceable, and that is heartbreaking and raw in its vulnerability. I call these songs “Down Disco” (Gloria Ann Taylor’s “Love is a Hurting Thing” is the all-time best example of this) for they fulfill our multifaceted desires simultaneously. We are free to both dance in joy and cry in frustration.
In the song, she sings, "I'm trying to hide the untired eyes aside, I'm tired of trying to try to not cry, I might survive the night time or might die" over a bouncy, hybrid garage and house beat. Casual listeners might miss the lyrics, instead focusing on its perfect syncopation and intonation. But these words are a poignant, important look into Azealia, The Person. To me, it is the best example of two selves: the one we present to the world and the one we are deep down. And maybe I am projecting, but my connection to “Soda” feels made for my black womanhood, my need to present strength and resilience and my internal struggle of pain and sadness and frustration. This same push and pull of the danceable, the surface, and the deep, the uncomfortable, penetrates nearly every track on the album.”
Azealia herself had these words to give Rolling Stone in regards to “Soda”’s origin:
“Last year, she handed a completed album in to Interscope/Polydor. "I thought they were going to like it," she says. "But when I handed it in, they told me that I didn't have a hit." She went back to the studio and recorded "Chasing Time" – one of the most instantly appealing dance-pop anthems on the album – only to be told that the label preferred another song, the twitchy house groove "Soda," as a single. "I just spent a whole 'nother fuckin' four months in the studio trying to come up with some shit, and you want to go with fuckin' 'Soda'?" Banks says, still incredulous. "I really just lost it. That was the day you saw me on Twitter, like, 'The fuck? I'm tired of talking to these white guys about my shit.' It felt like they were playing some sort of head game. And you know I love conspiracy theories. I was like, 'They're trying to brainwash me! Fuck these guys!’””
In addition to her “16 Days of Azealia” commentary for “Soda”:
She even tweeted directed about “Soda”, in a now unavailable post:
"Soda is about self-medicating. Soda is about loneliness and depression."
Azealia went on to clarify further the roots of “Soda”, rather indirectly, as part of a post in late 2016, where she hit back at critics remarking on her run-in’s during that year:
And a music video was recorded rather recently, and even mentioned online, but as of yet, it remains unreleased…and may stay that way.
Sigh.
My thoughts:
Before 2018 @Mr.Arroz puts in his two cent, here are my feelings about "Soda" from the last time it was rated, back in 2015, with assistance from the fabulous @Laura Vanderbooben. It was my 11 there too.
“Soda” earned an average of 9.30 there, taking home that rate’s bronze trophy - but competition was perhaps not as strong, or as fierce, as it is here. And in the 2.5 years + since, my thoughts about “Soda” have not really changed - but instead, have evolved, into a beast of sorrow and a further shade of understanding for some of the trappings that Azealia expounds upon within the song. I can’t speak to the misogynoir present, just as I’ve never be able to, because as a queer, Afro-Latinx man, I've never had to contemplate that intersection; it’s not my story to tell. I can see it through the hurt I’ve watched my nana, my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my cousins all experience in the various social/personal ordeals that they’ve endured - but that's as far as my words can reach. Still though, that journey to find yourself, to escape yourself, to wish that maybe your chains were just bit lighter, specifically through a certain lens, has always hit home for me, especially since the beginning of 2016. In this case, it’s the turn toward the comfort of self-medicating; or rather, the so-called comfort that it can blindly offer. Sometimes our best way to remember who we are is to find a way to push out what the world tells us to be. Or at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. I relate to “Soda”, not only through the scope of how it can be applied to the Black women that have impacted me - whether family, friend, or those in the present, the past, etc., but also for how it depicts some of how, and I mean here, how I’ve had to learn to cope and almost co-exist with our vices. How that time alongside them, however long or short it may be, affects us.
Do we win again?
Do we continue to fragment?
Or, are we somewhere in the middle, ambling through alternate moments of light and dark?
That again, is where “Soda” again becomes relevant, as it too alternates between the joy that we seek, that freedom, that “light”, as evidenced in the dance-y, almost jubilant video-game production; all the while weighed heavily down by the dressings of stark melancholy calling out from within its lyrics, before a rather abrupt end. It’s as if to say, that there is no solid ending, no definitive path away from that which haunts us. Every walk is different. Every heart weathers its pain in its unique way. Something about “Soda” has always resonated for me for this alone - in Azealia’s story, most definitely, as it speaks to the direct; but it’s also applicable for its listeners, for that which it implies rather abstractly. It’s been necessary for me for more than any single, solitary reason, and for that, I’ll always be grateful to Azealia for having the bravery to not just record it, but to share it with us so openly. Thanks again, Azealia. I really appreciate all of who you've allowed yourself to be.
Your thoughts:
@He (11) - The center piece of this album for me. A personal track from Azealia, who likes to keep opinions out of her music. It’s such a gorgeous and vulnerable metaphor about love and addiction. It’s so lush too. Just gorgeous all around.
@TRAVVV (10) - She really needed a video for this. This is some of her best wordplay. Is that Brandy sample? (NOTE: I TYPED THIS INTO EXISTENCE?!? I WROTE THIS COMMENTARY BEFORE SHE POSTED THE SODA BTS INSTA)
@Bangers&Bops (7) - To me one of the weaker songs on the album. A generic house beat with her singing has been done by her in much better ways.
@KingBruno (10) - Mega bop.
@happiestgirl (10) - This is one of the most fun songs I have ever heard. I listen to it whenever I need a mood boost
@Posh Spears (10) - The Super Mario 64 realness of the production is iconic.
@ohnostalgia (9) - Marrying deep weariness with suspicious whimsy, Soda fizzes at the point where optimists and pessimists meet, the glass half something or other. At least until you bully yourself into another, forcefully pouring happiness. Maybe one day it will stay.
@constantino (8) - I suddenly no longer detest soft drinks.
@Mr.Arroz sidebar:
err…
Azealia ha power. I adore how soft and introspective this feels compared to the other tracks on the album, there’s a really gorgeous energy to this.
@Solenciennes (10) - This is so carefree and light compared to the rest of the album, it’s an effective way to follow on from the insanity of Yung Rapunxel. Love the chorus.
@Trouble in Paradise (6) - First half is solid but the second half feels like she ran out of where she wanted the song to go
Live performances:
None, understandably, so enjoy the track's instrumental:
Yo, I’m OUT.
When I got the quotification I got so NERVOUS.
Soda is legitimately amazing though. Would’ve been my 11 too. For whatever reason, I always find it interesting that there isn’t a single curse word in it.
He/Him
That write up makes me feel legitimately bad about my score so job well done. In unrelated news, I got Kelela tickets today, can't wait to hear her perform eventual winner "Onanon" live!
Ooh. She is amazing! Onanon was definitely one of many highlights live.
Mr.Arroz
Staff member
he/him/his
