Coda 2012: So, A New Season is in Bloom.

A still from Psy's 2012 video "Gangnam Style."

It's February, 2012. Whitney Houston - the most awarded woman in the history of music - has just died. Following the deaths of Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse, once again the world grieves for the loss of an all time great taken too soon by addiction and fame. From its outset, 2012 looked like it was going to be another hard year for the world of music. (It was, after all, supposed to be the prophetic year the world ended.) But then, something unusual happened. Instead of letting the music die, artists rallied and a new era was born.

Renaissances are tricky to categorize, especially recent ones. And while it would be very easy to say that music changed in its entirety in 2010, that isn't the case. 2010 was an exceptional year for music, though it was very much like the previous decade. 2011 was slightly different. It seemed the world was going through some musical growing pains. But it was in 2012 that a new musical season took full bloom; one that we are still living in the midst of. 

And while there are so many places that could claim to be the birthplace of this musical renaissance - Atlanta, Los Angeles, Toronto, Silicon Valley - none may be more important than South Korea. 

In a single video, South Korean pop star Psy turned K-pop from a niche musical genre into a global powerhouse, and created an entire new type of music: meme music. "Gangnam Style" was more than a catchy dance track with a wild music video, it was a cultural phenomenon. It was the first in what has become a long line of songs that caught on because of their absurdity (and fixation on horses). We never would have had the "Harlem Shake" or "What Does the Fox Say?" without "Gangnam Style." Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows this song and dance. Within 6 months, it was the most watched video in history. (Today, it's been watched on Youtube alone almost 3.5 billion times. That's almost half of the world population!) The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has done the "Gangnam Style" dance. President Obama has done the dance. Hell, even the leader of the United Nations has done the dance, and then he went on to call "Gangnam Style" a "force for world peace."

A Force For World Peace.

Say that out loud. Watch this music video, and then say out loud, "A Force For World Peace." 

A Force For World Peace. Okay. If you say so.

Anyway, moving on. If you couldn't already tell by whatever that music video was, 2012 turned into a fucking celebration. It was a new time for music, and everyone was hopping on it!

In many parts of the music industry, DIY music sprouted. Rappers began releasing more and more of their music for free, often dropping mixtapes to promote albums. However, those mixtapes often outshone the albums themselves (as was the case for both Rick Ross and Wiz Khalifa in 2012). Indie rockers continued marching into Indiedom (that's not a phrase but it is now). Music was like pollen in the air, and now it was easier to catch than ever before. In March of 2011, Spotify announced they had a million paying subscribers, confined to Europe only. By the end of 2012, that number was a global five million. I'm not great with math, but that's a 500% increase. Right? Someone fact check that for me.

And luckily for anyone with a car, it was a slightly less obnoxious year to turn on your radio. Sure, electronic dance music still largely shaped the hits of the day, but there were also more subdued tracks. 2012 had a lot of hold over from Adele's 21, and new Taylor Swift and Rihanna meant that it wasn't just dance hits all the time. I would dare say that rock even had a pretty good year on the radio too. Then again, 2012 also introduced us to One Direction and Imagine Dragons. So... maybe I won't say that.

My ten picks of radio hits released in 2012.

Don't get me wrong, electronica still ruled the roost. You can hear the EDM in Psy's music video (obviously), and auto-tune was on the verge of forever changing rap music (but we'll get to that in a minute). In fact, in the summer of 2012 Rolling Stone magazine featured Deadmau5 on its cover, making him the first ever electronic music artist on the cover of the magazine. EDM was alive and well in 2012, and it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Deadmau5 on Rolling Stone.

I'd now like to dedicate a few moments to the least artistic genre in the history of music: pop. Yeah, I said it. The least artistic. Now watch as I immediately flip flop on that statement. 

By 2012, pop (and I don't mean the generic "radio pop") had taken on a renovated chart-topping, list shattering form known as "art pop." Of course, if you know anything about art pop, you'll know that it didn't start in 2012. Far from it actually. You can follow its roots all the way the back to the 1960s. In fact, "Strawberry Fields Forever" was one of the first commercially successful art pop tracks. Art pop has been around forever, dominating in its own ways in nearly every decade. In the 70s it took the form of glam rock. In the 90s it took the form of uh... Björk. That's about it. She really kept art pop alive in the 90s. Then as hip-hop grew in prominence in the 2000s, art pop began to take a backseat to conventional pop hits and rap (save for Kanye's 2008 "art-pop masterpiece" 808s & Heartbreak). 

However, by 2012 art pop and its little sister, dream pop, had found a new way to blossom by drawing on the rise of electronica. 2012 was an amazing year for art pop. Fiona Apple, Jessie Ware, Grimes, Beach House, and a litany of other pop artists released, not just commercially successful art pop albums, but phenomenal art pop albums. I truly mean that. Even more conventional pop stars like Lana Del Rey took a more alternative approach on their albums in 2012. It was like every pop artist thought the end of the world was nigh (wasn't it?), so they put together the most beautiful pieces of music their genre could produce. Pop may often be oversimplified and repetitive, but in 2012 it was otherworldly. 

My ten picks of album "deep cuts" from 2012.

July 4th, 2012. Independence Day:

4 SUMMERS AGO, I MET SOMEBODY. I WAS 19 YEARS OLD. HE WAS TOO. WE SPENT THAT SUMMER, AND THE SUMMER AFTER, TOGETHER. EVERYDAY ALMOST. AND ON THE DAYS WE WERE TOGETHER, TIME WOULD GLIDE. MOST OF THE DAY I'D SEE HIM, AND HIS SMILE. I'D HEAR HIS CONVERSATION AND HIS SILENCE .. UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO SLEEP. SLEEP I WOULD OFTEN SHARE WITH HIM. BY THE TIME I REALIZED I WAS IN LOVE, IT WAS MALIGNANT. IT WAS HOPELESS. THERE WAS NO ESCAPING, NO NEGOTIATING WITH THE FEELING. NO CHOICE. IT WAS MY FIRST LOVE, IT CHANGED MY LIFE.

In a shocking open letter posted to his Tumblr, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All crooner, Frank Ocean, revealed to the world that he was not straight. Above is only a portion of that letter. Frank told the world about the man that taught him to love and taught him to lose. It was originally going to be in the liner notes for his upcoming debut album channel ORANGE, an album that would equally shock the world for its beauty and honesty. But, for whatever reason, Frank decided to release the letter online ahead of the album.

And we should all be grateful he did. His letter was not only brave, but it was a culturally definitive moment. It did more than give a voice to people too afraid to come out of the closet; it stood as one of the few moments in history where an icon - a young, rising icon - said who they really were. Frank Ocean is not gay. Frank Ocean is not bi. Frank Ocean is not pan. Frank Ocean is Frank Ocean. 

He is a person, just like the rest of us. He questions himself. He falls in love. He has his heart broken. His open letter in 2012 was the first step in a career of spinning life's brightest and darkest moments into pure poetry. channel ORANGE was the letter's soundtrack.

THANKS. TO MY FIRST LOVE, I'M GRATEFUL FOR YOU. GRATEFUL THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WASN'T WHAT I HOPED FOR AND EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NEVER ENOUGH, IT WAS. SOME THINGS NEVER ARE .. AND WE WERE ... SO THANK YOU. ALL OF YOU. FOR EVERYTHING GOOD. I FEEL LIKE A FREE MAN. IF I LISTEN CLOSELY .. I CAN HEAR THE SKY FALLING TOO.

Frank Ocean performing in 2012.

While Frank Ocean was painting portraits of falling in love, of an orange autumn, Kendrick Lamar was painting a mural of Compton worthy of a cathedral ceiling. Lamar, who had (like Ocean) made his debut the year prior, also showed the world he was more than a gifted artist - he was a poet. good kid, m.A.A.d city may be, not only the best rap album of 2012 and one of the best rap albums of this decade, but the best biography on the city of Compton. With Dr. Dre producing the album, Kendrick was able to bring Compton to the rest of the world. "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe," "Swimming Pools," and "m.A.A.d city" are sung the world over, while also serving as lyrical masterpieces on the prevalence of alcoholism, violence, and music in the ghettos of Los Angeles. 

Section.80 put Kendrick on the map. It established him as the best lyricist in the game with a bright future ahead of him. But no one saw that future coming as quickly as it did. good kid, m.A.A.d city brought us that future immediately, and it took Kendrick from the best lyricist in the industry, to one of America's leading storytellers. It's no wonder the album can be recognized by, not one, but two different covers. That's the power of Kendrick Lamar. 

The 2 covers of good kid, m.A.A.d city.

So, where does that leave us? Two all-time storytellers jumping into their prime, a rebirth of art pop, and a musical renaissance on the radio and on the Internet? That seems like enough, right? Well guess what. It's not. Because if 2012 hadn't set the stage enough already, the future was about to arrive. 

Or should I say Future?

A-Town's very own, Future, 2012.

Not enough credit is given to what Future did on November 27th, 2012. Because on that day Future released Pluto, a debut album that was both just fine and groundbreaking. Before Pluto, trap music was just a Southern gangsta version of hip-hop. There were plenty of trap artists who had made it big, all rapping about the same shit: money, women, violence, drugs. You get the picture. And some of them made it really, really big. Ludacris, for example. Or T.I., or Young Jeezy, or Gucci Mane, or Yo Gotti. The list goes on. 

By 2012 though, most of that music was played out. Artists imitating those trappers were coming along and floundering (looking at you Scotty ATL). Then Future came along in 2012, and he made trap music. But he made it a little differently. He took that auto-tune that T-Pain had been singing into, and he rapped into it. A lot. 

Pluto, though a rather lackluster album, broke new ground by combining fresh trap beats with a heavily auto-tuned (and heavily sedated) voice. Future was the first trapper to do it, and it made him a bonafide star. Nowadays, every rapper is doing it, and there are too many trap artists to name that draw direct inspiration from Future (i.e. Young Thug, Gunna, Lil Baby, Migos, Lil Yachty). It would be another five years before he put out what could be considered the greatest trap album of all time, but in 2012 Future was still well ahead of his time. 

While Future was reinventing the wheel, another debut Atlanta trapper was climbing into the upper echelons of the rap industry - Mr. Tauheed Epps. Better known as 2 Chainz.

You would not believe how difficult it is to find a decent picture of 2 Chainz from 2012, so here's a very large picture of him and his puppy, Trappy. Taken whenever.

2 Chainz went from an underground Atlanta trapper with a handful of meaningless singles to one of the biggest names in hip-hop in just about twelve months flat. In January of 2012, he was putting his music together for his first solo album, which he would drop August 14th of that same year. (Happy fucking birthday, me.) By December, he had multiple songs in the Billboard Top 50 and had a feature everywhere you turned (including some more Billboard chart toppers). To say Chainz's rise was meteoric would be an understatement and an under-evaluation of his work. Since 2012, he's released four solo albums and a joint album with Lil Wayne. He's toured with a broken leg, improvising with a golden wheelchair. He's opened HIV centers and won Grammys. He has his own television show. The man, now 41, put out a number one album just this year that was produced by LeBron James (yes, that LeBron James). There is nowhere he hasn't been. And to think that all of this started with... music videos?

Yeah. Music videos. Because apparently we still cared about music videos in 2012. Now, I've asked a bunch of people how many music videos would have to be made in a single year before they considered it a lot of music videos. I got a range of answers, from as low as four to as high as ten. I myself thought if an artist made twelve music videos a year that would be wildly impressive. I mean, that's one a month. That's a lot of time to be spending on music videos. And yet in 2012, 2 Chainz did just that.

Well actually he did a little more than that. Double that to be precise. 2 Chainz, the artist formerly known as Tity Boi, made, not a dozen, but two dozen music videos in twelve months. 24. 

So, I watched them all. And I graded them. Welcome to Chainz Bowl 2012. 

2 Chainz and corny ass Drake in "No Lie," 2012.

The parameters for Chainz Bowl are simple. I wanted to find the most 2 Chainz music video from 2012. So I set a few guidelines for scoring such:

1. How much is 2 Chainz in the video? This is measured on a scale of 1 - 5; 1 being only for his verse, and 5 being for pretty much the entire thing.
2. Is the video even slightly cohesive or rational? This is measured on a scale of 1 - 10; 1 being "yes, I understand what is happening here," and 10 being "wait a minute, I have to stop before I have a stroke."
3. How braggadocios is the video? This is also measured on a scale of 1 - 10; 1 being laid back and pretty chill, and 10 being problematically hedonistic.

The lowest score is 3. The highest score is 25. Now, don't worry. I've watched all of these videos to save you the trouble of having to do that, so I'm only going to give some honorable mentions before counting down the top five or so. That being said...

The Honorable Mentions

• "Riot." Score of 12. This is actually a great music video. It's super destructive, and a fantastic 2 Chainz song. It just isn't very 2 Chainz-y, if that makes sense.
• "Capitol." Score of 15. I am 1000% certain that 2 Chainz had literally ZERO idea what song he was doing a music video for here. The entire time he just bops around in the back, looking like a high ass fish out of water.
• "Hoodrich Anthem." Score of 16. This is required viewing. I'm dead fucking serious. Somehow, someone got 2 Chainz, Future, Yo Gotti, Waka Flocka, and Gucci Mane, but still managed to put something together that looks like it was done by middle schoolers. It is easily the best use of 3 minutes and 16 seconds you will ever find.

Fourth Place (Tie at 19): "Mercy" and "Murder"

Both of these music videos scored extremely high in the second category (wtf is going on?). Both are clear replicas of The Twilight Zone and American Horror Story. And honestly, both are modern works of art.

Third Place (Tie at 21): "Do My Dance" and "Spend It (Remix)"

I don't have much to say about either of these videos. They both flaunt their wealth to an incredible degree. They're both side-splitting in their hilarity. And "Spend It (Remix)" has the added benefit of being the only music video in the bunch where no frame lasts longer than a single goddamn second. So there's that.



Second Place (Score of 21.5): "I'm Different"

I really thought when I undertook this little project that "I'm Different" was going to win it all. It's the song that really accelerated 2 Chainz into the lime light, and its music video is practically the prototype for a 2 Chainz video. It has Chainz in it the entire time. He's riding around in a boat on the highway talking about his "missing roof," and there's a topless car wash where clothed women sit inside the car while an old man (who is ALSO CLOTHED) washes the car. The video makes no goddamn sense, and yet it kind of does. He's going for an "opposite day" kind of effect, and it's actually pulled off so well that the video loses some points for being too coherent.



The Winner of Chainz Bowl 2012 (with a perfect score of 25): "Birthday Song"

The perfect music video does not exi-



If you watch any video it has to be this one. Seriously. Stop reading and watch it. All of it.

Done? Great. I hope you enjoyed whatever that was as much as I did. It is such an utterly perfect music video, I can't even begin. It has all of the long tracking shots that made Birdman such an incredible movie, mixed with the plot twists of Sorry to Bother You. It is, in other words, the best thing put on film this decade, and it is the Most 2 Chainz music video of 2012.

So, that's it. There's little more to say about what 2012 did for music. It was not, as the Mayans predicted, the end of times. It was actually the beginning of a new musical season, one that Whitney Houston would no doubt be proud to see. And while it may not have quite been "a force for world peace," it was damn close. 𝄌

good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar, channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean, & The Idler Wheel... by Fiona Apple.

Author's note: You can find my 20 essential tracks of 2012 on Spotify if you search for Coda 2012. They are in a playlist in the order listed.