Hey music fans, and welcome back to song review! This one should be fun, as this song is very popular and has become a trending meme that is supposed to be good. I am excited to do it. But before I start, I just wanted to say that I will try to get Miscellaneous Mondays back next month, as I'm having a hard time doing it for this month because of how I've pushed myself into a music-discovering hiatus due to all the new stuff I've inhaled lately. When I'm done with that I promise I will have a lot of songs to talk about, so stay tuned. Meanwhile I have this to do. It sounds fun so let's get into it!
INTRODUCTION
"Thotiana" is a song released on January 29, 2019, by American rapper Johnathan Porter, also known as Blueface. It appears on his second mixtape Famous Cryp and was written by Porter and Scum Beats. In January of 2019, Porter released a remix of this song with American rapper YG on YouTube along with a Cole Bennett-directed music video. A week or two after the song's release, he released another remix, featuring American rapper Cardi B, on his social media pages. The music video for that remix, also directed by Bennett, was posted onto YouTube on February 16, 2019. The third and final remix, featuring both YG and Cardi B, was released to most music platforms two days later. These remixes and a dance challenge created on social media have helped the song reach the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it has peaked at #9. According to his Wikipedia pages, Blueface supposedly has an off-beat style of rapping and a unique voice that has been compared to E-40, Suga Free, Juvenile, and Slikk the Shocker. I think that sounds like an interesting style that should be fun to hear in this song, and if I like it I can look more into the mixtape and maybe review that here. But we'll see. Let's turn up and see if it's good.
REVIEW
Right away the piano-driven beat sounds good. The drums that come in soon after make it seem hype. What sounds like a chorus or hook comes in right after, as he repeats, "Bust down, Thotiana," and some other things. I think it reminds me quite a bit of a DJ Mustard-produced rap song that would have been a big thing back in 2014 or 2015. But that is not a bad thing. I think a lot of those songs sound decent, and this one does so far. I can kind of see what the off-beat rapping style is about now, too, and I kind of enjoy that. Going into the halfway point the song doesn't have too many layers, but the absence of some possible layers makes it sound pretty chill and I don't mind that. His rapping style seems to get a little more enjoyable as the song goes on as well. That marks the halfway point and I think the song is really worth listening to now because of how catchy it is. I think his rhymes sound good and the off-beat rapping style helps them become more easily moldable into something good. This style isn't something you hear every day and when I do hear it I enjoy it. When he continues to repeat, "Bust down, Thotiana," I just think it brings the song up more than it does down because it gives the song a catchy, more positive vibe. And we're already at the end because the song is only two minutes and nine seconds long. A lot of rap songs today are short like that, but I'm used to it because a lot of my favorite punk rock songs are also that length. It's short but sweet.
Now let's look at the lyrics. Genius says that the song is a strip club anthem that has instructions for any stripper that is listening to it. I think the way he calls a possible stripper "Thotiana" is creative, fun to say, and fun to hear. Even Blueface himself says that he chose "Thotiana" because he thought it was a catchy and different word. But back to the stripper thing, Blueface also said that he wanted this song to be a strip club hit, and if I ran a strip club I would definitely play this song in it as much as I could because even if it wasn't popular, I can see people really liking it when it's played. I can see it as a good dancing song as well. Also, even though everyone thinks Blueface raps off-beat, he says that he writes the song to the beat. How he does that and then raps it somewhat differently is nice. And now I don't have much else to say because the song is shorter than what I'm used to. I think in the short amount of time I had listening to the song a lot of good things happened and I like that.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
So, do I think this song is good? Yes, I do. It has a lot of things going on despite it sounding simple and hard to dig into and that's good. Do I think it deserves to be a top ten hit in this country? I would say yes, especially with lazier trap songs (*cough* "7 rings" *cough*) being up there with it. I would not mind seeing it go further in the charts at all. I do sort of see this song as a bit of an escape from all of the lazy trap that's high up on the charts today because there's actually some fun in it. There aren't many negative things in this song, but I wouldn't quite call it great because there aren't enough layers in the song for that. However, I still don't mind the absence of a lot of layers because I don't think this song is meant to have too many of them. If it did it would be sort of a different song that comes with a risk of being worse than before. So I think it's fine the way it is. Good song overall, I am fine with it being a hit, and I definitely can see myself coming back to it when I'm bored. If I had to rate it out of 10, I'd give it a 7, maybe a very light 8, which is good for a modern rap song.
FINAL WORDS
So yeah, that wraps up this song review. I had fun listening to this song and writing a review for it, and it makes me want to do these more often. So if you have a song you want me to review like this, then seriously tell me and I will be glad to review it. Or if there's a whole chart worth of songs you want me to review, tell me that and I don't mind looking into that either. I will not turn down your suggestions so just keep them coming! Either way, thanks if you read this far, and if you want to listen to this song, you can do so via YouTube here and Spotify here. I recommend it to anyone who is downright not scared of modern rap music, but if you are then stay away because you won't like it. But if you're not, jump right in, this might be for you. Thanks again and I'll see you guys soon! Have a great rest of your day! :D
