Everyone Thinks They Know What Saweetie Should Do
Her EP isn't selling well, and everyone from DJ Vlad to Joe Budden to Sonny Digital and Hitmaka think they know how to fix it.
Last week, Saweetie dropped a six-song EP called THE SINGLE LIFE and it looks like not a single fuck was given. She’s reportedly on pace to sell 2K like a J. Cole endorsement deal. Those are paltry numbers you wouldn’t expect for an artist with nearly 10 million Spotify monthly listeners, over 13 million Instagram followers, and a couple of hits under her belt. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be shocked since her buzz has slowed down, the surprise EP doesn’t have many tracks, and her last EP yielded so little chatter I can’t even find the first-week numbers for it. What’s more interesting than the actual project (which is fine, ⭐️⭐️⭐️) has been the fallout from it.
As is the case whenever a woman in rap has anything go wrong, many men were quick to chime in with their own two cents including artists turned media moguls Joe Budden and DJ Vlad (Who remembers Vlad’s Rap Phenomenon mixtape series?) as well as producers Sonny Digital and Hitmaka.
Some points were more valid than others.
The least worthy comment was from DJ Vlad, who seemed bitter that Saweetie didn’t want to do his show. While I’m sure Vlad would have scored a viral clip with her, it’s hilarious to think any interview with him was gonna make the EP a hit. Delusional as he may be, and hate him all you like, Vlad does do great interviews and even Saweetie is a fan. She took the time to respond to him, then Vlad followed up, and apparently, it’s one big misunderstanding caused by a publicist at Warner who supposedly has a vendetta against Vlad. (Again, hate him all you like but he’s a great interviewer.)
Meanwhile, Joe Budden got spicy with his comments.
"I'm not listening to Saweetie until she answer the question everybody waitin' for her to answer," said Joe Budden. "Did you fuck Offset or not? That's it."
It’s hard to imagine Joe Budden making that same point about Offset, Quavo, or Lil Baby’s music—even though they’re all involved in those same rumors—which tells you how valid his point is. It’s a crass assertion, but he’s not wrong that the rumors about her sex life cast a cloud. Saweetie is, however, willing to weather the storm as the project’s title alludes to her breakup with Quavo, tracks like “DON’T SAY NOTHIN’” and “HANDLE MY TRUTH” dance around the rumors, and she made headlines for lines like, “That's what I get for kissin’ on these frogs/He got mad and told my business to the blogs.” Gossip aside, the darkest cloud hanging over hip-hop is the recent death of Takeoff, which does make it poor timing for any Quavo/Offset conversations, but if she’s gonna be dogged by the rumors why can’t they be as well?
Just like she did with Vlad, Saweetie responded to Joe on Twitter.
Later that night, she added this.
I laughed at the “now.”
Rest assured, many of the men demanding she explicitly talk about Quavo/Offset will probably hit her with the “she’s a 10 trying to rap, it’s better on mute” or “Why doesn’t start an OnlyFans” as soon as she does. Despite Budden’s demands, songs on the project do touch on Saweetie’s personal life with lines like, “Will you make me feel bad if I told you the n—s I smashed?/We get into it, will you bring up my past?” With other lines like, “If you want me to apologize, I'll apologize/I thought it made it clear I wasn't tryna be your wife,” it’s pretty clear who they’re aimed at.
Unlike Vlad and Budden, the producers who commented had more interesting points that are worth breaking down. First was Sonny Digital, who questioned why the math wasn’t adding up.
I understand where Sonny is coming from, but we often mistake being internet famous for having an actual fanbase. Saweetie’s brand is literally being a “Pretty Bitch”—plenty of people follow her just to see her looks, her fits, and her insane diet. That’s why she’s got plenty of brand endorsements, likely making more money from her Champion and McDonald’s deals than she ever will off music publishing. There’s nothing wrong with that, but being an influencer doesn’t always translate to being an artist. We’ve seen plenty of artists with millions of social media followers struggle to garner streams because, at some point, the music becomes beside the point. It would be sad if that’s happening to Saweetie already, though a surprise EP is a hard way to make that judgment call.
Finally, Hitmaka made perhaps the most interesting point, even if it’s a classic case of “You know what you should do is…”
There is something to be said about her formula.
For what it’s worth, I always liked Saweetie’s music ever since I heard “Icy.” She projected confidence, there was definitely a lane for her music, and obviously, she looked like a star. The Khia “My Neck, My Back” flip on “Icy” just made sense, a song with a memorable hook and a beat that still had a modern bounce.
She seemed to find her style by flipping 2000s rap classics like Too Short’s “Blow The Whistle” and “Freek A Leek” for “Tap In” and “My Type.” Then some old heads suddenly realized they were old when those songs became hits, decrying her blueprint of desecrating sacred artifacts of their childhood. “How dare she harness the power of nostalgia for chart relevance for an audience that wasn’t alive for its heyday?” they asked. Yeah well, sampling is as fundamental to hip-hop as being bitter about being washed.
Of course, I’m such an old head I’m old enough to remember this tired debate during Bad Boy’s ‘90s heyday. Taking hits from 10-20 years ago, adding modern drums, and building on top of that is a recipe Puff Daddy perfected so much he literally boasts about it on Ma$e’s “Feel So Good” (“Take hits from the 80's? (Yeah, yeah)/But do it sound so crazy? (Yeah, yeah)) Coincidentally, the one song on THE SINGLE LIFE that samples heavily is “P.U.S.S.Y.”—which flips Mtume’s 1983 song “Juicy Fruit” just like The Notorious B.I.G.’s classic “Juicy”—but it’s easily the worst song on the project. There isn’t much to gain from flipping ‘90s rap songs for Saweetie, especially when the early 2000s are ripe for reimagining as her previous hits proved.
The chorus of sampling criticism must have gotten too loud because Saweetie seemed to internalize it. In a 2020 interview with Variety, she seemed to downplay the value of sampling.
“I love to sample, because I do draw inspiration from other artists and their energy,” she said. “But I really had to figure out my Saweetie sound, because I’m not going to come out with an album full of samples. I’ve had to figure out, who is Saweetie, what does she stand for and what does she want to talk about?”
This might explain the long delay behind her debut Pretty Bitch Music, an album that seemed primed to drop around the time the Doja Cat-assisted “Best Friend” was taking off and then just never materialized. There’s a lot of terrible advice from men in this column, but I do agree with Hitmaka: Saweetie shouldn’t run from sampling. It’s fine if that’s what her main sound is, as long as fans are tapping in.
There’s a different conversation her sales figure should maybe inspired but mostly didn’t. Selling 2K your first week is bad for an established artist, but in 2022, the benchmark for first-week sales of a rap project is about 30K. Everyone from Fivio Foreign to Latto to Corde to Dreamville has done about 30K in their first week in 2022, which is why I recently wrote about my concerns about rap’s declining commercial impact for Billboard earlier this year.
Last week, I wrote about Nas and GloRilla, two very different artists, but his recent album and her recent EP did about 30K. Rod Wave, who dropped an 8-song EP the same day Saweetie, he did about 30K as well. (The least-played song on his EP has just over a million Spotify streams, Saweetie’s least-played song on her recent EP has just over 100K.) 30K is kind of the bottom tier of rap releases these days but don’t be surprised if that number keeps going down next year as we all struggle to keep up with an ever-growing release calendar.
Much of the criticism Saweetie has gotten has been unfair, but any time an artist of her caliber sells 2K, even if it’s for a throwaway project, it’s going to spark a conversation. So here we are, talking about a Saweetie project. In the attention economy, that might count as a win because it builds hype for Pretty Bitch Music better than her recent output. She ends her EP by saying the album is coming soon. If she finally feels confident in her product and does a proper album rollout, she could easily shut the haters up.