a little over a year ago that today seems unwittingly funny. Explaining the appeal, or at least the wild popularity, of Morgan Wallen’s “—I keyed into the country singer’s raplike flow. No one has ever called the Tennessean a rapper, but he sings with syncopation as if he’s dropping bars. The now-amusing line in my piece: “By the time Wallen gets to the first verse after the opening chorus, he’s singing in a double-time cadence that would be called ‘rap’ if Post Malone did it.
In retrospect, an actual duet between Wallen and the tattooed-and-grilled Texan-born Austin Post was inevitable. But my 2023 assessment of Wallen’s flow is nonetheless ironic, not because Post Malone did team up with Wallen—that was fairly predictable—but rather because Malone wound up moving more in the sonic direction of Wallen rather than the other way around. The result, a barroom rave-up by Malone with Wallen that’s more honky-tonk than hip-hop, gives Post his first lead-artist No.
.” The core problem with Song of the Summer is one of supply, not demand: It’s only as good as the songs the Zeitgeist serves up to us. Fortunately, 2024 has generated a bounteous harvest. The Top 10 is packed with legit contenders, including newcomers Tommy Richman, with the falsetto trap&B synth jam “But the biggest challenger in the race is the song that didn’t even exist a month ago and was No. 1 just last week: Kendrick Lamar’s beef-winning Drake diss record “.