There is no shortage of change needed in the music space in 2024 after being blessed by what may well be one of my favorite artist’s- Dani Kiyoko, best release yet. With the knowledge that this year is only just starting for them (be ready for a prolific year from Dani) one aspect of change has become glaringly obvious, that is the onslaught of media pages promoting white boy rappers with viral posts every week, but more specifically how we engage with this phenomenon.

‘Yūutsu 001’ is Dani Kiyoko at their peak. The project is five tracks long, including ‘So Beautiful’ a bonus track that has me looking forward to the rest of the year and is quickly becoming my most replayed project of 2024. Each song here is more infectious than the last, Dani Kiyoko proves themselves time and time again with each drop. I’ve realized that we need to start supporting and focusing our attention on those who have proven to be real, and are focused only on making good music. I don’t know the name of the latest white boy rapper to ‘blow up’ on social media, though I have seen his face more than enough times. This trend also breaks the brains of the average underground music fan in the sense that they lose the ability to tell a real artist from one of these promo page goblins. The clearest example I can think of being Ian, an incredible artist with a great manager just doing his thing, but because he’s white and rapping, random rap fans feel the need to make baseless and needless comparisons to the ‘new guy’. This has real world consequences, I know it just looks like internet stuff but it is also people trying to launch a career, and we have to watch who we put on and who we choose to support. It’s dangerous to be a blind fan of something in 2024, especially when we already have countless artists from all corners of the scene who have have been exposed as dangerous, gross, degenerates. I’m a firm believer that we need to stop interacting with accounts that post these altogether, they aren’t worth our quote tweet critical takedowns, and they aren’t worth a second thought, all of the time and energy spent on the topic is better spent gassing up your day ones, and continuing support for those artists who you already love. I think what specifically made me feel this way is when I started seeing these paid promo posts of a guy’s little Triller-esque video with the captions reading “yall better blow up Heffie like yall did Ian and Nettspend”. To me these posts, these paid promos come across as borderline bait, which feels just wrong, especially when the latest guy- again, I do not remember his name, and do not care, is essentially doing a sonified blackface.

What this really comes down to is this, for every one of these white guys rapping who end up getting elevated at insane rates. There are a solid handful of actual icons who have been doing this for years and deserve to dwarf all of these guys, and in my opinion already do. Dani Kiyoko is absolutely one of these icons. More of a star than some of your actual favorites, Dani is an undisputed legend, so when you hear their best work has come out you are doing yourself a huge disservice by not streaming it. I do want to stress how messed up I think it is how self proven icons like Dani are constantly missing from underground rap media pages. These pages have been rendered useless for artists and this is why artists hate blogger culture now, even yearning for the old days of blogging. Truly every aspect of these Yuutsu 001 songs is insanely well crafted, and three out of the five songs are self produced, including my favorite one ‘Know Better’. Dani’s writing is a pretty understated aspect of their work as well, like with these lines on ‘So Crushed’

“You don’t wanna feel love

Say that you wasn’t enough

Just say you love me way too much

Like was it enough?

When I’m just feeling so crushed”

I just really like music that makes me feel something and Dani Kiyoko’s always does. I said previously if you have read this far and still don’t have plans to stream Yūutsu by Dani Kiyoko, you’re only doing yourself a disservice. There is a lot of great music out there, do not fill your head with nonsense.

Stream Yuutsu 001: soundcloud.com/danikiyoko/sets/r-b-tape?si=17ebe01d1bd340ee95ac6743f3859d74&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 

Written By Em Bishoff: twitter.com/emofc_