Random J(unk) Mail: 15.7.24 – I’m bringing SobrietyBack

Because my drunk ass don’t know how to act.

Random J(unk) Mail is a weekly roundup of whatever the fuck. A collection of things that I was too lazy to make individual posts on. Or just small things that I didn’t think warranted a post, but I still wanted to share thoughts on. I’m gonna try to do this weekly. But those of you who have been here for a minute know my ass is lazy.

Another Random J(unk) Mail. Written with zero urgency. Late. Y’all know the drill if you’ve been here since the first instalment of Random J(unk) Mail. At the end of the day, the day gotta end, and a Random J(unk) Mail gotta go out. Well, it don’t gotta.

Justin Timberlake was arrested in New York on 17 June for driving whilst intoxicated. And for those wondering ‘What are the chances of Justin Timberlake being pulled over in big-ass, busy-ass, crazy-ass New York?’. The police received an anonymous tip off. And no. It was not from Janet Jackson. But it’s funny to think that it was.

I don’t play with drinking and driving—having been a passenger in a car where the driver had been drinking (unbeknownst to me) and crashed.

Justin is wealthy. Justin has security. Justin has a whole staff. Justin is wealthy. Justin has friends. Justin is also wealthy. Justin had so many options available to him to get home without needing to drive himself, knowing full well he had been drinking. Yet he chose to drive anyway. And now look. His mugshot is all over the Internet. And in addition to hit records, he now has a police record.

Another development of this story was that the police officer who booked Justin was 24 years old and had absolutely no idea who Justin Timberlake was. Y’all. This dude was 2 years old when “Like I Love You” and “Cry Me a River” dropped. He wasn’t even born when NSYNC released No Strings Attached. Wow. This piece of information just called me ‘old’.

This probably largely explains how Justin got pulled over in the first place. Because chances are that officers who knew who he was wouldn’t have charged him. Money talks. And we already know that the New York pig squad is fraudulent as fuck. So I’d bet my nursing home credits that numerous celebs have probably been caught around New York driving under the influence, but have gotten away with it because they were slid some money. We’ve watched enough HBO shows and episodes of Fellow Travellers to know how it goes. Select members of the New York pig squad probably even know whose plates belong to whom, and don’t bother pulling over certain cars, despite them careening all over the street like they hit a banana skin in Mario Kart. Negligent.

I’m just glad nobody was hurt. Because there are a number of horrendous ways this could have ended.

Don’t drink and drive folks.

J-R&B singing sensation Crystal Kay announced that she will be holding a show to celebrate her 25th anniversary. Great news. Kinda. Because when I say a show, I don’t mean ‘a 15 date national tour’ show. I mean literally one show.

Crystal Kay will be holding one show at KT Zepp Yokohama—a venue the size of an IMAX theatre. For the monumental milestone, which is the 25th anniversary of her music career.

This is what it has come to y’all. A 25th anniversary being celebrated with one crusty lil’ show.

One can only assume that Crystal not embarking on a tour is due to a concern of her not being able to sell enough tickets—a very real concern. Crystal has not headlined a tour in over a decade. Nor has she had anything remotely close to a hit in that time. And general public awareness of her has dwindled.

But purely looking at the logistics, there’s no way Crystal Kay would be able to do a national tour at the end of the year anyway, even if she wanted to. And that’s all because of being cast in the stage production of Rent, which starts playing in Tokyo on 15 August and ends in Osaka on 11 September. Therefore, Crystal has little time to put together any type of show. But if Crystal’s team were on their shit, they would have mapped 2024 out for her properly.

In a world where Crystal’s team is on their shit, her 25th anniversary tour would have been announced in 2023, set to start in February and end in April—right before the press announcement that she has been cast in the Japanese run of Rent. In May we’d get a Best album announcement, along with news that there would be a new single in June and that HD versions of each of Crystal Kay’s music videos would be uploaded to her YouTube channel weekly. Then we’d get a second single in July. A third single in August. A fourth single in September (which would be a cover of a song from Rent). And then the Best album dropping at the end of November, along with a fifth single (a Winter ballad with a J-drama tie-in) and an announcement of her doing her annual Christmas shows in December, but in additional venues. A Best album after a tour!? Weird behaviour, yes. But the tour would be all about the old shit anyway. And she could still perform a couple of the new songs on the tour or include parts of them during interlude—as a tease.

None of this is rocket science. I didn’t have to sit and think for long to map this shit out. And yet, Crystal’s team refuses to line anything up for her in a way which makes sense. Then again, this is the same team who still haven’t managed to get “Kirakuni” on all streaming platforms globally, along with three of the standout songs on Color Change! and half of her ninth studio album, Spin the Music.

Girl. Fire the whole management and marketing team.

Mariah Carey celebrated 24 (and a half) years of Rainbow, by releasing an expanded edition of it during Pride month. Obviously. And because Mariah was feeling f*g-festive, she uploaded a video of herself singing “Heartbreaker”, Smooth McGroove style, which was fun and completely unexpected. But I couldn’t help but notice…Mariah’s vocals.

Mariah doesn’t have the voice she once did. And that’s absolutely fine and to be expected. Also, “Heartbreaker” is a deceptively difficult song to sing. It sounds like it’s manageable at the start, but that first verse will kick your ass immediately. “Heartbreaker” requires a ridiculous level of breath control to be able to get through it.

But the problem for me is not simply how Mariah sounds, it’s how she’s making herself sound. Mariah still doesn’t seem to know where her sweet spot is with her voice as it currently stands, as was very clearly evidenced by her turns on the remixes of “Say That Shit With Your Chest” and “Twin”. Mariah is trying to sing songs as she would have over 20 years ago, but is doing so with a voice and a body which requires a completely different approach and technique. I’m still in disbelief at how bad she sounded on “Fucking Best Friend” and “Nobody Knows Me”. And it’s also becoming more and more noticeable that pitch correction is being used on her voice to mask the fluidity she no longer has consistent control of. This became really clear on Merry Christmas II You and Me. I Am Mariah. And even in the Smooth McCarey video, you can catch a moment of a note being pitch corrected.

Girl. Pitch correct away. Do what needs to be done. I really hope Mariah finds and ACCEPTS a way of singing which works for the current condition of her voice. Because that shit she did on “What’s Next?” and “Where Have You Been” made her sound like she couldn’t sing. And I am fully aware of how wild of a thing this is to say about THEE Mariah Carey.

The more Mariah tries to push her voice and attempt to sing how she used to, the more she strains it. Mariah seemed to have found something which worked for her on Caution. I really liked how she sounded when she tapped into her lower register and was chilled in her delivery. It highlighted that Mariah’s vocal distinctness isn’t just singing big. It’s not even in her whistles. It’s in her tone. She needs to take a note out of Beyoncé’s book. Beyoncé ain’t singing nowhere near as high and as crazy as she used to, and she still sounds great. In fact, I think the way Beyoncé sings now and how her voice sounds is the best she’s ever sounded. Because much like Mariah, a huge part of Beyoncé’s vocal distinctness is in her tone. And as she’s gotten older, it’s only gotten richer, and she’s smartly leaned into that—accessing parts of her voice that she couldn’t when she was in her teens and her twenties and exploring that in really cool ways, which adds so much more colour to her voice. And with this, Beyoncé has not been precious about dropping the key of some of her earlier songs. She ain’t try’na fuck up her voice by pushing it to try and do all of the things she was doing with it in 2006.

But I get it. When you are ‘Mariah Carey’ and everybody knows you for ‘your voice’ and for singing big and high, there is going to be a pressure to always deliver that. But Mariah needs to fuck everybody’s expectations and do what feels right for her and the condition of her voice. Because if she keeps pushing it too far, she’s going to damage it further. Part of the reason her voice is probably in the condition it’s in now is because she was pushing it in ways she really shouldn’t have been in her earlier years. I still listen to “Emotions” and shake my head in wonderment at how she managed to seemingly walk through that shit.

Megan Thee Stallion released her third studio album Megan and it features a Japanese rapper by the name of Yuki Chiba. Those who are regulars of Random J Pop and / or happen to be Hikaru Utada fans will know who Yuki Chiba is. Yuki Chiba is the government name of the rapper formerly known as KOHH, who many Hikaru Utada fans were introduced to on the Fantôme album cut “Bōkyaku”. And some Mariah Carey fans were probably introduced to him via his feature on the Japanese exclusive Caution bonus track “Runway”. Chiba being able to say he has featured on songs with Hikaru Utada, Mariah Carey and Megan Thee Stallion is crazy.

Megan having a Japanese rapper feature on her song isn’t a stretch for those who follow her. A bitch loves Japan. Loves anime. She a whole nerd. But even so, despite seeing pics on Insta of Megan hanging out with Chiba, I never thought they’d do a song together. And I certainly didn’t expect for his entire verse to be in Japanese, AND for Megan to be rapping parts in Japanese herself.

Megan and Chiba’s “Mamushi” is going all sorts of viral between Megan’s line ‘Watashi wa sta’ and the TikTok dance which originated from Japanese choreographer Mona, which Megan herself had co-signed by reposting Mona’s video and dancing it dressed as Sailor Moon.

I really hope this opens the door to Megan collaborating with other Japanese acts, and perhaps other artists doing the same. Historically, American acts and Japanese acts doing songs together has never generated a lot of noise. And strangely, they were never heavily promoted, despite bagging an American feature long being seen as a desire by Japanese acts in the R&B and Rap scene. But when it finally did happen? Hikaru Utada and Foxxy Brown. Crickets. Namie Amuro and TLC. Crickets. Crystal Kay working and Jimmy & Terry Lewis. Crickets. Koda Kumi and Omarion. Crickets.

I just want to see Perfume do the “Mamushi” TikTok dance. The song has the Japanese sector of TikTok buzzing. So it’s more likely to happen than not. Let us not forget that Perfume shot a TikTok strutting down the street to Beyoncé’s “Energy”.

And have I made a mashup of Megan’s “Mamushi” and Perfume’s “Star Train”?

Maybe.

Chappell Roan is the new it girl in pop, which is amazing. She’s fun. She’s camp. She has personality. It’s great to see a different face in mainstream pop who has character to offer. But she’s been having a really rough time of it lately—being forced to adjust to this massive life change which has occurred because of her surge in popularity.

Some may say ‘Well, bitch you wanted to be a pop star’. But I doubt Chappell ever anticipated that she would be a name on everyone’s lips overnight, and that songs she released 8 months ago to silence would suddenly be at the top of iTunes and Spotify charts. There was no steady slope for Chappell. It was just ‘BITCH. YOU’RE THE NEW POP GIRL NOW’. And she candidly expressed on stage during one of her gigs how hard it’s all been for her to deal with, in addition to uploading a video to TikTok where she spoke about her struggles with dealing with her rapid rise to fame and how having bipolar disorder makes this even harder for her. I think it’s something we need to be more mindful of in this age of the Internet—where people frequently become famous really quickly and aren’t given the time nor grace to adjust. And in addition to the fame and attention, these folk are also made to deal with all of our unwarranted expectations. Something I am also guilty of. 

The other issue with the current climate of pop, is that there are fewer opportunities given to pop acts to cut their teeth, perform and be on public platforms. Back in the olden days, we had far more music shows, chart shows, radio shows, festivals and a whole bunch of talk shows of varying degrees of size, scale and popularity around the world—which gave acts many opportunities to do interviews to gain media experience, perform so that they could build their stage chops and grow their fanbases gradually. But now, we don’t have any of this. It’s just big light night talk shows, big festivals, big awards shows and TikTok. So when an act goes viral, everybody wants to capitalise on them, and they’re shot out of the obscurity cannon straight onto huge festival stages, Jimmy Fallon and the VMAs. Some acts can roll with the punches and have at least had some opportunity to hone some form of craft in order for them to scale, adjust and deliver accordingly, which Chappell has done remarkably well. But many acts, have not had this chance. Therefore, they hit big and can’t deliver, and are never able to really deliver at a level we expect from a pop star, because of the expectation set by those who came many years before. And it can be really debilitating. Look at Lil Nas X. Thrown onto every big award show with zero performance experience and it showed. And he’s been open about how he gets in his own head over releasing new material, because of how large a shadow “Old Time Road” had cast.

The music industry isn’t set up for steady growth at any level. Record labels don’t want to develop acts anymore. They either want somebody already seasoned or somebody who can just go viral. And the landscape of TV is a mess, because everything is geared towards streaming and YouTube now. And smaller radio stations who used to have local festivals and gigs, don’t have them anymore, because radio isn’t what it used to be. Everything is online now, about ‘content’ and what can get the most clicks, views and impressions—which often means that new acts and new music doesn’t get spotlit unless it has a viral factor.

So there’s no real infrastructure for acts to grow steadily or organically. It’s all or nothing, and it’s not sustainable FOR ANYBODY. Hopefully this changes. And hopefully Chappell doesn’t completely buckle under all of this pressure she’s feeling.

Let us not forget about Britney Spears. Her family wasn’t shit and that played a huge part in her unfortunate downfall. But she was also a victim of fast fame. Going from 0 to 1000 immediately at an early age, and being caught in a whirlwind she was unable to stop.

We’ve gotta do better.

When Katy Perry announced her comeback, it came with news that she had reunited with Dr. Puke,one of the driving forces behind some of Katy’s biggest hits—“I Kissed a Girl”, “Hot n Cold”, “California Gurls” and “Roar”, just to name a few. You may also remember Dr. Puke from one of his better known hits, being taken to court by Kesha. In 2014 Kesha filed a suit against Dr. Puke for a bunch of things, which included sexual assault and emotional abuse. The two went back and forth with suits and countersuits in more than one state for 9 years, before a settlement was reached in 2023.

As soon as news of Kesha’s lawsuit broke, many artists fled to support her. Some who were known for working with Dr. Puke, stopped working with him for subsequent albums. A couple had even spoken up about their own negative experiences of working with him, most notably Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson had shared that she didn’t want to work with Dr. Puke, but her record label threatened to shelve her album unless she did so. And that she refused a writing credit on a song, just because she didn’t want her name next to his. I mean, girl. He still produced the song. His name is still in your liner notes. But, I get it.

Despite Dr. Puke not being found guilty in any of the lawsuits against him, there is still a stench which will forever hang over that man. Because there will always be an air of ‘There can’t have been smoke without fire’. And Kelly Clarkson speaking of her experience of working with him may not add credence to everything he allegedly did to Kesha, but it does highlight that he isn’t somebody incapable of creating a toxic work environment. And this is the part people never get when they start playing the ‘Well, it didn’t happen to me’ card. As though it invalidates the experience somebody else had, and absolves them of any accountability of continuing to line the pockets of the accused. And this is where the woman with the candy floss titty album now finds herself.

Judging by the noticeable lack of Dr. Puke in Katy Perry’s 2017 album, Witness and Smile in 2020, this seemed to be a direct reaction to Kesha’s initial lawsuit against him in 2014. But the middling reviews of Witness and the commercial failure of Smile was enough for her to say ‘FUCK IT’ and make an album with the one person who was involved with some of her biggest hits. I get why Katy heeled toed her ugly shoes back to Dr. Puke. But I don’t think it was the right choice. Dr. Puke is not the only producer who can give Katy great songs. And the important thing to note is that Dr. Puke was not single-handedly writing and producing these songs and these albums. Producers Benny Blanco, Cikut and Ammo also played huge parts in these songs. As did the legend that is Max Martin and the songwriting force that was Bonnie McKee, who most definitely the special sauce on those Teenage Dream cuts which involved Dr. Luke, and also “Roar”. “Firework” is one of Katy’s biggest hits and Ester Dean and Stargate were responsible for that.

Katy is setting herself up to have a whole album roll out be smeared by the fact she worked with a man accused of rape that many believe is guilty, despite not being found as such by a court of law. I’m sure when it comes to doing promo for her album, that the press will be told not to ask about Dr. Puke—but it’s an inevitability that she will be asked about reuniting with him, and deservedly so. Folk online are already lighting her ass up about it and the tone deafness of her releasing a lead single titled “Woman’s World” which features Dr. Puke as a co-writer and producer. She chose to work with that man, so she needs to own it and stand by her decision with her whole chest and accept all of the backlash which may come with it.

One thing about the entertainment industry is that it will always be money over morals. People will make choices based on what will bring them success and line their pockets, versus what is ACTUALLY right. And as we’ve seen from the success of Doja Cat and Kim Petras, a lot of the music buying and streaming public do not give a fuck about what Dr. Puke did or didn’t do. As long as the song is a bop. Just look at that pink haired woman who raps or…whatever. Married to a rapist and proud of it. And yet, people still go up for her, defend her and want to act heinous towards those who simply state the fact that their fave is married to a registered sex offender.

Everything is completely fucked.

Wanda. Come put me in a hex sweetie. I’m tired.

South Korea held its annual Waterbomb Festival and the Internet is PARCHED over shirtless shots of K-pop stars Baekho and Minho, which went viral. Both of these men have ‘ho’ in their names. [In Saweetie voice] I know that’s right. Meanwhile, Wonho is screaming into his military bunk pillow.

And around the same time, a GQ China shoot titled ‘Heat Wave’ also went viral, because it features lots of titties and six-packs.

But this post isn’t just about titties. Okay, it kinda is. But it’s about East Asian titties, body standards, stereotypes and desirability based on racial preference. And how attractiveness spikes when it’s placed through our own lens of desirability, even the desires are for a person some wouldn’t normally find attractive. Which ten begs the question: Are they attracted to the person as they are, or just their body?

First of all, there are attractive, gorgeous, beautiful people in every country, of every race. Let’s just make this clear from the jump, so nobody is confused about my stance over the course of the next few paragraphs. Because I am about to go on some tangents y’all. But, walk with me.

When it comes to East Asian men, there has LONG been a stereotype about them being undesirable. Jade Yamazaki Stewart wrote a great piece ‘How America tells me and other Asian American men we’re not attractive’ for the Seattle Times and the ways in which he internalised this stereotype.

The narrative of East Asian men being undesirable is a long running stereotype, born out of xenophobia and racism. Something which is further perpetuated by a lack of representation. As somebody who lives in the UK, we don’t often see East Asian men in Western media being ‘slutted out’ as the kids say. And as a result, there is a specific look and body type which people just associate with East Asian men, and these looks and body types aren’t ever seen to be mass desired and are stripped of all sexuality and masculinity. Whilst Black, Latino and white men have been seen in many a film and magazine spread with their titties and six-packs out, we seldom see this of East Asian men. This has changed A LOT over the past decade or so. But even so, it’s not as common as it could / nor should be. But a part of this—the BIGGEST part of this—is cultural.

In the west there is a lot of desirability for men with built bodies. And this body type is widely viewed as a measure and form of masculinity. In East Asian countries this same desire exists, but it’s not always what’s mass marketed and viewed as the pinnacle of attractiveness in a man. In the likes of South Korea and Japan, men are frequently marketed with some degree of femininity, compared to the aggressive marketing of masculinity and heteronormativity of the West.

Over time we’ve started to see more of the built body type being featured in the media of countries in East Asia. But social media in conjunction with generational shifts has played one of the biggest parts in this. Younger generations are more vocal about what they want, what they desire and are far more open towards the spectrum of masculinity. And social media has allowed many of these people to explore these things, in addition to taking a stance of where they fall on the spectrum and being unapologetic in that. Let’s use Wonho as an example, who is probably screaming into the pillow of his military bunk right now, seeing his fellow K-pop stars getting all of this attention for their titties. Wonho is a K-pop star whose popularity grew massively once he started showing titties for free on Instagram—something which (surprise, surprise) resulted in him gaining huge popularity in North America. Wonho willingly showed off his body. A body type which has never been common in K-pop. The last K-pop star I can think of who did this before him was Rain—whose willingness to objectify his body at every opportunity was what he was known for more than his music. But even whilst Wonho’s body is seen as a very masculine thing, the attire he wears on stage to reveal his body is sometimes quite feminine in energy. And we love to see it.

Social media has opened up a window into cultures, allowing people to see things they hadn’t seen before and shatter many of their expectations. Now, there is a lot to be said that people only find somebody attractive when they have a certain body type, and that is what it is. But even with some of the filth y’all be saying about the likes of Wonho and Baekho, it’s nice to see people tapping into some damn variety, and realising that the stereotype they were locked into for so long is false. The rhetoric of East Asian men not being ‘attractive’ was always dumb and made zero sense. But this is the thing about stereotypes. They stick with so many people across so many generations, that they become a fact.

So shout-outs to the East Asian titty brigade for helping shatter that. It’d be nice to see this same exposure and adoration extended to the large sized men in East Asia, but as bad as fatphobia is in the west, it’s real BAD in East Asia—where you will rarely see a larger sized person on a billboard, in a TV commercial or a TV show, unless it’s for a punchline.

Bara hive. Your time will come.

But in the midst of lust for Baekho’s titties at Waterbomb, some couldn’t help but notice how much darker his skin tone was compared to how they’re used to seeing him. Baekho appeared extremely tanned at the Waterbomb festival, yet is frequently as white as flour in photoshoots—highlight the issue of colourism in K-pop. And yes, it is absolutely a thing. Just ask Hwasa of Mamamooo and the shit she has continually gotten from netizens over her skin tone being noticeably darker than that of her fellow group members.

The point of this long-ass ramble? Stereotyping an entire race of people is still shitty. Colourism is real. The desire for men of a certain body type is some murky waters and always will be, and this age of social media makes them even murkier. And when you factor the homosexual [looks into the camera] gaze into all of this, it’s a whole lot worse. But people being exposed to a wider range of people of different races and cultures with different body types in a non pornographic manner which shatters an expectation and makes them realise ‘wait a minute’ is a good thing. I guess.

---

So. What’s the lesson in this week’s Random J(unk) Mail?

Don’t drink and drive. Also, people be hot—no matter where they’re from or the colour of their skin. But mainly, don’t drink and drive.

Have a non-alcoholic day
?J