Random J playlist: Black Girl Pop

I'd come across a Twitter thread on Black girls in Pop music and decided to take a dive into it. It's a genuinely great thread. But what really sealed it for me was the inclusion of Crystal Kay, who followers of mine will know, I'm a huge fan of. I did not expect to see her in the thread, because silly me just forgets that FOLK OTHER THAN ME AND THE 3 PEOPLE THAT READ DIS BLOG HAVE HEARD OF THIS CHICK. But of course Crystal Kay fully deserves to be in the cut for Black girls in Pop music.

The music industry has a long history of how it categorises music and artists based purely on their skin colour. Many Black artists get other'd and placed in 'Urban' categories by default, even though their music could easily sit within Pop. Of course, lines blur and there's overlap. A song like Beyoncé's "Crazy in love" can get filed under R&B and that wouldn't be wrong. But it could get filed under Pop too and that wouldn't be wrong either. But Pop has often been wholly reserved for White and non-Black artists, which is not right nor fair, as Black folk have been contributing to the world of Pop and shaping it some-what for many, many years. But Black folk aren't blameless in this divide. Part of how Black artists were moved so far from Pop categorisation is because of how Black folk side-eyed Pop as something they didn't really want to be associated with, because it wasn't cool or they felt it would question their Blackness. A cross section of Black audiences completely shat on Whitney Houston for being too Pop at one point, which is partly why we got the shift in sound with her forth studio album My love is your love.

As a kid, I loved listening to all types of music, no matter what it fell under. But as I got older, I definitely went through this phase of not admitting to myself that I liked certain songs because they were Pop and it wasn't cool to be Black and like that shit. And it was far easier to just like a Black female artist and be like 'No, she Black, so she ain't Pop' when she and her song was Pop as fuck. Thankfully that phase didn't last long, and I soon stopped caring and just liked what I liked. But whilst many of us were okay with the lines blurring and admitting the crossover, charts and award categories never followed suit as quickly.

It's changing. Not fast enough. But it is changing. It's why threads like ahomari's and people calling out that Black girls been doing Pop and still do Pop is important. Otherwise the Black = Urban / R&B train just keeps rollin'.

Somebody had asked the thread creator (@ahomari_) for a Spotify playlist in the replies, but she said that she doesn't have a Spotify account. So, of course my fast ass went and made a playlist.

Now. This playlist doesn't not feature every artist and every song which is in ahomari's thread. Some  of the songs in the thread that I actually like and would want in the plyalist (Rhona Bennett's "Satisfied" and So Plush's "Things I heard before") aren't available on streaming. But the playlist as a whole is inspired by ahomari's awesome thread and exists because of it. Because Black girls and women in Pop should be celebrated and accepted for what they are and were.

🎧 Listen on Spotify: Black Girl Pop