MUSIC

How Has G-Eazy Dated Megan Thee Stallion, Lana Del Rey, and Halsey?

Twitter is reacting aversely to the news that G-Eazy might be dating Megan Thee Stallion. Though he as a history of dating beloved pop starlets, this one has sparked particularly strong backlash.

Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock


Early this morning, the rapper G-Eazy posted an Instagram video of himself with fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

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MUSIC

From Lizzo's Tiny Purse to Selena Gomez's Shaky Return: The Internet's Hottest AMA Takes

In terms of memes, the AMAs didn't disappoint. In other respects, of course it disappointed. It's the AMAs.

Billie and Dua Lipa at the AMAs 2019 #billieeilish #dualipa #shorts

As we know, the Internet is the world's most accurate and knowledgeable arbiter of talent, and Twitter users and entertainment bloggers are the definitive arbiters of taste and quality.

Also, the AMAs are notorious for selecting top-tier talent, never catering to the whims of the music industry and their own moneyed interests, but rather elevating the voices of artists who deserve to be honored...That said, here's what the Internet had to say about the AMAs.

1. Selena Gomez's performance was off-key—but it wasn't her fault

After nearly two years away from the stage, Selena Gomez returned to perform her new song "Lose You to Love Me." The Internet immediately responded with harsh criticism, calling her performance off-key, but many leapt to her defense, arguing that nerves and her long absence from performing played a role.

Apparently, the performance was plagued by technical difficulties from start to finish, and Gomez also had a "panic attack" before the show, according to E! News. Fortunately, Gomez seemed to be doing well later in the night, and, after hearing about the technical difficulties, fans have swarmed to her defense.

2. Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello gave us more of the same

Heterosexual icons Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello are milking their "Señorita" success for all it's worth, and they brought the same recipe to the AMAs. Unfortunately, the repetition caused fans to actually listen to the song instead of being mesmerized by Cabello's hair and Mendes' biceps, which caused some confusion and doubts.


3. Lizzo's purse was the best part of the entire show

Lizzo's tiny purse made headlines in TIME magazine, CNN, Harper's Bazaar, Jezebel, Buzzfeed, and many other major news sources, many of which argued that the purse was "the best part of the entire show," so if anything, that ought to tell you something about the show. It also inspired a flurry of delicious memes.

Admittedly, the purse was pretty iconic. Maybe we can all resolve to belch extra-tiny amounts of fossil fuels into the atmosphere next.


4. Taylor Swift "avoided controversy"

Taylor Swift won Artist of the Decade at the AMAs and, after asking the entire Internet for help and gaining sympathy and support from everyone from Elizabeth Warren to Cher, it turned out that she was able to triumph over adversity in order to perform her old hits. She also won all five of the awards she was nominated for and became the most awarded artist in the history of the AMAs.

5. Post Malone is adorable

Post Malone won the award for Favorite Rap/Hip Hop album for Hollywood's Bleeding, but he also won the award for king of good vibes when the camera caught him dancing along to Shania Twain's medley.

All in all, Posty had a great night. He performed with Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott, and during his album acceptance speech, he solidified his place in awards show history with a peculiar closing line. Just as he was finishing up, he said, "We love you very much and I love grapes."

This sparked a flurry of speculation about the meaning of that cryptic phrase and also caused the Internet to conclude that Post Malone is someone who would be really fun to have a beer with. Maybe we should just elect Post Malone for president; after all, the mark of a great elected official is how fun they'd be to have a beer with. Right?



6. BTS won big, and the ARMY can sleep well tonight

The K-pop powerhouse group won all three of the categories they were nominated in, taking home the awards for Favorite Social Artist, Tour of the Year, and Favorite Duo or Group. Fans were ecstatic, especially since BTS has been slighted by awards shows (cough, the Grammys) in the past.



7. Kesha, Green Day, and Shania Twain returned

The AMAs provided plenty of nostalgia to tug on the heartstrings of their older viewers. Kesha returned to blow everyone away with her hit "Tik Tok"; Green Day celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of their album Dookie and reinvigorated emo with their performance; and Shania Twain blew everyone (most of all Post Malone) out of the water.9. Halsey threw shade at the Grammys

We all know that the AMAs are just a somehow more watered-down Grammys, and Halsey reminded us that though she won the award for Favorite Pop/Rock Song for her smash hit "Without Me," she's bitter over her Grammys snub and disillusioned with the trappings of fame and awards on the whole.

In spite of her speech, most people were impressed with her performance.

8.Lil Nas X made everyone emotional

Despite being 20 years old and set for life thanks to the success of his very first single, the wunderkind (clad in an instantly iconic neon green suit) reminded everyone that it's never too late to shine.


9. Ciara and Megan Thee Stallion invented knees

Ciara hosted, performed her new single "Melanin," rocked every one of her looks, received her first platinum plaque as a music label owner, twerked with Megan Thee Stallion (who also delivered some priceless moments), and cemented her place as an eternal star and a person entirely immune to the passage of time.





10. Billie Eilish is really scary and very talented—but she's not alt-rock

I don't think I'm alone in saying Billie Eilish is the embodiment of everything that terrifies and amazes me about Gen Z teen girls. During her first awards show performance, she literally lit the stage on fire.

Despite her talent, viewers were quick to criticize the category she won in (alt-rock).

Then again, music is perpetually changing, genre is just about as real as gender (which is to say it's not real and was created by capitalism), and all of us old folk who don't understand how Billie Eilish won for alt-rock will be dead soon or relegated to the dusty attics of "Ok Boomer" land soon enough anyway.


11. We're all going to be telling our kids about this someday

Apparently nobody's sticking to their vow not to have kids until we stop the climate crisis, because almost every performance in the AMAs become the subject of a "gonna tell my kids" meme. Poor kids.








MUSIC

"Hot Girl Summer" vs. "Summertime Sadness": Lies the Internet Told Me

Megan Thee Stallion told us it's hot girl summer, but what happens when you're not hot?

Megan Thee Stallion - Hot Girl Summer ft. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign

If you haven't heard, we're in the midst of Hot Girl Summer.

The term was coined by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, who created an alter ego named "Hot Girl Meg" to accompany the release of her debut mixtape, Fever. Following its release on May 17, the term "hot girl" quickly took off online, becoming a symbol of a metamorphosis into an upgraded, more confident version of oneself.

Stallion later elaborated on the phrase's connotations, clarifying that it was meant to be gender-neutral. "So it's just basically about women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up your friends, doing you, not giving a damn about what nobody gotta say about it," she said. "You definitely have to be a person that could be like the life of the party, and … you know, just a bad bitch."

In typical Internet fashion, the term's message of carefree hyper-sexual-liberation didn't hold up for long against the online world's nihilistic bend. Quickly, Hot Girl Summer memes—those quiet, wry expressions of our online collective consciousness—began cropping up. Though many of them featured photos of people celebrating their own radiant auras, more lamented the failure of Hot Girl Summer, revealing the disappointment lingering just beneath the the term's glossy surface. Refracted through memes, the phrase revealed its own fragility: "me tweeting 'hot girl summer' and then sitting in my room texting 'haha hey what r u doin'" read one. Another, more sobering message: "who was I kidding? I was never meant to have a hot girl summer lmaooo likeee I'm too loving." Another: "how am I supposed to have a hot girl summer with $5?"


Apparently, "hot girl summer" can be shattered by a sad album, or by falling in love.

Sure enough, "hot girl summer" has become a polarizing term that feels liberating for some but promises much to others while actually exacerbating their own self-consciousness and uncertainty.



Predictably, several weeks after Megan Thee Stallion set Hot Girl Summer into motion, Lana Del Rey's 2012 hit "Summertime Sadness" returned to the charts.

"Summertime Sadness" offers a marked alternative to the "hot girl" way of life. While "hot girl summer" connotes unconditional self-love and radical abandon, "summertime sadness" permits languorous hours lying beneath one's fan, mourning anything: the state of the world, one's love life, or lack of funds. "Hot girl summer" is exuberant, brash, performative. "Summertime Sadness" is depressed, tongue-in-cheek, firmly planted in the shade. If "hot girl summer" embodies the untouchable glam of stars of the early aughts, like Britney and Beyoncé, "summertime sadness" is the domain of Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Halsey, and their decidedly anti-pop ethos.

Together, these two divergent summertime pathways highlight a contrast that is very specific to the Internet. The online sphere thrives on polarization, and often a single scroll through recent posts reveals both performative ecstasy and equally performative, exaggerated depressive sentiments. The Internet has always thrived on these kinds of contrasts, as by nature it is well-suited to black-and-white thinking. People are either "cancelled" or deified. There is no such thing as "neutral" or "middle-of-the-road." One is either perpetually bikini-clad and living out a Hot Girl Summer or fully surrendering to the rip tide of summertime sadness. There is no in between.

In reality, however, sharp binaries rarely hold up when they exit the screen and join the equally chaotic but much less starkly divided corporeal world. Both Hot Girl Summer and "summertime sadness" are aesthetically beautiful in the conceptual realm; both begin to glitch when used as blueprints for how to live.

After all, no human is capable of existing in a perpetual state of Hot Girl Summer—not even the bikini models, LA hustlers, and influencers whose online profiles embody the term, but who have quietly and consistently spoken out about the falsity, emptiness, and depression that tends to accompany their professions.

Similarly, not even the Internet's self-proclaimed sad girls exist in a perpetual, stagnant state of summertime sadness. When that sadness does arise, it is rarely of the languorous, vintage-styled sort that Del Rey's early career promoted. In this, "summertime sadness" is equally as hollow and ephemeral as Hot Girl Summer.

Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com

Viewed this way, the two terms are far more similar than they initially seem. They are both designed to be surreal and cartoonishly dramatic. They both advocate for not really caring about anything, yet somehow simultaneously promote an all-consuming fixation on oneself.

In this, they both reflect social media as a whole. For all of the ways it promises to connect us, social media has become an echo chamber through which we perform and obsess over fixed, simplified, and ultimately nonexistent versions of ourselves."Hot girl summer" is about being single, feeling fantastic, and not giving a f*ck all at the same time; it connotes billboards, consumption, sugar, perma-smiles. "Summertime sadness" is about languishing inside one's own brain, clinging to a lost love, passively accepting a jaded worldview.

Still, both "hot girl summer" and "summertime sadness" have a time and a place, and they each make for great Instagram captions—but neither should suffice as a permanent way to spend one's summer months. Whereas the Internet thrives on isolated circuits of people with similar views, all-encompassing labels, and quick fixes, real life is far more defined by monotonous repetition, complex relationships, and murky questions that lack definitive answers.

In this corporeal reality, no one is a brand. No influencer is solely comprised of makeup and white teeth; most fitness models have cheat days; most online spiritual coaches don't constantly emanate love and incense; and most managers of depression meme accounts do not spend all of their time lying on piles of rotting pizza and dirty clothes (hopefully).

But it's only July; many summer nights still stretch out before us. When we find ourselves at the impasse between Hot Girl Summer and summertime sadness, perhaps we don't have to choose either path. Maybe we can make peace with the fact that we all have a little of both within us.