Art via Evan Solano
Ryan Pomarico personally ended Brat summer.
Over the last decade, white girl rap arrived in all forms and dubious accents. Kreayshawn blunt cruised down Fairfax so Iggy Azalea could blithely roll up Rodeo, leveraging a questionable co-sign from T.I., Skeme’s lyrics, and a Clueless themed video into massive fame. Azalea quickly became the most prominent and successful white girl rapper of all-time – an Australian Manchurian candidate who smoothed the edges of earlier prototypes V-Nasty and Kat Stacks with well-manicured nails, streetwear fits, and Southern rap colloquialisms. The mainstream ate it up.
While V-Nasty picked tinny beats and defended her right to use racial slurs, Azalea opted to be as safe and radio friendly as possible. A decade later, her biggest hit, “Fancy,” feels like a Charli XCX-aided cultural blip, but in reality, it reflected a long-running tradition of white rappers lazily applying white cultural signifiers to a historically Black art form –– and in the process obscuring the origins (and originators) of their “bars.” And right now, this year’s contender for that ignominious throne is Indiana’s Jorjiana.
If you haven’t seen her viral appearance on On the Radar, Jorjiana’s primary selling point is that she’s a white girl who wears grills, Palm Angels hoodies, and raps like the beat is located in a different area code. Ten years ago, these qualities used to be considered rightful indictments; now, they’re marketing points.
Jorjiana presents herself as a memed out gimmick, but she doesn’t actually do anything funny. She raps off-beat, but her delivery lacks the historical context or intentionality of the Bay Area, West Coast and Michigan rappers who originated those cadences. Her lone contribution to rap is a confused flow – like she contracted Alzheimer’s in the middle of the song and tried to figure out how to punch her way out of the verse. She’s the rapper equivalent of a pop-up ad.
Despite having bottom tier stats in all categories, Jorjiana has all the metrics of success. She’s gained roughly two million monthly listeners on Spotify, largely due to her single “ILBB2,” which found massive overnight success from that widely circulated “freestyle.” A quick look at the comments reveals that most viewers are just angry: “Nas was right, Hip Hop dead”; “The hell goin on”; “Caitlyn Clark wylin.”
In The Book of Unknown Americans, Cristina Henriquez writes, “language lived on walls before it lived on the charts,” meaning that regional slang and culture is married to specific areas. Rhythm and style flow outward like radio waves from a local source. Rappers are like a transmitter that interprets and spins these waves into new frequencies. Meanwhile Jorjiana and Azalea are just cheap pirate radio ripoffs lacking that medium’s DIY cool.
It’s worth remembering how fast Azalea was burned in effigy by hip-hop fans. She was a statuesque Wilhelmina model raised on a 12-acre New South Wales estate but still rapped “no money, family, 16 in the middle of Miami.” She created a struggle for herself – a new origin story far more compelling than the actual reality. And as time went on, she was exposed for her inability to pivot beyond sheer novelty. There was no “there” there. Her singles stopped charting, the industry left her behind, and she got rich off OnlyFans.
To Jorjiana’s credit, her story is much more sympathetic and interesting. A native of Michigan City, Indiana, she bounced between friends’ couches and foster homes while working at fast food restaurants. While Azalea likely had a safety net in case her music failed, Jorjiana didn’t have the same luxury. Only 20, she’s already lived a lot of life. But without the intrinsic talent, all the industry resources and compelling backstory in the world can’t allow you to create great music.
From her earliest material, Jorjiana took shortcuts by sampling well-known tunes like the Law and Order theme song. The bars are non-sequiturs supposed to sound clever, but come off as somehow nonsensical and cliched: “I like green bills like green tomatoes ‘cuz they stuff my pockets…” What the fuck does that really mean?
Newer songs like “ILBB2” and “Uh Huh” are straight up unlistenable, introducing one of the clumsiest ad-libs I’ve ever heard. “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh” sounds like we’re listening to Geoffrey The Toys ‘R’ Us giraffe try to make trap. The only time her music has any momentum is when a (presumably) purchased feature from a Rio Da Yung OG or a GloRilla does the heavy lifting. To give Jorjiana even a semblance of credit for these tracks is like saying the younger sibling with the unplugged PS2 controller helped in beating the game.
No track better demonstrates her weakness as an artist than “Elevator Spaghetti.” Over bossa nova elevator music, Jorjiana delivers lines like “I’m livin’ my life, no PlayPlace.” Those familiar with internet rappers already know she’s attempting to copy BabyTron’s “Emperor of the Universe” Lyrical Lemonade video. In that video, Tron demonstrates his agility on the mic by rapping over a diverse range of beats from Yung Lean’s “Ginseng Strip” to 2Pac’s “California Love.” It’s a serious display of talent that’s also loose and fun. “Elevator Spaghetti” fails because Jorjiana just doesn’t possess the wit, charm or looseness required.
Jorjiana’s rise to fame isn’t exactly unique. If you read my last article for POW, you know about Ian, a rapper foisted into stardom by the boutique rap label BuVision. Founded by Akon’s brother Abou Thiam, BuVision’s sole purpose seems to be creating young white avatars from thin air. It’s been rumored that Jorjiana is the next test tube experiment concocted by Abou, and if that’s true, it makes total sense.
BuVision is not just an organic upstart passion project, it’s a Columbia Records imprint run by Thiam, who famously A&R’d his brother, T-Pain, and Rihanna. Whether you’ve loved or hated the last two decades of popular music, Abou played no small part in its creation. And as streaming and TikTok terraforms the landscape into something unrecognizable, his label is playing catch up on behalf of Columbia Records.
Thiam was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying, “as a manager and entrepreneur, you eat what you kill, but you’re also betting on yourself. There’s a high reward that comes with that.” While it’s clear that he is a serious music fan, he has been in the industry long enough where new artists are considered investments. Nothing shocking there, it’s the music business. Despite the mercenary nature of the job, he began the new decade by trying to push artists who seemingly aligned with his tastes. He connected his artist KayyCy with Kanye for his 2021 album DONDA. Next came 4batz, another auto-crooning, Kanye-affiliated R&B flop. He had a few viral moments, randomly got verses from both Kanye and Drake, and then was promptly thrust back into obscurity.
The music internet has been abuzz with talk about these viral industry plant rappers like 4batz, Ian, and now, Jorjiana. They have all seen wild levels of exposure that their camp would like everyone to think is organic interest. While it’s confirmed that Ian and 4batz are on BuVision, it’s unclear whether Jorjiana is. Regardless, each of their marketing strategies utilize the exact same astroturfing popularity formula.
A million kids across the country look and sound like Ian or Jorjiana. The labels would like you to believe that all these artists got the top based on merit (or at least until a genius executive discovered them). But this creates a false ideal of success for young kids. In reality, the current music business is a ring toss carnival game run by jaded industry stalwarts who have no clue what the people want to hear, and thus rely on shock value virality.
The short term gains made by these flavor-of-the-month artists rarely translate to the real world. A million Instagram followers doesn’t necessarily mean that any of them will buy merch or concert tickets. Jorjiana might be one of the most cynical new products of the music industry, but she’s ultimately just a pawn and byproduct of a far more insidious machine. This is the most caustic, bullshit feedback loop music ecosystem that has ever existed. We rely on music labels, influencers, streaming playlists, and popular social media pages to guide us towards worthwhile art, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that all of them are tasteless. All of these disparate entities once sought to disrupt one another and in turn, benefit the listener. It’s a nice thought, at least.
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