You don't know what you started

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

25/09/20 : Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon - Pop Smoke

We've already met Pop (who, amusingly, I often type as Poop) on our travels - I didn't like it at all, but the reviews all told me it was far inferior to his previous work, so I'm "happy" to give this one a go...

...and whilst it's not really my kinda thing, I have to say (from what I remember) this is indeed a vast improvement on Faith.  I'm not generally convinced by the vocoder rappy thang, but he gets away with it better than most here - and some of the lyrics seemed interesting enough (when I could decipher them anyway).  Obviously I'll never listen to it again (and I'm expecting zero people to listen to it as a result of this), but I am at least somewhat less mystified as to why people liked him.  I would say though that the more I think about the album title, the less I have any idea what he means by it - if you aim for the moon with enough velocity to reach the stars, then things are going to end very badly indeed, surely?  I do like the album cover though.

We're at #1 this week with something a bit different - this was it's 12th week on the charts.  It had spent most of that in the top 3 (having come in at #2) so it wasn't like it was a slow climber, it had just never got enough push to get to the top, until this week.  And it's still in the charts around the #40 mark now on a run of 92 weeks - which is impressive.  His death in February 2020 will have played a part, but only a part - the album has obviously struck a chord more with quite a few people.  New entries in the top ten are Ava Max (#2 - good, but not as good as you'd hope for after "Sweet But Psycho"), Potter Payper (#3), Yusuf Islam (#4) and Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets (#5).  Another slightly odd mix, to say the least.

Wikipedia's going to have a massive amount on this, isn't it?  Oh yes, 418 milliPeppers - the most we've had in quite some time.  I didn't read it all, but it does remind us of the unfortunate circumstances of his death - he posted some pictures of him receiving a Rolex which foolishly showed the address of the house he was staying at, so some guys went straight round to relieve him of said Rolex and he was shot during a struggle.  A shame for it to happen at any age, but he was just 20 and the rest of the entry makes Pop sound like a decent guy.  There's an interesting section on the cover art - it's fair to say the original option was not liked by anyone (50 Cent's comment was "they ain't going for this bullshit") but people were happy with the final design, picked by his mum.  And people were very happy with the album with it getting to #1 in a lot of places - as I said earlier, his death will have played a part but there's more to it than that for its longevity.

"Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of, which isn't the greatest surprise ever.  I can't say this is entirely my thing, but I'm glad I listened to it and I'm also glad it was obviously far superior to Faith and I can fully understand how unhappy people were with the cash-in and rip-off ethos of that album, with SFTSAFTM being a far better legacy for the man - even if I don't understand what the title (or most of the album) is saying.

16/10/20 - A very enjoyable album
02/10/20 - Something in the style of Caravaggio