How Lalala of Y2k and $ bbno became popular – Rolling Stone



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"Have I really forgotten that melody?"

This is the first cleared line of the year 2000 and the frivolous hit of $ bbno, "Lalala", which reached the top of the Spotify Viral 50 on July 1 and remained in the Top 5 all month. It's boastful, an ironic idiot with a touch of A drugged rhyme: "I caught a Lucy, a disgusting boy, I keep you cool / I've got the newspaper, I went to school, pay attention to who you call the l & # 39; 39; fool. "

But it's a pop hit, the verses are just a way to kill time until you get to the onomatopoeic hook, which rhymes "shashasha" with "lalala", as if he was trying to bring back the glory days of girls' groups. Despite his The melody is hard to forget, which partly explains why the music was created by Columbia Records this month.

"Lalala" is the latest in a series of "strange, unusual and atypical songs that have experienced explosive digital growth" over the past six months, says Mark Adams, program director for KYLD in San Francisco, a station of the Top 40 already broadcast The only one. "There is a thread of records like this one after the other: Lil Nas X [with ‘Old Town Road’] of course, Ambjay [with ‘Uno’], Blanco Brown [with ‘The Git Up’]. Here is another one.

In the case of "Lalala", one of the reasons for the "explosive digital growth" is a guerrilla marketing offensive involving Tinder, Craigslist ads and even centennial call centers. The song begins as if it were composed by two slackers in the studio, but do not be fooled; These artists talk about promotional tactics like taking the Acela from the business school to a conference on innovation. "We have approached a lot of non-traditional markets very aggressively," says Y2k.

Antonio Chavez, who manages $ bbno, has the flair for these campaigns – he also works with Shotgun Willy, who launched "Do not worry about being happy" in "Oreo", an ode to promiscuity that made the Viral 50 this month. "The labels remind me:" How did you do that? ", Says Chavez.

Eight months before the majors swarm with people, Y2K and BBBN $ made the most of "Lalala" during a studio night in November. "People keep telling us that one of the melodies looks like nirvana, but that was not our intention at all," Y2k says. "My voice is just melodious when I hit those notes," adds $ bbno. Unlike the self-deprecating introduction to the song, both musicians remember the melody of their hit. But some of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the song are, in fact, unclear.

"You know [Cardi B’s] "I like it like that?" Asks $ bbno. "I sat on [Y2k’s] couch and was like, "can you try [making something like] ? It & # 39; "

"Have we even listened?" Y2K Retorque. "I swear to God that I have never heard this song."

"I'm pretty sure I talked about Latin-Spanish," says bbno $.

"Without offending Cardi B, love it," says Y2k. "But I've never heard that song."

Cardi B or not, Y2K has approached a "Latin vibe" with a guitar line written on a MIDI keyboard. The $ bbno hook follows mainly the same melody. "While [Y2K] did that [writing the guitar part]I was like "nah-nah, nah-nah-nah," says $ bbno. "He turned around like, 'you're going to record that."

The part "Did I really forget this melody?" Appeared during an incendiary session, but rather than suppressing the blunder, Y2k and $ bbno decided to wear it proudly, placing it at the beginning of the final version . "It's unorthodox," says $ bbno. And it's smart: listen to the intros of 20 different songs, and this one stands out.

Many potential shots fade and die without proper exposure. To ensure that "Lalala" receives the attention it deserves, Y2K, BBBN $ and Chavez have developed a detailed deployment plan. "Generally, what works best is when people are spammed the same shit again and again," says $ bbno. That's exactly how pop radio succeeds, but pop radio is just a medium; Y2k and bbno $ had planned to help potential listeners from all directions. "They had an Excel spreadsheet of potential viral marketing ideas," recalls Nic Warner, who now runs the Y2k software.

The video application TikTok has provided a quick boost. "They had a lot of friends who had been followed by TikTok or had access to them," says Warner. "Many children in the age of self-promotion and Internet marketing, you collect these relationships. It's like going to Dave & Buster, you get all those tickets and you swap them for the big one. "Lalala" was an opportunity to appeal to these favors.

Through their network of friends, $ bbno boasts of "bombing his car" Lalala June 7 – we had the song before it came out . " To date, three different versions of "Lalala" have been used in more than 1.1 million TikTok videos. The most popular excerpt incorporates this discordant opening: "Have I really forgotten that melody?" (Another disorienting title, "Cha Cha" by Freddie Dread, has also released Virify 50 from Spotify. been used to record more than 600,000 TikTok videos.)

Getting music through TikTok is old news at the moment, but on the wilder side of the spectrum of modern personal promotion, Y2k, bbno $ and Chavez have also paid subscriptions to Tinder Plus to attract an audience. Tinder Plus has two advantages for the rich and the horny. First, "you can remotely access any city," says Y2k. Second, "you can buy other Super Likes," says $ bbno. "Super Like probably increases by 50% your chances of getting a match." For Y2k and $ bbno, that means they could have more matches in more cities, thus expanding the pool of people who would send their song. "We would spam 'Lalala' to all our matches," says Y2K. "It was really odious." ("I had some numbers," adds $ bbno.)

In addition to these social media promotions, Y2K and $ bbno $ have tested several unusual regression marketing techniques in the world of modern blackmail. Like politicians trying to win competitive electoral districts, artists have hired call centers to advance their projects. "We conducted research on the listener for our audiences using the badyzes of all these websites," says Y2k. They took this information and turned into a telemarketing campaign. "Everybody hates telemarketers, but everyone responds anyway," says Y2k. "We got good results from them."

They even hammered the sidewalk, hiring people randomly "to go door-to-door with a song on the USB drive" and just give it away for free. "We put ads [for the song] on Craigslist and on eBay, really register the song in unexpected places, "says Y2k. It is not certain that it worked: "We have no way of measuring that. We were just trying to try everything.

"Everything" also included the unleashing of false news. "We did a lot of bogus stories about how we met so that publications would be published to make it more interesting," says Y2k. "One said we met at a meeting with Ariana Grande, another said [bbno$ was] my delivery boy from Postmates. We thought it was fun to publish different stories from different conflicting blogs and display them all at the same time on our pages. Although clever, this raises the question of whether some of the stories told about their promotional efforts are somewhat exaggerated. .

But their results are not convincing: "Lalala" has ambaded 47 million flows in the United States so far, according to badyst firm Alpha Data. And most of these flows were due to the marketing work of the year 2000 and $ bbno. "When the movement really started moving around June 18 or 19, only 2% of their feeds came from the Spotify editorial. [playlists]Said Warner. "Almost everyone who listened was a fan who found it alone. This indicates success. "

With "Lalala" beginning to make pop radio appearances – more than 200 plays last week – and a recently signed recording contract, Y2k and bbno $ both plan to broadcast more music. But Monday, the day before the video of their single, they were more excited about the breakfast sandwich at LA's Highland Cafe. "We go maybe even twice a day," says $ bbno, praising the "perfect consistency of the mayo. "

Thanks to millions of streams, they can now afford a lot of sandwiches for breakfast. According to Y2k, both partners dream of more important things: "We hope to get them for free," he says. "But thanks."

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