Swae Lee's Surprising Contribution to "Formation"

By Zack Boehm on February 13, 2016

With last week’s surprise release of “Formation”, and a bravura Super Bowl performance a mere 24 hours later, the indomitably fierce Beyoncé laid siege upon the world of pop culture in a way that, really, only she can. The brilliantly coordinated roll out of the song, which was accompanied by the iconic half-time show performance, a tour announcement, and a visually arresting and scathingly political video that may be her best yet, betrays not only Beyoncé’s virtuosity as an artist, but also her comprehensive understanding of the peculiar and capricious calculus of pop-stardom. Beyoncé has the puzzle of pop-artistry worked out (with an exactitude that seems unfailing) to a science, which makes her collaboration with Swae Lee on “Formation” all the more fascinating.

 Twenty-year-old Swae Lee, who is a credited cowriter on “Formation”, is a gangly, bounding party-rap pygmy and one-half of Rae Sremmurd, who are best known for virally infectious club bangers like “No Type” and “No Flex Zone”. That Beyoncé would enlist such a young, obscure, and generally marginal figure like Swae Lee for support on such a monumental project was, for many, kind of mystifying, but a discriminating listen to the song reveals that some of its best elements bare trace evidence of Swae’s influence. The repeated “I slay” refrain, for example, is reminiscent of any number of repeated phrases jubilantly exclaimed in Sremmurd’s most ineradicable earworms (no flex, zone! no flex, zone!) and the now famous, unendingly memed “Red Lobster” lyric sounds like it easily could have been the product of Swae’s profane playfulness.

 Although Swae Lee has been, at most, a peripheral figure in the “Formation” phenomenon, his involvement in a song of this magnitude represents an interesting indication of shifting and mutating aesthetics in pop music. Swae Lee is a member of a cohort of young artists (Young Thug, Travi$ Scott, ILoveMakonnen) who are joyously unmooring hip-hop from the conventions that have governed it for decades, and who are quickly deconstructing genre distinctions that have historically divided “real” hip-hop and mainstream pop-music. These artists don’t position themselves as lyrical technicians—they don’t invest much energy in cultivating any kind of dizzying lyrical dexterity. Rather, artists like Swae Lee tend to take a more expressive and holistic approach, treating the song as a unitary experience that shouldn’t be separated into “the beat” and “the lyrics”, and focusing on pairing intuitive, sticky melodies with broad and memorable lyrics that demand to be sung along to. “No Type” is a fantastic actualization of this approach: one listen and you too will be defiantly insisting that you ain’t got no type.

That “Formation” may already be one of the songs of 2016 shows that these ancillary, novel styles are rapidly becoming institutionalized, and that the titans of pop-music have recognized their popularity and potential. This trend has been suggested in the past, like with Drake’s cosign of ILoveMakonnen or with Kanye’s long and fruitful artistic partnership with Travi$ Scott, but Swae Lee’s involvement in what augurs to be one of the biggest songs of Beyoncé’s career signals that the sensibilities of these young, eccentric, often decried artists are artistically and, perhaps more importantly, commercially viable.

 Hip-hop gatekeepers generally dismiss Swae Lee and similar artists as inauthentic or not conventionally talented enough to warrant attention. Radio DJ Ebro Darden has been vocal in his criticism of Rae Sremmurd, accusing them of vapidity, of not writing their own lyrics, and, essentially, of unorthodoxy; of not conforming to the prescribed role of “hip-hop personality”. However this appraisal seems to be becoming an increasingly antiquated way of evaluating the music industry. Swae Lee collaborating with Beyoncé on “Formation”, whose artistic achievement is exceeded only by its commercial potential, illustrates what we already know to be true. Genre lines are more permeable than ever. Hip-hop is the mainstream. And, although some may be loath to the inevitable, voices like Swae Lee’s will be dominating airwaves for years to come.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format