S04.E03: Born to Die

[PrincessPurrsALot]

I'm tired of all these old heads hating, just let me listen to my Italian drill music and blue eyed trap in peace. Y'all can listen to D'Angelo or whatever.

Original air date 2022.09.22

[AngieBee1]

Last week Earn dealt in pettiness and this week the writers did their own little on bit of pettiness. I know Donald Glover and Brian Tyree Henry have spoke on the show "Dave" and how people compare the two shows and Glover doesn't think the show is honest, et cetera, but I think it's not worth their time to get their backs up about the existence of that show. Cop and hospital shows are allowed to be the same and follow the same beats; I don't find it crazy that two shows about rappers deal with rising fame and the traps of the business. So having "Atlanta" avatars of L'il Dicky (L'il Ricky) and his producer Benny (producer Benny Blanco is on "Dave" and he is great) is just petty. As soon as the show opened at a bar mitzvah ("Dave" had a seriously good bar mitvah episode), I thought how much it felt like "Dave".


The idea of White rappers being more accessible than Black rappers was one of Glover's complaints about "Dave" - that it doesn't show the reality of that. Putting their collective pens where their mouths are this YWA plotline is the spin on that. It's Black artists capitalizing on White artists versus the other way around (though Usher never needed Justin Bieber). I laughed when the leader of that group's avatar was a Post Malone wannabe. PaperBoi gets saddled with a not-long-for-this-world Yodel Kid. I suppose it's too on the nose to have made him a Lil Peep stand-in, so we get the Walmart Yodeling Kid Mason Ramsey gone wrong (Mason's bit on one of the many L'il Nas X's "Old Town Road" was cute. I can't lie.). Now I wonder who's backing Jack Harlow.


The D'Angelo plot was as crazy as we have come to expect with this show. I laughed when Earn's new boss said he needed to get D'Angelo and laughed as if D'Angelo was some big get. I just think that's how far back the boss' idea about what is popular goes.


I don't know what to make of D'Angelo being a vibe and we're all D'Angelos, but I want to try their spin on Elvis' peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich. Fried chicken and peanut butter sandwich sounds good like a downgraded version of chicken satay with peanut sauce.


I'm curious if they thought of any other singer to reference because I think if you're going for a mythologized person I would think Outkast's Andre 3000; and unlike D'Angelo he's from Atlanta. But I think Andre represents that last step on the ladder of the club's leader. Andre is (was) a great rapper, but now we think of Andre we think Andre Benjamin actor. As the series is speeding through PaperBoi's career, if "Atlanta" had more seasons it would be nice to see if Al went the route of other rappers who turned safe actors/personalities like Snoop Doog, Ice Cube, Ice T, Method Man and Rza.

[JenE4]

That’s an interesting take, @angiebee. I haven’t seen Dave and wasn’t aware of the competition/comparison. 

The first 2 seasons were about PaperBoi’s rise, we have one season of a European tour where he was just starting to make it, and now this season is all about somehow he achieved some fame offscreen (mentioning arena tours) and we’re already coming down focusing on the limited lifespan of fame. I liked the callback to BlueBlood that even the rappers who were still trying to cling to fame didn’t know one of the OG’s made an album until 5 months after he died (aka, Al’s big scavenger hunt day). BB who has a long career only got 5 people who cared enough to invest in his scavenger hunt, but Yodel Boy, who has only been on the charts for 11 days, gets a Grammy with his death! There’s something to this YWA scheme! If you’re a young, cute white boy, it doesn’t matter whether you have talent. But what they didn’t mention is that those kids have a limited career span, too—but I guess there’s no shortage of younger and cuter boys with rich daddies to trade in your YWAs and keep the racket going.

R&B is playing a slightly different game here. What happens when you’re a washed up R&B star? You deprive people of any outside stimulation, food, and water (Dasani, you can go to hell!!) until they become so delirious that they reach the epiphany that we’re all D’Angelo. Then you got yourself a slew of BWAs (brainwashed avatars) running your underground network/only fanbase left in abandoned Rally’s restaurants, keeping D’Angelo’s music streaming one song at a time, with nothing but a  PB&FCSwLS (peanut butter and fried chicken skin with Lawry’s Seasoning) to keep you going. How many cents does D’Angelo get for each play? Gotta make that bank somehow!

I think we all can guess what happened to the white author who held the Black kid by gunpoint. No doubt she was lauded by a particular political group we’re not allowed to talk about and became even more successful and famous. Once again, the white people are rocketing to fame without any real talent, and the Black people with talent are hustling to keep their precarious position.

I can only assume the series is going to end with the end of PaperBoi’s career. I would like to think everyone moves to LA and lives happily ever after, Al being more famous than ever—maybe making those movies with Ice Cube! Earn would take that job he mentioned last week and marry Van. And Darius would be the ultimate new agey guru for the Hollywood elite! But, alas, I think this year’s theme is clearly emerging, and it’s not looking so good for PaperBoi’s career. But, I guess we still have a chance of him making it to Ice Cube fame. He succeeded with the YWA, and even though he’s not cut out to be a manager, surely he’ll get some clout having a Grammy-award winning YWA who died young; that might just catapult him to the final stage of making family comedies. 

Edited September 23, 2022 by JenE4

[marny]

I was waiting for us to find out that when the guy from the management company said he wanted him to try to sign “a D’Angelo”, he was actually referring to Robin DiAngelo, the white woman who wrote “White Fragility” and sold a bazillion copies to well-meaning white people in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. It seems unlikely he would randomly mention an outdated R&B singer out of the blue.  But they never got back to that so that’s just my assumption. 

[aghst]

I don't follow hip hop so not familiar with the things depicted on the show or what you guys are talking about.

Is that really a thing, WYA, a successful but not a superstar rapper "managing" white young rappers?  That Yodel Kid sounded like a joke.  I thought white wannabe rappers was done, with people like Vanilla Ice dismissed.

How many rappers have been able to successfully transition to movies?  Doesn't seem like there are that many.  Now, you see Snoop Dog selling beer.  Is that really a great achievement other than a big bank account?

Now Earn is working for some big PR agency with racist authors?  When did that happen, wasn't he going to go to LA?  Just in the previous episode he spent a lot of money to ruin that Karen's life but now he's got to work for a paycheck?

There doesn't seem to be a huge desire by the writers to sustain some season-long or series-long plot arcs.  They just hint at things, like before the Europe season Al was on the rise and Earn was trying to make a career out of managing Paper Boi.  In the Europe season, he's having big international tours.  This episode, Al says he's done arena tours but he's being told his career is going to come to an end unless he can latch onto a YWA.  How much time has elapsed, seems like in the space of two seasons a lot has happened.

Then they hint that Earn and Van may be back together but they don't show Lottie at all.  Maybe they didn't want to bother casting an older child actress.  Darius has mostly been in the background.  He did have one episode in the Europe season, about him trying to get into Nigerian cuisine.

Looks like there may not be a huge interest in wrapping up all the characters other than Earn and Al.  When you think about how many self-contained episodes they had in the Europe season, where it was some random characters you'd never seen before and you will never see again, seems like they weren't interested in developing the characters which the audience came to love and want to follow.

They also don't follow things like Earn being in therapy or Van spending most of the Europe season apart from the others, doing her own thing, actually falling in with cannibals was it in France?  Then she's hanging out with Earn in the first couple of episodes of this season, making you wonder if they're back together.

Atlanta never was a conventional show though, they had weird one-off episodes like Teddy Perkins sprinkled liberally throughout the run of the show.  So it hasn't been big on continuity or character development in the traditional sense.  While some of these individual episodes have been great, what is it going to be when it's done, maybe more like an anthology with some recurring characters, with some recurring themes like different episodes of racism, experiments with different styles?

[AngieBee1]

Quote

How many rappers have been able to successfully transition to movies?  Doesn't seem like there are that many.  Now, you see Snoop Dog selling beer.  Is that really a great achievement other than a big bank account?

Queen Latifah, Will Smith, Mark Wahlberg, Ludacris, Andre 3000, Common, Mos Def/Yasiin Bey. Method Man, Rza, ice Cube, Ice T, the late Tupac, then others have more minor career in film/TV like Eve, Lil Bow Wow, Sticky Fingaz, Redman, 50 Cent, Fredro Starr - so they are out there.

With Snoop, to me, the great achievement is that he's completely mainstream down to having a Christmas album and a cooking show with his pal Martha Stewart. As it is increasingly hard to make money solely by selling music, more rappers turn to other avenues and do not care if they're viewed as selling out or soft. Diddy and Jay Z have alcohol brands and 50 Cent had stock in Vitamin Water. Al/PaperBoi would surely settle for a deal like that to keep him clad in Celine.

[tljgator]

21 hours ago, aghst said:

Now Earn is working for some big PR agency with racist authors?

Yeah, I was a little confused there...he mentioned to Van that he had been offered a job, but he sounded like he'd have to move for that to happen and that he wasn't all that into it. Guess I was wrong.

I don't know enough about the music side of things to delve as deep as all the above (great info, though, from y'all!) -- I just automatically think of Dre and Eminem as the go-to example there. There are plenty of folks who have made it as actors, per the list above, and I wholeheartedly agree that Snoop is the ultimate example of mainstream acceptance. I mean, my 70-something, white mom loves her some Snoop...if you'd have told me that 30 years ago, I'd have laughed in your face (she was beside herself with glee when he was on that Property Brothers Celebrity IOU show a while back; that dude is everywhere).

I've really appreciated the return to Atlanta this season and I'm enjoying having the main cast featured in all the stories in a way they weren't last season -- appreciate it now that we're getting to the end.

[tennisgurl]

I know that this show is always weird and surreal, but Earn's situation is just confusing. Why is he working on PR for a publishing company? I know they mentioned something about Earn getting a new job, but why this one? When did that happen? 

Al has reached the point in his career when he is thinking about the future of his career as he starts to feel older, and the idea of "selling out" to keep a foot in the game is already something he's dreading. Al has always struggled with trying to stay "real" and accept his fame, so thinking about moving into the acting/sponsoring part of his career is not appealing to him. I think he could do alright, he has a charisma to him.

I was a child of the early 00s, so I mostly knew a lot of 90s rappers turned actors like Ice Cube and Snoop as actors in comedy's and kids movies, I had no idea about their earlier careers until later, I found the idea that people were ever scared of Ice Cube, the goofy dad from Are We There Yet, to be absolutely ridiculous. I would even say that rappers have a higher than average success rate when it comes to musicians transitioning into acting.

I am hoping for a Darius episode soon, I feel like he got the shaft last season. He had some good plots, especially the food one, but I think he was the person who got pushed to the side the most as the show focused on stand alone episodes. 

Edited September 27, 2022 by tennisgurl

[cmfran]

On 9/25/2022 at 4:53 AM, AngieBee1 said:

Queen Latifah, Will Smith, Mark Wahlberg, Ludacris, Andre 3000, Common, Mos Def/Yasiin Bey. Method Man, Rza, ice Cube, Ice T, the late Tupac, then others have more minor career in film/TV like Eve, Lil Bow Wow, Sticky Fingaz, Redman, 50 Cent, Fredro Starr - so they are out there.

With Snoop, to me, the great achievement is that he's completely mainstream down to having a Christmas album and a cooking show with his pal Martha Stewart. As it is increasingly hard to make money solely by selling music, more rappers turn to other avenues and do not care if they're viewed as selling out or soft. Diddy and Jay Z have alcohol brands and 50 Cent had stock in Vitamin Water. Al/PaperBoi would surely settle for a deal like that to keep him clad in Celine.

Snoop Dogg will do anything for a paycheck. My wife and I have a running joke about him being in everything these days. Advertisement for diapers? Snoop will do it. Judging a baking show? Call Snoop. I don't think he has a viable musical career at this point, so I get it. 

[xaxat]

I supposed this was a good complimentary episode to "Black Bieber". But, to paraphrase Jay Z (Roc Nation), the road to post rap career success is not to be a businessman, but a "business, man".  Dr. Dre (Beats headphones), Diddy ( Ciroc vodka), Kanye West (Yeezy shoes) are all past their music relevancy, but they are still cashing them checks.

5 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I was a child of the early 00s, so I mostly knew a lot of 90s rappers turned actors like Ice Cube and Snoop as actors in comedy's and kids movies, I had no idea about their earlier careers until later, I found the idea that people were ever scared of Ice Cube, the goofy dad from Are We There Yet, to be absolutely ridiculous.

Those days were wild! East Coast/West Coast rap wars. The killing of Biggie and Tupac. The police condemning Ice T because of the song "Cop Killer", Second Lady Tipper Gore trying to save the youth of America from explicit/violent rap and rock lyrics. . .

[JenE4]

8 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I know that this show is always weird and surreal, but Earn's situation is just confusing. Why is he working on PR for a publishing company? I know they mentioned something about Earn getting a new job, but why this one? When did that happen? 

Al has reached the point in his career when he is thinking about the future of his career as he starts to feel older, and the idea of "selling out" to keep a foot in the game is already something he's dreading. Al has always struggled with trying to stay "real" and accept his fame, so thinking about moving into the acting/sponsoring part of his career is not appealing to him. I think he could do alright, he has a charisma to him.

I was a child of the early 00s, so I mostly knew a lot of 90s rappers turned actors like Ice Cube and Snoop as actors in comedy's and kids movies, I had no idea about their earlier careers until later, I found the idea that people were ever scared of Ice Cube, the goofy dad from Are We There Yet, to be absolutely ridiculous. I would even say that rappers have a higher than average success rate when it comes to musicians transitioning into acting.

I am hoping for a Darius episode soon, I feel like he got the shaft last season. He had some good plots, especially the food one, but I think he was the person who got pushed to the side the most as the show focused on stand alone episodes. 

We did know that Earn has taken on managing other artists. Although I was under the impression that there was some type of delineation in the management business between types of entertainment/media, maybe there actually isn’t with some companies. This was a big all-hands staff meeting for his management company, and one of the authors they manage went off the rails holding that kid at gunpoint, so they were all brainstorming on what to do. Doesn’t seem feasible that they would bring in everyone over every type of industry rather than just the publishing team, but I guess it was so bad that they’ll take anyone’s ideas and that’s why it was standing room only. It’s kind of funny in comparison to see how a “real” company operates as opposed to the  actor plus Tracey that Earn hired to play a publishing manager get back at the TSA agent. That should have been another clue to us that Earn knew what he was doing to set that up. I think if the order of the episodes were reversed it would have been more obvious, since, like you said, we only thought he’s involved with music, but he at least works with people who manage authors, too.