Weekly Billboard Theory — Nice For What
I have some friends that are already declaring “Nice For What” as the song of the summer even though it’s still April. Are they right? Probably not but Drake’s newest number one is a very interesting song to top the charts.
Drake
Key: F Minor
Tempo: 94 BPM
Drake released his “playlist” More Life a little over a year ago. Plenty of people speculated what he meant by the term “playlist’ but I had always felt that the transitions between songs made the album feel like a live DJ set. Why am I bringing this up now? “Nice For What” begins with Big Freedia introducing the song as if during a bounce concert. The live performance feel cannot be denied. “Nice For What” consists of a four measure loop that originates from a Lauryn Hill song (more on this later) but we don’t get to that actual beat until about 0:15 seconds. All of the bass frequencies have been filtered away. “Uh-oh. You hate that,” you assume. Normally, you’d be correct. However, because “Nice For What” has a DJ’d feel I think I’m alright with a few imperfections. Eventually, we hear some bass but these are probably some of the lowest frequencies we’ve experienced since I started doing these weekly write-ups.
Let’s fast-forward to the last minute of the song, starting at 2:30. I’ll be forward in admitting that I know next to nothing about bounce music but this ending seems to match up with the limited understanding that I have. The chopped-up rhythms and additional samples add to the live DJ vibe that I keep coming back referencing. Because of this, “Nice For What” is perfect for radio and club mixes. The downside to this energy is that Drake presents us with a little more than two minutes of content before the bounce section. Is that enough for a song to dominate the summer? Probably not, but I guess we’ll find out!
You didn’t come here just for projections though. You came here for That Good You Need™. And that means we’re talking about some harmony, baybay! I’m going to be using triads to demonstrate these chords so we don’t have to worry about extensions and fancy business. I had previously mentioned that “Nice For What” samples a Lauryn Hill song. We’ll look at that song, “Ex Factor”, and go over how the sample is transformed into something new!
“V, IV, vi, and I. We see those all the time” Look a little bit closer. We see those chords all the time in a MAJOR key. Notice that all of the tonalities are switched because these songs take place in MINOR. If we were to think of this as being in the relative major (Gb major) then the progression would be iii-ii-IV-vi. So yeah, this is actually a pretty new chord progression that we’re looking at. These chords are nothing unusual in the R&B world but it’s always a treat when we get to look at stuff like this in the number one song.
But why are we just focusing on “Ex Factor”’s sample if it’s lifted directly into “Nice For What”? Because a small change in “More Life” alters the original progression. If you listen to the two pieces you can immediately tell that the sample has been altered. For a little more info on how this is done, check out this video. However, I’m not talking about transposition. I’m talking about how a chord converts when the bass frequencies finally enter at 1:06.
If it weren’t for those bass notes then the sample would simply be transposed and I’d have to find something else to write about. Fortunately, the bass does not follow the sample and we get some new harmonic ideas. Even if you can’t read music you should be able to see that we are in a different key as there are less b’s (flats) on the left side of the image. But what do those question marks mean? Well, we can analyze this chord a couple of different ways. My initial reaction is to label the chord as an extended ii chord but there’s a small hiccup here. The chord associated with the second scale degree in a minor key is diminished, neither major OR minor. An oversimplified way to think of this is that chord is extra minor but I’m cringing as I type that so I’ll try and go into more detail.
A major chord consists of a root note followed by a note that is a major third above. Then we add the third note, a perfect fifth above that root. A minor chord? Root, minor third above and then that perfect fifth. Now, a diminished chord also begins with a root and a minor third. But instead of that perfect fifth above the root, we lower it by one half-step. We don’t have “minor fifths” so we call this a diminished fifth. Look below to see the three chord variations and this will hopefully clear stuff up.
Another issue is that we use a small circle to signify a diminished chord but I don’t think Medium will allow me to do so. Whatevs. Back on topic! One way to analyze this chord is to think of it as a diminished ii chord. This would be ~very rare~ because we usually only see diminished ii chords leading us to a cadence that would create a ii-V-i progression. That’s not the case here. We could say it’s a iv chord with a sixth in the bass. Yeah, that’s also super weird. Personally, I would probably go the ii route but tbh none of this is THAT important. All I’m trying to say is that this small change created a big hiccup in analyzing this song. Is it a good or a bad thing? Who’s to say. But it IS a thing and that thing IS interesting and THAT is what’s important. Is that thing enough to make “Nice For What” the song of the summer? I guess we’ll find out (but probably not)!
Hey, guess what I have some recommended listening for this week! Check out Big Freedia’s “Rent”. She adds a lot to the feel of “Nice For What” and I’m shocked to see that her most recent single only has 150k plays on Spotify.
It’s pretty wild that Drake still has the number one AND number two songs on the carts. It’s also pretty wild that a country song is at number three. 2018 is wild. This year seems to belong to Cardi B so it’s no surprise that I’ll be writing about “I Like It” by Cardi, Bad Bunny and J Balvin. Will it compare to her previous efforts? Only one way to find out! Next week!
