Diss Track: Linkin Park feat. Kiiara, Desiigner, Carly Rae Jepsen & Lil Yachty

In this segment, our writers turn a pen against the music industry’s worst penned offerings. No song is safe from being taken down in Diss Track.

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Linkin Park (feat. Kiiara)
“Heavy”

Kiiara
“Heavy (A song written by Linkin Park)”

Whenever two high profile artists collaborate on a project, one of two things happen: it’s a successful collaboration that shows off both artists’ strengths separately and how they complement each other together; or one artist takes centre stage while the other gets piss drunk back stage and attempts to play one of their own songs in Rock Band 2 only to find that they can’t match the vocals anymore and pass out due to frustration.

“Heavy” has somehow landed itself in a new category altogether. It neutralized the things that made either artist interesting and has become what sounds like the quintessential G.I. pop song of 2017.

Linkin Park is most famous for their work in the early 2000’s back when they were a hip-hop/rock band of sorts (aka part of the beloved genre of nu-metal), and Kiiara is also famous, uh, for some reason? Are they objectively talented musicians? Sure. Are they objectively good composers and lyricists? Umm… pass. Did they just waste two minutes and forty-nine seconds of your life? Without a fucking doubt.

This song is intended to promote Linkin Park’s upcoming album, One More Light, which feels like a very apt title given that if Linkin Park continues their current trajectory they will likely only get One More Album.

Idk, maybe this version of “Heavy,” done in the old, nu-metal style, is more your early 2000s cup of tea.

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Desiigner
“Outlet”

I suspect that this song was created as a response to the question, “Hey Desiigner, what’s your next song going to be about?” and Desiigner’s ADHD kicked in while he frantically looked around the room for inspiration before eventually settling on a power outlet he saw in the corner.

I had a hard time figuring out what exactly this song was supposed to be about. The lyrics are hard to hear due to the industry-standard level of voice synthesizing, and even harder to read. Here are some alleged “lyrics”:

That’s that guy snake

Watch out for that guy snake

Big bullets with the U-Haul truck

So we move his ass ’round my place

Move his ass over there and over there

Take his ass around (THLLLLLAH)

This feels like I’m reading Shakespeare for eleventh grade English class all over again. Because the words look like English but they make about as much sense as a Muslim Trump supporter. I look forward to being berated in the future for my ignorant interpretation of these lyrics. I’ll be told “You missed all of the deep underlying meaning and metaphors you naïve twat…” and then they’ll explain to me what exactly all the deep meanings behind the word (sound? exclamation?) ‘THLLLLLAH‘ are.

And you know what? It annoyed me when people kept insisting that there was some deep meaning to Shakespeare as well. Well, I’m sure there is, but you can also express these meanings in FUCKING ENGLISH!

Oh well, some things never change. In the meantime…

THLLLLLAH!

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Carly Rae Jepsen & Lil Yachty
“It Takes Two” (Prod. Mike WiLL Made-It)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePHqiWj7BCA

I could probably just say that this song was published via the Target YouTube account and that would be a sufficiently crippling diss for this commercial pretending to be a song.

But no, this abomination is the worthiest candidate we’ve ever had on Diss Track, and it deserves to be thrown into a pit of carnivorous leprechauns, forced to watch its own dumb music video for 48 hours with its eyelids peeled back, and then write a STAT 151 midterm on only three hours of sleep.

This song is a joke. That’s not a hyperbole. It’s meant to be painfully bad, sort of like Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” or the DC Cinematic Universe. It’s what happens when people realize they aren’t talented enough to make anything good, so instead they make it so bad that it goes viral just because of how fucking bad it is.

I can only hope discount Katy Perry and Lil Tug Boat were able to secure big paycheques for this song because it looks like they’ll have to live off of it for a while since this will definitely be a silver bullet to their music careers.

The good news is that they can always shop at Target to save money when money gets tight for them. Oh the irony.

Target: Expect More. Pay Less.

But not in Canada.