At the time we wrote this Editors' Note, Lil Nas X's “Old Town Road” was in its record-setting nineteenth straight week atop the Billboard Hot 100. This song's unprecedented success was made possible, at least in part, by Lil Nas X's mastery of memes and video-based social media. Wayne Marshall talks about this new dimension of popular music's social media ecology in his contribution to this issue's Amplifier section. Studying the circulation of black social dances, such as the Floss and the Milly Rock, on the massively popular interactive online game Fortnite, Marshall raises several concerns about the meme-like circulation of black dance on social media, such as cultural appropriation, digital blackface, and the use of dance-memes in gamergate-style bullying but ultimately remains optimistic about the promise of this evolving dimension of popular musical culture. Amplifier's artist feature focuses on Korean hip hop. Myoung-Sun Song leads a roundtable with Korean...
University of California Press