The Pop Corporation

Whether society at large has completely had it with capitalism and global dominance or not, remains to be seen. However, there’s a number of wars on and the tech bros dominance has seen a small shift in thinking which may blossom into something broader.

On both ends of the political spectrum, it is obvious that people are looking closer to home in their interests. Libertarians want smaller government, right wingers want to look after their own, and the left are eyeing up co-operatives to take care of those in the community that need it. In Queer spaces, they’ve realised once again, that they can rely on no-one in power, so they’re taking it all in-house, and checking in on each other. Whoever you are, wherever you sit on the spectrum, there’s a noticeable attempt at people trying to create small communities.

At the top end of the food chain, Trump is sharing AI videos about turning Gaza into a Dubai-esque resort for millionaires, and the tech guys are switching between artificial intelligence and crypto scams and getting wildly rich in the process. Everyday people, are not getting rich. Look at America, for the sake of an argument, black communities are coming together to make food locally instead of relying on enormo-retail parks and counteract the food deserts, and the MAGA community are thinking about local farmers and taking care of veteran soldiers.

Luigi Mangione, you’ll note, didn’t go after a bunch of random people in the street to show his frustration in modern America.

Insurance companies are getting wealthy and ordinary folk are getting stiffed. And those with money to play with – the top end of the food chain – they’re looking for opportunities overseas, increasing retail and online spend, using people’s online data, misinformation and, in the case of Elon Musk, looking to move to Mars.

The wealthy and influential say they’re trying to advance humanity, but sooner or later, the PR spin will stall, and people are going to realise (if they haven’t started to already) it is only some people who will benefit from these moves, and the ladder will be pulled up before the majority get to use it.

What has this got to do with music and pop culture? Well, the tail end of 2024 and the start of 2025, we saw two gigantic smashes which really shook up the world of music, and both of these releases were hyper-local.

Kendrick Lamar dropped ‘GNX’, which was music that dealt with the music of where he’s from – it almost felt like it was local enough to be aimed squarely at the block he grew up on. It was LA through-and-through, and one of its foes – Drake – was the embodiment of global, almost industrial, focus group pop. Drake’s music, almost overnight, sounded out-of-step as it ticked all the boxes to be as successful as possible in as many markets as it could. Kendrick, in comparison, had a worldwide hit despite making a record seemingly for himself and his postcode.

Bad Bunny, previously hitting his marks in all world markets, looked at the global power wielded by North America, and made an album for Puerto Rico. With ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’, he made an album that was critical of the unchecked power of The States, and focused Puerto Rico’s political status, gentrification, cultural identity and infused salsa, jíbaro and plena into his modern reggaeton.

In both cases, it felt like lightning had been captured in a bottle, representing their own blocks, and sticking a thumb in the eye of all this clout chasing and focus group thinking music that was clogging up the streaming algorithms. With it, the pair had huge success, and it got us wondering if hyper-localism is something that is resonating with young people who are growing weary of all this rampant international marketeering, and whether authenticity is something that is going to carry more weight.

Culturally, we’re seeing more people opt out of big politics – not trusting any of these people, and some authenticity and grass roots stuff taking a hold. You’ll notice that small raves and DIY gigs are everywhere, but you find out about them after they’ve happened, because these are communities talking to each other first, and eschewing the broad marketing and it feels less concerned with widespread notoriety, instead, aiming for doing things for likeminded individuals.

Middle Eastern resorts and glass elevators are for the likes of DJ Khaled and contestants of The Bachelor – the kids, it seems, are hatching plans in old boozers with cheap pints, and deleting their Instagram accounts and reverting back to photocopied flyers and ‘zine culture.

Not that these global elites are going anywhere, and corporate events are vanishing any time soon – but keep an eye on the amount of corporate sponsored shows and festivals shutting up shop, while young people rediscover their love of ad-hoc events and shows without the need for a big name headliner.

In recent years, everyone has been hoovering up hyper-local meme accounts – ones that are based around local music scenes, down to specific areas of the city they live in – instead of following the big ticket paid-for review accounts who only shout about a local bar opening when there’s a fee involved. The taste-makers, scene starters and the like, have been turning inward, and if politics have taught us anything in recent years, it is a thing that can’t be reasoned with, and something that won’t stop. Influencers will still be around, but are people already turning away from the broad influencer market and looking toward more local ones?

You can see it in the ailing mainstream media. Subscription fatigue means that people are just flat out stealing content, and if piracy gets stomped on and stops being a thing, the kids will shrug and find something else to watch. There’s no brand loyalty to Netflix, Amazon, or anyone else. Spotify is a little more complicated, but there’s a growing dissatisfaction with music streaming services, which may come from artists before the consumer, but it certainly feels like we’re exiting one phone dependant period, into something else. TV news is not to be trusted and the daily papers are out of touch.

The cultural dominance of Old Media are riddled with outdated notions, and the internet has learned to exploit the weaknesses in it. The media class news rooms feel out of touch and worse, riddled with agendas. The opinion piece writers all live in wildly expensive cities, and write about things that most people don’t care about, offering dinner party witticisms about Netflix shows no-one has seen in the first place.

And now, the internet has been dived on by Old Media, and culture is learning to mistrust that too, thanks to tech bros leaning hard into a political sphere which was long not-trusted. The algorithm is fucked, and the place which was once about our collective interests is now skewed toward those with the biggest marketing budgets, and it is boring.

It is little wonder that the more esoteric fringes and aesthetics are sticking ever closer together, whether they’re into some wilfully obscure music scene, or whether they’re all identifying as alpha males who listen to misogynistic podcasts claiming to just ask the questions.

Where once, the widest relevance was once de rigueur, and now, it seems quaint at best, and at its worst, grossly decadent in the middle of so many people struggling financially. Even down to clothing, it seems like people are no longer looking at brands with universal appeal, but instead, something that speaks to those locally, or their own niche.

Post pandemic, it feels like the monoculture has really started to die, and the lockdowns which once saw everyone rely on online communities and communications, has seen everyone grow weary of the constant deluge of information, good and bad. People forgot how to interact with each other, and now, in 2025, there’s a sense that our communities were there all along, and we’re tentatively working out how to rely on those nearest to us, once again.

A few years ago, things trended like Squid Game and Marvel movies – now, those things are still popular, but they no longer have the same hold over anyone, and nothing has come along to replace them. What’s a new phenomenon? The fact there isn’t one isn’t a cause for concern – rather, everyone wants to be part of a group, it’s just that those groups got smaller.

The institutions look like they’re on shaky ground, but people’s interest in making things, ingesting things, isn’t. People’s trust in big political movements feel like they’re at a low, but people’s interest in what they think is right still exists. And… on and on and on…

They not like us…