Does Fetty Wap Suck?

I was at a party the other day, mingling with a few folks, when a Fetty Wap song came on.

It wasn’t “Trap Queen,” but the other one. You know it. You’ve heard it at a party, on the radio, blasting from a car or at the very least in someone’s silly Vine video.

This one. “My Way.”

Just then, chatting amongst ourselves, a rogue partygoer walked up and flatly asked:

“Do you like this song? Do you like Fetty Wap?”

The people in our group shook their heads inconclusively, as if to suggest that despite Mr. Wap’s enduring popularity and the fact that his first album debuted at #1 back in October, they’d never really thought very long or hard about the important questions surrounding what Fetty Wap means.

At which point, the affable chap went ahead and answered his own questions.

“I think this song sucks. Fetty Wap sucks. This shit is terrible. Fetty Wap is terrible. The shit sounds like noise. He can’t sing. He’s trash.”

I thought about what he was saying for a second, as I think about what all people say for a second, no matter how ridiculous or smart they might sound. And then replied:

“Well, yes, you may be right. That doesn’t mean what he’s doing isn’t good though. Or that people don’t enjoy his songs precisely because they are, in fact, trash. That they’re so fucking horrible, that might be their appeal.”

The gentleman saw where I was coming from, how I was arguing that the novelty of Fetty Wap was how uniquely untalented he is. But he didn’t really get it. He was hung up on just how bad Fetty Wap sounds.

“He’s just bad. Listen to him — he just doesn’t sound good.”

I replied:

“Good is a relative term. Your good is someone else’s bad. And vice versa. I know what it is — you’re too hung up on technicality. You’re listening to him and judging based on expertise, what you might call skill, when instead, you should be listening based on how Fetty Wap makes you feel.”

He nodded. He was starting to agree with me, or at least pretend to, so I’d shut the fuck up while he took a flamethrower to the rack of Fetty Wap CD’s at Best Buy. I continued:

“The kind of music Fetty Wap makes, the kind of music a lot of people make nowadays, it’s not grounded or couched in any preconceived thought or even what you might call formal training.”

I said this not having any prior knowledge as to whether Fetty Wap might, in fact, have received some sort of formal training. If he’s formally-trained and still sounds like he does, well then, shit, I don’t know what to say. My bad, I guess.

And yet I still felt like Fetty Wap was getting shortchanged here. That I wasn’t accurately describing why someone might actually find him appealing. So on I went:

“Look, just listen to him. His voice may not be the best, and what he’s saying may be very simple, but it’s in how he’s expressing it — the delivery — that’s what makes people like him. He’s not an opera singer. And he’s not trying to be. He sings what he feels. People don’t want to think. They want to feel. Good or bad, that’s why he’s so popular.”

This patient man, this nice man, this man with the existential Fetty Wap questions, heard me out. He listened to my Fetty Wap soliloquy. Thought long. Thought hard. A whole five seconds passed. And then he said:

“Yeah, that’s cool and all. But umm, yeah, Fetty Wap sucks.”

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