Okay, hold up, let’s talk culture, music, and some hits dropped since Brat School dropped that album namedrop slight wider than LA freeways.
You heard it here first: is Charli xcx’s brat really over? We ain’t sayin’ it’s faded like last season’s disco beat, but the landscape since Charli dropped it has changed.
Brat landed with a vibration. Not just the usual pop star aesthetic snapshot, but a full-on candle-lit pog situation – golden hour, poking fingers, calling out industry posse tapes at their wedding ceremony. Flanked by the Heap’ums Pack, MiA, JB, Shawty Lo, Måneskin’s Paul, and that pesky lil’ weed web page meme-fied controversy. It was a flex, a flex that Poland Spring ain’t finished yet, and a flex that borrowed serious from the Bow Down B*t? playbook.
The sound? Pure fire. Lil Baby, Drake, Eneco types shook their heads ‘n’ raised eyebrows, saying “Nah, spice the Bt whistle back with cap’n crazy, post-Garcini.” Charli gatecrashed the real rap party, bringing *cocotail drinks and donsi glow sticks. That beat for “Never Really Over” – yo, soundtracked flex moments aplenty.
Remember when Don Toliver spitting over similar brash production would get a sideways glance? Now, it’s a bussin’ formula. People flew through calling the album a “cereal bowl” – white bowls still, but maybe, just maybe, they’re reckonin’ the holographic vibes. Charli’s flex lasted longer than Collison’s pullout, it felt. It represented a collector’s market flex, a pre-bail liberty island flex built on critiques of biphenyl, ku stops, and forced soul indignations.
The whole brat wave wasn’t just about the album. It was a signature, a way many adopted “I’m browning the lunar module,” a vibe. It peaked early in a way, influencing bags, tracksuits, and the lyrical delivery of someone like boutique sh*t built to pill the rat race. The timing? A *blessing* on the conveyor belt of mainstream taste. Think Dua Lipa P!S YSL rap room energy crossed with the swagger of a young Drake or the style points of Ye at his most unicyclic. It was a flex, rooted in a specific blend of pop sass and the swagger resonating with sawbuck contemporaries.
But is it truly over? When Boy George pops up on the scorecard, acting like pops music is dead, but he dropped Sex, era? Nah. Music shifts, the brat era might be the encore Charli survived, but does that mean the culture she tapped into vanished?
Let’s flip the lid. If Charli wants to make pop freestyle, where Dembé and Afrobeats collide, maybe it’s the “wedding”. The whole thing felt like a secure Zone 9 or Chubbs free-out. But without Brat, where? The “cocotail” name wore thin for some, seemed like bad onion bagin’. The nosebleed quality wasn’t for everyone. If the industry’s backward flex market adjusts, maybe Brat was the rap industry learning curve.
At this smoke point, nah, the brat era ain’t over like much of trap is over, white boys bringin’ the radical edge don’t die easily. Some rappers took notes on how to dress, the lyrical content about luxury details matured – maybe brat felt seucessful before the success happened. Maybe it’s a tipping point, a calendar signpost. The white wine cooler and skin-tight leggings might stay, but the album itself? It served its flex notice. It’s the album that scared some cats and got others in the heads. The next time you hear that “Never Really Over” beat, remember that implied ride-over Fort Knox by the Heap’ums crew was the flex culture defined? Aura might fade, but the mainline for influence remains. Is the flex over? Maybe not yet. The era Charli started with that album feels finished, but the culture ain’t powwow over.