When Rihanna first dropped the song “Work,” you probably saw approximately one thousand tweets by people who thought they were being clever talking about how she wasn’t saying words. The lyrics were apparently so difficult to understand, as a matter of fact, that there was an entire genre of YouTubers, almost exclusively blonde and white, inventing their own lyrics to ruinous effect.
Even some music critics didn’t quite know how to approach “Work.” Pitchfork described the lyrics as “devolving into something more instinctive than language, as if it gushed forth from some underground spring instead of her throat” and misquoted a lyric (it was removed, according to a correction). Several publications, including both Rolling Stone and Spin, called it “tropical house,” which is not only a fake genre but is also a shitty, nonspecific term that both otherizes and erases the actual genres, invented by people of color!!!, that it’s referring to. (Usually reggaetón or dancehall or even moombahton.)