Is Kim Petras a Hyperpop? Why ‘Slut Pop’ Is A Highly-Sexualized Romp?

Who is Kim Petras

Kim Petras is a German singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles. she released music as an independent artist under her own imprint, BunHead Records.

Petras began recording music as a teenager, releasing her debut extended play One Piece of Tape in 2011. She independently released her debut single in 2017, “I Don’t Want It at All”, which went on to top several viral music charts on Spotify.
The song was followed by Billboard-charting singles “Feeling of Falling” (with Cheat Codes), “Heart to Break”, and “1, 2, 3 Dayz Up” (featuring Sophie).

What is Hyperpop?

Hyperpop (digicore) is a loosely-defined music movement and microgenre, characterized by a maximalist or exaggerated take on popular music.

Artists tagged with the label typically integrate pop and avant-garde sensibilities, drawing on tropes from electronic, hip hop, and dance music.

The movement is often linked to LGBTQ+ online communities and many key figures identify as transgender, non-binary, or gay. “Digicore” is sometimes used to describe an underground experimental hip-hop movement stemming from the music streaming platform SoundCloud that is often conflated with “hyperpop” due to its overlapping artists.

Deriving influence from a varied range of sources, the development of hyperpop solidified into a recognizable style in connection with the mid-2010s output of A. G. Cook and affiliates of his PC Music collective, including Sophie and Charli XCX.

Music associated with this scene received wider attention in August 2019 when Spotify renamed an existing playlist featuring artists such as Cook and 100 Gecs to “hyperpop”.

The genre spread within younger audiences through social media platforms such as TikTok.

Kim Petras’ New Valentine’s Day EP ‘Slut Pop’ Is A Highly-Sexualized Romp

Nobody loves a holiday release more than Kim Petras. The pop star is infamous for her Halloween projects, but this year, she decided to be sweet and drop a little something for Valentine’s Day.

Her new EP, Slut Pop, is heralded as a “sex-positive” release and dropped in full tonight. Packed with gems such as “Treat Me Like A Slut, the title track “Slut Pop,” “XXX” and “Throat Goat” — which sounds like a Slayyyter song tbh — this new material is definitely in line with her latest single, “Coconuts,” which is, uh, not about fruit.

Kim Petras – Slut Pop (Official Visualizer)

The official “Slut Pop” audio by Kim Petras.

Slut Pop

Slut Pop is the fourth extended play by German singer Kim Petras. It was released on 11 February 2022 through Republic Records, her debut on the label. In the weeks leading up to it, Petras posted videos teasing the songs on social media.

Slut Pop track listing

Slut Pop
Treat Me Like a Slut
XXX
Superpower Bitch
Throat Goat
They Wanna Fuck
Your Wish Is My Command

Kim Petras Drops New EP Slut Pop: Stream

Kim Petras’ NSFW era starts now. At the stroke of midnight, the rising star released her new EP Slut Pop via Republic Records just in time for Valentine’s Day. Stream it below.

While the German pop princess’ latest single “Coconuts” merely flirted with the explicit thanks to a number of coy and clever double entendres, she goes full frontal (musically speaking, of course) on the new seven-track project with songs like “Treat Me Like a Slut,” “XXX,” “Throat Goat,” and “They Wanna Fuck.”

In a statement released, the trans icon revealed the inspiration for the unabashedly sex-positive EP came from the sex worker community and the way they are all too often stigmatized and shamed by polite society. Interestingly, though, “Hit It From the Back” — a snippet of which Petras debuted live during her performance at the 2021 MTV Europe Music Awards in Budapest, Hungary alongside “Coconuts” — is strangely absent from the tracklist despite being a rather perfect thematic fit.

Slut Pop and third studio album

On 6 November 2020, Petras was featured on K/DA’s EP All Out, appearing on the song “Villain” alongside Madison Beer, which charted in New Zealand and on the US World Songs chart.

In 2021, Petras was featured on remixes of several songs made popular on TikTok, including “Jenny” with Studio Killers, and “SugarCrash!” by ElyOtto and Curtis Waters.

Additionally, her 2017 song “Unlock It” with Charli XCX and Jay Park went viral on the app. Petras has additionally announced Turn Off the Light, Vol. 3 will be released sometime in 2021.

In August 2021, Petras signed to Republic Records and released “Future Starts Now” as the lead single from her upcoming major-label debut studio album.

Petras performed the song at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards pre-show on 12 September 2021, as the first out trans artist to perform at the VMAs.

In November 2021, she performed two more singles from the forthcoming album — ”Coconuts” and “Hit It from the Back” — when she appeared at the 2021 MTV Europe Music Awards, becoming the first out trans artist to perform at the EMAs, a show that MTV had deliberated hosted in Budapest, as “an opportunity to stand in solidarity” in protest against the Hungarian anti-LGBT law; likewise Petras’s performance was intentionally raunchy and “sex positive” and spoke out to say “It’s going to be pretty powerful to be in Hungary and perform the show when these laws have just happened”.

Petras also performed at the 2021 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, becoming the first out trans performer to do so. She was featured in the 2021 holiday film The Bitch Who Stole Christmas.

On 3 December 2021, after overwhelming fan response on TikTok, Petras released Coconuts, doing so around a month earlier than scheduled.

Is Kim Petras a Hyperpop?

In August 2019, Spotify launched the “Hyperpop” playlist which further cemented the genre, and featured guest curation from 100 Gecs and others.

Other artists featured on the playlist included Cook, Slayyyter, Gupi, Caroline Polachek, Hannah Diamond, and Kim Petras.

Spotify editor Lizzy Szabo and her colleagues landed on the name for their August 2019 playlist after McDonald noted the term in the website’s metadata and classified it as a microgenre. In November, Cook added artists such as J Dilla and Kate Bush to the playlist, which added confusion to the genre’s scope.

The genre began to see rise in popularity in 2020, with the prominence of the Spotify playlist and its spread within younger audiences on social media, such as on TikTok.

Hyperpop albums like Charli XCX’s How I’m Feeling Now (2020) and A. G. Cook’s Apple (2020) appeared on critic’s 2020 end-of-year lists.

Internationally, hyperpop gained notoriety in Australia, China and Hispanic countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain, with Spanish-speaking artists and producers delving into the microgenre. Nylon’s Ben Jolley cited Putochinomaricón as one of the “biggest names in the scene.”

In mid-late 2020, the social media platform TikTok saw a rise in the popularity of hyperpop songs, mainly being used on the ‘Alt’ side of TikTok, also called ‘Alt TikTok’.

Why do people listen to hyperpop?

hyperpop lets creators reshape their songs to have whatever sound they want, with absolutely no limits, pushing the underutilized third dimension of music, timbre, to the limit. And when something new happens in music, even if it doesn’t have immediate mass appeal, the effects will eventually ripple out.

Why you should be listening to hyperpop

When I started the first track of 100 gecs’ first album 1000 gecs, I thought the entire band had to be a joke. The music was distorted to the point of destruction, and all of the vocals were autotuned to near-incomprehensibility.

It was the most maximalist music I’d ever heard, and I couldn’t believe anyone could find it even moderately listenable. There was absolutely no way that this album could be anything but satire.

And yet, as I progressed from track to track, the song transitions punctuated with wailing sirens and staticky noise, I found myself oddly addicted to the chaos.

Even if I couldn’t quite wrap my head around why, something was strangely compelling about this ridiculous album; I found myself starting the album over when it finished, and then again after the second play. By the time the third repeat finished, only about an hour total of listening, I felt like I had seen the future of music – and was completely converted.

How did Kim Petras get famous?

In 2016, we saw the swift rise of pop singer Kim Petras, whose debut single “I Don’t Want It At All” became a viral sensation, with a sugar-drenched pop chorus paired with a music video cameo from Paris Hilton.

What are Kim Petras fans called?

For anyone confused as to why the singer referred to her fans as French loaves of bread, the video offered (some) clarity. In the clip, Petras is seen wearing a sheer black, open-chest bolero top, kneeling on a bed and surrounded by baguettes.

Is hyperpop a real genre?

To put it simply, hyperpop is a genre that was born from the internet. This is reinforced by all aspects of its conception, from its name arising from the title of a Spotify playlist, to its meme-y internet notalgia-laced lyrics and sound clips which fits right into its current resurgence.