One of our absolute favourite features last year (included of course on our Best of 2019 playlist) was when trap-rap-pop streaming-record-shatterer Post Malone featured an artist, new to many when it came out, Ozzy Osbourne, on his track Take What You Want from his third studio album Hollywood's Bleeding.

From Rock Feed's YouTube video: "These Post Malone Fans Think Ozzy Osbourne Is A New Pop Singer".

Post Malone is perhaps most noted to have become incredibly successful incredibly quickly (he was born in 1995). Many attribute a part of his success to streamlining what 'a normal song-structure' is in the era of playlists with amazing results. What he does is he opens on the chorus and keeps the songs short, the melody accessible which is in line with his general appearance which is perhaps a bit... disheveled? In other words, it's #relatable and #singalongable.

His formula that "he wears on his sleeve" on making his songs so goddamn catchy seems to be working rather well as four of his songs have over a billion streams on Spotify alone. Further, he's able to dance the line between pop and hip-hop even to alternative in a way that gets him plays on all of those radio stations. Talk about a cross-over.

This live performance of rcokstar (one of the four in the over a billion streams club, also nominated for a Grammy) is a brilliant illustration of this. See how within 2 seconds you know what song it is. There's no Queen-style super long build-y intros and performative drama, he gets straight to the point and his voice is at a register where it's impossible not to sing along, shout along, jump along. Which is exactly what the 20,000 people attending his show at the Tacoma Dome in Seattle can be seen doing in the video.

Point being, the man has some clout. If we take a queue from a recent headline "The Post Malone concert in Hershey, explained for Baby Boomers" his main audience seems to be the younger generation, Gen Z as they call it now. This article from QZ actually has some data to back up that Post Malone has almost no name recognition with older generations at all, just none.

So apparently it was Post Malone who has admired Ozzy Osbourne his entire life and asked him to be on his track. Ozzy had never heard of him at that point but still agreed. And he claims that being on this track with Posty (as he's endearingly known by his fans) got him back in the game, and his new album Ordinary Man just came out. And in a pleasing symmetry it includes a track featuring who, but our good friend Posty. And it is also a banger.

One would think that hip-hop and metal are two wildly different genres of music, but they maybe aren't. Both appreciate a good shock-factor, a good loud live show (which we love), and a certain irreverence to the mainstream and just fully letting go and you know, jumping around in mosh-pits etc.

We'll definitely keep you posted on when that Ozzy tour gets announced, and we hope it's being planned at this very moment. In the meantime, Post Malone is on tour, one that might not just appeal to the youngsters.

It's hard not to be moved by the story of the young and the old and how the collaboration is bringing each to new heights.