Monday Roundup Mix

featuring Maude Latour, Hope Tala, MJ Lenderman, and more!

Hi, happy Monday!

Over this past week, I spent more time than I’d like to admit wrapped up in Bama RushTok. Up to this point, I actively avoided all things Bama RushTok, the popular social media content surrounding sorority rush at the University of Alabama (and now, sorority rush in general). I was in a sorority at a small, Southern liberal arts school where roughly 60% of women on campus were involved in Greek life. While I had a generally positive experience once inside, rush was one of the most demoralizing weeks of my entire life. I do not look back on that experience of being judged and disappointed with any sense of fondness. Therefore, rush-related social media content is typically not of interest to me (also I am long out of college, so I have absolutely no stake in the game). This year, however, I reluctantly dipped a toe in the content because

Anne Helen Petersen

did some incredible reporting about rush and Greek life at Alabama in her newsletter,

Culture Study

. Highly recommend her series, Bama Confidential, if you are interested in niche subcultures, secret societies, and the fact that Greek Life stayed segregated at Alabama until 2013…!!!

In this past week of engaging with rush content, I have thought more about my own time in a sorority than I have since I was actually in the sorority. All my reminiscing lead me to search for a YouTube video I haven’t watched in nearly a decade - The Kappa Rap.

In 2011, a group of Kappa Kappa Gammas at Baylor University uploaded the music video for this song to YouTube. They made this video for rush, meaning it is probably the earliest example of rush content going viral. In the 2010s (and seemingly to this day), the song was a staple for Kappa chapters around the country, including my own. I cannot think of a Kappa-related event at which we did not play this song. This thing is earworm-y as hell and I still have every lyric seared into my brain. It is an unbelievable time capsule of 2010/2011, from the “rapping” to the swoopy bangs, and I cannot get it out of my head (“cute and intellectualll, these girls are exceptionalll” has been playing on a near constant loop since I re-watched this video last week).

In an attempt to drown out the sweet, autotuned sounds of The Kappa Rap, I’ve been listening to new albums from Charly Bliss, Maude Latour, Tinashe, Jack White, and beabadoobee, as well as new tracks from Lisa & Rosalia, Soccer Mommy, Hope Tala, Hozier, and more!

Would love to know what you’re listening to! Would love to know if The Kappa Rap is also stuck in your head?!

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