If you’ve logged onto TikTok — or heck, even Instagram at this point — in the past couple of months, you have probably encountered a song called “Billie Eilish” by now. If not, you definitely will now.
If you’re of a certain age, this song probably infuriates you, because, for the most part, its beat is almost a direct lift of NORE‘s 2002 God’s Favorite single “Nothin’,” which is still the Queens native’s biggest solo hit. It starts with the Neptunes-produced instrumental, but very quickly, a completely different voice replaces NORE’s: that of emerging Philadelphia star Armani White, who comes in with his now-inescapable hook.
“Bitch, I’m stylish
Glock tucked, big t-shirt — Billie Eilish”
It’s sort of a clever pull, drawing from the cultural ubiquity of the “Happier Than Ever” singer and combining it with the blog-era penchant for naming hip-hop songs after white pop stars (see: Lil B’s “I’m Miley Cyrus” and Migos’ “Hannah Montana”), along with a dose of millennial nostalgia. The punchline injects street-bred menace into Billie’s understandable preference for baggy clothes, while the beat invokes the tall tee era when such a uniform would have been less of a fashion statement and more of a necessity (it was a strange time).
But what, exactly, does Billie Eilish herself make of all this? Well, while she hasn’t exactly vocally co-signed the song, she has been known to share some of the clips using it from TikTok on her own social media.
Also, as Armani revealed in a recent interview with HipHopNMore, Billie sharing the song might well have been the catalyst that helped get the song cleared so he could start generating some revenue with the track. While trying to clear the sample and the usage of Billie’s name as the title, he says, once she shared it, “They released the claim right after that.”
Since then, Armani signed with Def Jam, got NORE’s co-sign in a performance of the song for the BET Hip-Hop Awards, and has begun planning the follow-up to his single’s success.