April Fools, everybody. Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where we completely over-analyze all of your favorite pop stars and then rank them in the official Pop-Pantheon. I'm your host, DJ Louis the 14th. This is a surprise

April Fool's episode. Many people have complained to me over and over again that in now,

what, 30 plus episodes of the show, we have yet to feature a tier five artist. And I've been thinking

to myself, many of the tier five artists,

you know, do they have enough material for a full episode? How do we actually make that work?

And at the same time, I felt like we have to feature artists that are in tier five.

We can't have had this podcast going on for this long without having a tier five artist.

So I know many people are

fascinated by the very glacially unfurling career of former Fifth Harmony member Normani. And so I figured

I'd surprise you guys with a special episode. This is a lighthearted deep dive into the 5, 6, 7, depending on how you count them,

song career of Normani.

I want to lead off by saying, I'm a fan.

I think she's an incredibly talented artist.

And I also want to acknowledge very quickly up top that I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a woman and a black woman working in the music industry, in the pop music industry.

Of course, pop music history is littered with stories of black female artists with great talent who have been thwarted for one reason or another,

usually by the powers that be. I'm thinking Tierra Marie, A. Marie, Tanishay. I mean, the list just

goes on and on. So I totally respect her on so many levels. This conversation is really an

attempt on my part to understand what I feel like have

been some pretty strange choices that I feel like have been made either by her or the powers

that be. I'm not clear on any of that. And to sort of try to figure out if she can pull it off at

this point after about four years of fall starts and a very scant amount of music.

So I hope you guys enjoy this.

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