Hotline Bling

"Hotline Bling" is a song by Canadian rapper Drake. It was released as a single on July 31, 2015, the same day that several diss tracks aimed at fellow rapper Meek Mill surfaced on the Internet.

The song received praise and criticism from music reviewers, praising the song for its presentation of Drake's emotional side on the track as well as its production, while others were critical of its lyrical content, considering it sexist. A Director X–directed music video for the song was also released, receiving positive reviews from critics. It subsequently gained popularity on YouTube and spawned several parodies of it. It has been included on numerous year-end critics' polls. "Hotline Bling" received commercial success worldwide, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Drake's highest-charting single in the United States (tying with "Best I Ever Had" in 2009). It also reached number three in Drake's native Canada and the United Kingdom, where it became his highest-charting single as a lead artist. A spanish version by reggaeton and R&B singer Randy was released on February 2016.

Hotline

A hotline is a point-to-point communications link in which a call is automatically directed to the preselected destination without any additional action by the user when the end instrument goes off-hook. An example would be a phone that automatically connects to emergency services on picking up the receiver. Therefore, dedicated hotline phones do not need a rotary dial or keypad. A hotline can also be called an automatic signaling, ringdown, or off-hook service.

For crises and service

True hotlines cannot be used to originate calls other than to preselected destinations. However, in common or colloquial usage, a "hotline" often refers to a call center reachable by dialing a standard telephone number, or sometimes the phone numbers themselves.

This is especially the case with 24-hour, noncommercial numbers, such as police tip hotlines or suicide crisis hotlines, which are manned around the clock and thereby give the appearance of real hotlines. Increasingly, however, the term is found being applied to any customer service telephone number.

Bling-bling

Bling (or bling-bling) is a slang term popularized in hip hop culture, referring to flashy, ostentatious, or elaborate jewelry and ornamented accessories that are carried, worn, or installed, such as cell phones or tooth caps. The term was first used in rap by Jay Z and Jermaine Dupri on "Money Ain't a Thing" in 1998, but made popular by Cash Money Millionaires in the song "Bling Bling" in 1999.

Origins and popularization of the term

In linguistics terms, bling is either an ideophone or an onomatopoeia, depending on the definition adhered to. The term is intended to evoke the "sound" of light hitting something shiny, especially valuables like silver, platinum, or diamonds. The form bling-bling is a case of reduplication.

During the mid- to late 1960s, toothpaste maker Ultra Brite ran a series of commercials stating, "Ultrabrite gives your mouth...[ping]...sex appeal!" Before the words "sex appeal", a bell sound was heard as a young man or woman smiled. Comedians such as Martin Lawrence parodied the "Ultrabrite smile" by vocalizing the sound effect as both "bling-bling," and "bling-blauw."

Parody

A parody (/ˈpærədi/; also called spoof, send-up, take-off or lampoon), in use, is a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms), animation, gaming and film.

The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche ("a composition in another artist's manner, without satirical intent") and burlesque (which "fools around with the material of high literature and adapts it to low ends"). Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot distinguishes between the parody and the burlesque, "A good parody is a fine amusement, capable of amusing and instructing the most sensible and polished minds; the burlesque is a miserable buffoonery which can only please the populace." Historically, when a formula grows tired, as in the case of the moralistic melodramas in the 1910s, it retains value only as a parody, as demonstrated by the Buster Keaton shorts that mocked that genre.

The Hotline

The Hotline is a daily political briefing published, alongside National Journal, by Atlantic Media from its headquarters at The Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.. It is currently edited by Scott Bland. The Hotline was founded by Doug Bailey and Roger Craver in 1987, and published independently until its acquisition in 1996 by National Journal Group, now a subsidiary of Atlantic Media.

The Hotline's primary audience includes Congressional staffers, political operatives and pundits. It is a comprehensive, non-partisan digest of that day's political events relating to upcoming statewide and national elections. The Hotline is published daily, condensing newspaper, magazine and digital political coverage from the previous 24 hours.

The Hotline comes out with a daily compendium of the morning's political headlines with "Wake-Up Call" and puts together a comprehensive digest of election and campaign news across the country with "Latest Edition." The Hotline reporters contribute to National Journal's overall political coverage.