15 Artists We Love To Hate

The way we feel about Riff Raff is the same way we feel about trolling in general. We mostly look for music that is honest and has artistic value to it, but sometimes a good trolling is appropriate, and if there is any art to trolling, then Riff Raff is a master. Even if you hate the guy's whole persona, you probably follow him on Twitter, so cheers to Riff Raff for providing an endless stream of mindless entertainment.

As Katie K aka KK so eloquently pointed out, we have a weird relationship with Drake. Even though we respect him and follow his every move, we can't hold back with the jokes. Maybe it's because he smiles so much. Maybe it's the wide-set eyes. Maybe it's the sweaters. It's probably all these things, but when it comes down to it, we love to hate on Drake, even if it's just playful jabs. Still, Drake says on "5AM" that “the part I love most is that they need me more than they hate me," and he's got a point.

If we're really being honest with ourselves, we were pretty into Mumford & Sons when they first came out. A little folk revival action fit for the indie crowd seemed like a good thing. Then just just kept doing it. Hoe-down after hoe-down, bro-jam after bro-jam. But these guys are dedicated to their schtick, staying dressed up in old-timey clothes, lugging around their big wooden instruments, and just being Mumford & Bros. You can't really hate on that. Well, yeah you can, and it's kind of fun to, but when it comes down to it, we can still remember why we liked them in the first place. It's because of the hoe-downs.

Dubstep, AMIRITE? While the history of the genre has played an important part in the evolution of electronic music, it's also come to represent, to some people, nothing more than a cacophony of wamp-wamps and vrrah-vrrah-vrrahs. With the explosion of EDM and the culture surrounding it, there has also been a backlash, with dubstep being the main target. And when it comes time to point a finger, there's Skrillex. There he his with his half shaved head and thick-framed glasses, making the bros rage and fist-pump in their tank tops and neon Ray-Bans, while thinking that they are "massive dubstep fans yo." Sure, some of his music can be fun to lose your shit to in a live setting, but when listening to more than one of his tracks at a time gives you a migraine, there's surely something wrong.

Maybe even worse than the brostep sound he helped popoularize is his recently released track "Leaving," a cack-handed attempt to make an Untrue-era Burial tune that fails through its lack of any humanity, soul or even the faintest hints of originality. It's not bad, it's just boring and five years late.

Young Bieber makes it ever more easy for us to hate him as he changes from a baby-faced, floppy-haired object of mild, snobbish contempt into a pant-sagging, quiff sporting, wannabee thug who threatens to "fucking beat the fuck" out of photographers. We get it Biebz, you've hung out with Mayweather and Lil Wayne, but you're a pop star with legions of early teenage fans (those scarily rabid Beliebers are another reason we love to hate him), and you became famous because you could sing like a eunuch, so don't be giving it that hard man act okay? Compounding our misery at the fact that Bieber is this generation's premiere popstar, and slowly turning that sadness into malicious, acidic hatred, are his attempts to "freestyle," which range from passable to quite simply atrocious (please see below), and help make Justin one of the easiest popstars to hate on.

Ugh Ke$ha. Ke$ha is like that one friend you have who still shops at Express and drinks Smirnoff Ices. She's easy to hate because she simply just does not know any better. She wears an obscene amount of glitter, has a dangerous relationship with animal print and thinks the best way to wake up in the morning is feeling like P Diddy (shoutout to those that wanna wake up feeling like Gunplay, amiright?!). You just get this overwhelming feeling that she's constantly trying to prove how cool and badass she is and it's like Ke$ha, you have a dollar sign in the middle of your name. Calm down. Then you almost start to feel bad for her, until you remember she has lyrics like "And the sun is coming up/ and oh my God I think I'm still drunk/ Where's my coat?/ Where?" and you're like "Ugh, Ke$ha, no more Smirnoff Ice for you" all over again.

Hey, some of the songs on Songs About Jane were pretty catchy, albeit in a sterilised, slightly mechanical way. They certainly weren't bad enough to warrant hate on a musical level though, but jealousy, pure jealousy, make any sightings of Adam Levine's chiselled good looks make me boil with rage. Look at you with your Grammys and your millions and your Victoria's Secret models and your acne treatment endorsement (?!), all off the back of mediocre songwriting and slightly grating voice. Oh, and you made a song comparing yourself to Mick Jagger, so is it really any suprise we love to hate you so?

Fun. seems like the kind of band stays home on weekends and choreographs instead of going out and partying. It pays off, you can tell that the lead singer has practiced his singing faces, mic poses, and gazes into the audience. The music is polished, instantly accessible, dangerously catchy, and since they went from no-names to huge stars overnight, it makes us feel less bad about making Fun. of them for their horrible band name and corny stage presence.

Let's just get one thing clear: Flo Rida is not really a rapper. He's not a hip-hop artist, he's not a gifted lyricist, he doesn't have tactful flow or hypnotic beats. All he's managed to do is take samples from other songs, flip them into new songs and consequently ruin them in the process. And if that isn't enough to convince you Flo Rida's the worst, have you seen the man's back tattoo?

One word: "Levels."

From conscious, alt-hip hop to "My Humps" and "Boom Boom Pow." How did it all go so wrong for the Black Eyed Peas? The turning point was their breakout hit "My Love," but rather than staying in that lane they went all-in to find the lowest common (musical) denominator. The dumbest, simplest, most in your face pop music—B.E.P. be on that. And as if to prove just how low our popular culture has sunk, they performed the halftime show at Superbowl XLV, dragging Slash out to help Fergie massacre "Sweet Child Of Mine," and proving that someone, somewhere, puts them on the same level as The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and The Stones. Oh dear.

The name David Guetta warrants nearly as much scorn and derision as Skrillex nowadays, as the lank-haired, perma-grinning Frenchman bounces his way (one hand in the air because that poppy synth build is just soooo great) across our screens in any number of cheesy, overly colourful music videos, as his by-numbers dance-pop makes lots of scantily clad ladies gyrate. But it wasn't always like this, oh no. Back in the 90s when he was DJing in Paris he released a soulful house cut called "Up & Away," and for most of the 2000s Guetta's Fuck Me I'm Famous compilations were credible reflections of what was popular in house at the time. With 2009s One Love, however, Guetta went unashamedly pop, chasing those Top 40 dollars with Akon and Will.i.am collaborations, and never looking back as he turned into that most hated of musical entities, the sellout.

When the frontman of your band can neither sing, nor rap, yet tries to do both, you're setting yourself up for failure. Really it's only Fred Durst who we hate, those other Limp Bizkit bros do their nu-metal rocking thing pretty well, but Durst's whiny, bratty attempts to rap are so terrible, so farcical, that the mind boggles at the 35 million records this band has sold. And just when we thought we were rid of the band for ever, they go and bloody sign with Cash Money, release 2012's worst song with "Ready To Go" (also dragging Weezy down into their stinking hellhole of awfulness), and ram their balding, past-it man-child selves back into our collective conciousness. Just fuck off Limp Bizkit. Please.

No list of this nature would be complete without serial douchebags Nickelback making an appearance. The band seem to take pleasure in pissing people off by endlessly milking the same bloated cash-cow of scummy, self-satisfied, radio friendly jock-rock, and although they may have recorded one self-aware song ("Rockstar"), you're more likely to hear mysoginisitc drivel ("Figured You Out," "Something In Your Mouth"). Oh, and in case you'd forgotten: All Nickelback songs sound the same.

Our hating stance on Chris Brown is a pretty self-explanatory one. Since he infamously hit now on-again girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, it's almost impossible to hear Brown's name in the news without some negative incident attached. Instead of owning up to his mistakes and keeping a low profile, Brown has done the opposite and instead dug himself deeper and deeper into a douchebag ditch. One that is in fact so enveloping that it doesn't seem as if anything he does musically will negate it, despite the #1 songs and millions of YouTube views he's accrued in the meantime. Chris Brown's immature and impulsive actions have set him up to be the kind of artist we all collectively go "Chris Brown? SMDH." Which is too bad too, because "Kiss Kiss" was kind of the jam back then.