“Inferno” by Bella Poarch & Sub Urban
Considering that, in researching this song, a number of articles have come up reporting that the music video, which even comes with a content warning, was inspired by Bella Poarch’s personal experiences with sexual assault, the expectation was that the lyrics would revolve around a similar sort of narrative.
But such does not appear to be the case. To the contrary, the female vocalist is “the villain” in this exchange. In fact Bella is so naughty that “she’s the reason why Hell is so hot”, and the entire focus of the song is on her character.
And even though the lyrics are contemporary to the 2020s, i.e. being based on this hell/fire motif, the message underneath it all is one we have come across regularly in times past.
And that is the male vocalist being attracted to a certain lady even though he knows she’s bad news. Or as Sub Urban puts it, ‘something is telling him to run away’ from her, with even Bella herself admitting that she’s “bad”. But at the same time she’s “sweet as caramel” in the eyes of the male vocalist, i.e. irresistible regardless of being akin to a devil.
Bella Poarch
This is our first time covering Bella Poarch, who at this point is primarily a social media star. In fact as it stands, as of the writing of this post, a video she uploaded in August of 2020 holds the record as the most liked in TikTok history, with over 50,000,000 likes.
She’s a relative newbie to TikTok though, having joined the platform earlier in 2020. And Poarch, who is actually from the Philippines (though spending considerable time stateside), didn’t start her music career until 2021 by releasing her debut single, “Build a Bi*ch”, in May of this year.
Thus “Inferno”, which came out on 13 August 2021 via Warner Records (whom she just signed with a few months prior), is her second single overall.
Sub Urban
Sub Urban, despite being a few years younger than Bella Poarch, has a more extensive musical catalog, being solely a musician by profession. To note as of the release date of this track, he’s 21 and she 24.
And with a discography dating back to 2017 so far Sub Urban has had a couple of international hits, 2019’s Cradles and 2020’s Freak alongside Rei Ami, the latter being a track we recently covered.
And this singer/producer, who hails from Nyack, New York, is considered by many to be one of the top up-and-coming artists.
In fact despite Inferno being Poarch’s first collaboration with Sub Urban in a vocal capacity, he did serve as a co-producer/co-writer of Build a Bi*ch, which by the way performed pretty well for a debut single by a social-media star.
More Facts about “Inferno”
The music video to this song, which is reportedly based on a theme of sexual assault, was directed by Andrew Donoho. And it features quite a few of Bella Poarch’s social-media celebrity peers, though primarily stars from Twitch and YouTube as opposed to TikTok.
Sub Urban produced Inferno and also contributed to its authoring. And the other writers, besides Bella Poarch, are as follows:
- Salem Ilese
- Elie Rizk
- Geoffrey Hufford
Inferno is a part of both Bella and Urban’s debut studio projects.
I really love ke this song because they both sing amazingly and there style kinda match up togeather.
This is one of my favorite songs to come out this year. Easily, the best “Influencer song” ugh. Bella is not even in the same category.
amazing i love these two artists