billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 20, 2022

Fun fact: I went back through my records and I believe this is the sixth album bomb in some form that I have covered from Youngboy Never Broke Again. Another fun fact: despite his persistently loud online fanbase, these episodes never get a ton of traction for the amount of work they require I do, which is annoying but revealing of a fanbase that might be more insular and the meme has long since transcended irony.

But before we get into all that, our top ten, where for another week ‘BREAK MY SOUL’ by Beyonce holds the #1, mostly thanks to a revival on sales and a continued radio push to make up for the streaming slipping away, courtesy of a big remix with Madonna; for the record, I’m still lukewarm on ‘BREAK MY SOUL’, and this remix certainly is not helping. But it held over ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles at #2, which still has good streaming and isn’t really fading on the radio, which is likely why it held the edge over ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo, which peaked on the radio and has better sales, but has never had the streaming to really compete. Then we have ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush at #4 which is still remarkably solid across the board… and it’ll have to be to hold up against our newest top ten entry: ‘Staying Alive’ by DJ Khaled ft. Drake and Lil Baby. We’ll get to this much later on thanks to streaming dominance, but it’s already getting a radio push, and while it might fade initially, they’re going to try and make this a thing, y’all have been warned. Then we have a spike for ‘Bad Habit’ by Steve Lacy, which got edged out on streaming but the radio has actually has a solid pickup, which put it over ‘Wait For U’ by Future, Tems and Drake at #7, where it can’t quite compete on streaming and doesn’t have enough of a wavering radio margin to rebound. This takes us to ‘Sunroof’ by Nicky Youre and dazy at #8, where the radio might adore this song but that’s all it really has, even if it’s enough to get over ‘First Class’ by Jack Harlow at #9, which is clearly on its way out across the board. And that opens up to our second top ten breakthrough: ‘Bad Decisions’ by benny blanco, BTS, and Snoop Dogg. Again, I’ll talk about this a bit later on, but it’s no surprise this is here thanks to insane sales overcompensating for anything else; it’s almost like there’s a pattern here or something.

But before we get down to that, our losers and dropouts, the latter of which is full of Beyonce but also a couple songs where their year-end positioning is going to be tenuous if they make it at all: ‘2step’ by Ed Sheeran and Lil Baby, ‘Thousand Miles’ by Kid LAROI, and ‘Trouble With A Heartbreak’ by Jason Aldean. Then we have our losers… which were all debuts from last week, and outside of ‘Never Sleep’ from NAV, Travis Scott and Lil Baby at 87, they were all Beyonce. So let’s run through them: ‘ALIEN SUPERSTAR’ at 43, ‘CUFF IT’ at 50, ‘CHURCH GIRL’ at 67, ‘ENERGY’ with BEAM at 79, ‘I’M THAT GIRL’ at 92, and ‘COZY’ at 93.

But what fills in the gaps here? Well, the only return is ‘Vette Motors’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again at 62 from the album bomb, but our gains feel really scattered. Off the debut last week ‘Dah Dah DahDah’ by Nardo Wick rose to 74 and ‘Victoria’s Secret’ by Jax hit 66, but off the losses ‘Whiskey On You’ by Nate Smith rebounded to 65. And the rest are just weird: ‘Bones’ by Imagine Dragons to 70, ‘Free Mind’ by Tems up to 64, ‘F.N.F. (Let’s Go)’ by Glorilla and Hitkidd at 49, and ‘Betty (Get Money)’ by Yung Gravy up big to 45. But now for the larger matter at hand, the album bomb from YoungBoy Never Broke Again, where for the songs that are neither the best nor worst and didn’t crack the top 40… ‘7 Days’ at 100, ‘Kamikaze’ at 88 - though this was pretty rough, all things considered - ‘Top Sound’ at 86, ‘Hold Your Own’ at 83, ‘Lost Soul Survivor’ at 75, ‘Free Dem 5’s’ at 68, ‘Fuck Da Industry’ at 63, and ‘I Know’ at 46.

Okay, now onto a slightly more reasonable list…

98. ‘Despecha’ by ROSALIA - you know, considering that ROSALIA actually dropped an album this year, you would think that she’d actually push a few more songs from it, rather than this unattached single, but I guess if you’re looking for a way to snag quick Tiktok virality, this is the way to do it? Because this song absolutely feels built for TikTok - the sandy percussion, the chintzy piano, the single verse, the weirdly cheap-sounding vocal production, the pretty sparse dance vibes but with an undercurrent of a kissoff to some ex running under three minutes, this feels custom-built for that app. And I guess that’s fine, but even on MOTOMAMI ROSALIA was doing more interesting things than this, which is generally catchy but feels undercooked and disposable. Next!

96. ‘Big 14’ by Trippie Redd, Moneybagg Yo & Offset - serious question: at this point, is there anyone left checking for Trippie Redd? I thought he was going to have a much bigger breakthrough last year than what happened, and now with this new song you can argue it’s charting more because of its features than Trippie Redd himself. It’s certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Trippie Redd’s nasal drawl where he sounds checked out and unable to sell any menace in his threats and flexing, especially with those shouted ad-libs on his verse. But Moneybagg Yo can’t do much with it either especially with that awkward attempted change-up, and the goopy synths behind the brittle percussion can’t built any potency - I’d say Offset delivers the best performance, but it’s a stock Migos flow, it’s pretty interchangeable too. So no, it’s just more forgettable mediocre than bad - I’ll forget this exists in record time, let’s move on.

90 ‘My Time’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - you know, credit where it’s due, even if there’s something about the vocal overdubs and reverb that remind me a little of Burna Boy, with the spare clinking percussion against the echoing guitars is a good backdrop for YoungBoy and he delivers a solid hook here. More than that if you dig into the bars there’s a better sense of melancholy beyond the unstable rage you’d expect - he’s dejected that he has to keep hustling and shooting to provide for his family, roots of his conflict in and out of jail going back to his childhood, where he’s trying to break the cycle but conscious of so many who can’t, and even then, what’s the cost with all that lingering pain he can’t get past. No, it’s not new for this genre - Polo G in particular does this better - but with a good hook and YoungBoy’s haggard delivery, I’d say this works. And while we’re here…

47. ‘Home Ain’t Home’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again ft. Rod Wave - I don’t know how much of an album bomb Rod Wave is going to have next week, but getting him alongside YoungBoy is a steal, and they make the most of it here. The gentle guitar rollick against the pianos against the slight snaps and trap percussion, Rod Wave hitting the balance of gunplay and angst you’d expect from his material, but I think Youngboy actually steps up the most here, in his angst that despite his hustle his home doesn’t feel the same thanks to isolation from his family, drug addiction, and the cycle that might see it all happen again, especially as he’s resigned to death in the same place. I dunno, when YoungBoy gets more coherent and sober and can take stock of his life, he can get to a real place, which might be the reason I don’t throw up my hands despite so much of his bullshit year after year. But yeah, this is really damn good, I like this too.

37. ‘Umm Hmm’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the YoungBoy song that charted the highest is one of his most vicious, manic, and slapdash on the early section of the album, where the hook is more mouth noises than bars off the arranged menace and trap menace. And as a hook it’s such a misstep, especially given how wild YoungBoy’s hollering gunplay is - it feels barely composed and genuinely unstable, the sort of thing, where even if the mixing is rough you want to keep listening to see what vocal flourish he pulls out next. It’s certainly messy… but I kind of get why it works, so not especially good, but not bad either.

10. ‘Bad Decisions’ by benny blanco, BTS & Snoop Dogg - this is the sort of collaboration that feels like a record executive threw names into a blender for whatever might come out, but the funny thing is that in recent years benny blanco’s pop songs have been remarkably tolerable, and I was curious where the hell he’d take working with BTS and Snoop Dogg. And… I feel like I should like this, but I’m lukewarm at best - Snoop Dogg is in terminally lazy pop verse mold, benny blanco’s disco gloss feels muted to the point of never really popping, and while BTS can sell lovesick in their sleep and there’s some good interplay, I’m used to them bringing more flair to these songs. Maybe it’s the basic melody driving the song or how the lockstep percussion never pops, but this should have more to it - everyone here can do better. Speaking of which…

5. ‘Staying Alive’ by DJ Khaled ft. Drake & Lil Baby - at this point, DJ Khaled making “music” with Drake has to be a tax write-off on some label agreement, because there is absolutely no excuse for this to keep happening. They’ve routinely brought out the worst in each other for years now, and this might be the most egregious - if you’re going to interpolate one of the most iconic songs from disco that’s widely hailed as a classic, maybe sound like you care? But I’m not sure I can even get past this godawful instrumental, which crushes the lead into slurry and drops this cheap, leaden percussion that might be the opposite of a groove, which allows Drake to meander into his usual empty paranoia and his complaining that this girl isn’t coming over as much… but wait, not only does he not know what he wants, apparently he’s rich enough that she’s already there, or maybe he’s trading her back and forth with Lil Baby, who knows and who cares! Lil Baby at least tries to add some continuity but apparently she’s just as flighty with all of this even as he’s buying her things, but what happened to his diction, he’s slurring more than he did four years ago! So yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve got a song with the potential to be a hit that sucks this much, but yeah, this is crap in the least interesting way possible.

So yeah, easy worst of the week, with Dishonourable Mention going to ‘Umm Hmm’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again just for shaky mastering and a bad hook that can’t pay off the verses - that song could have gone much harder than it does. But YoungBoy is getting the top spots too, with ‘Home Ain’t Home’ with Rod Wave as the best of the week and ‘My Time’ as the Honourable Mention - again, he’s capable of making good music, I just wish he was more consistent and didn’t put out thirty song albums. Next week… it’ll be a toss-up between Megan Thee Stallion and Rod Wave plus that big single from Nicki Minaj, we’ll have to see…