billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - june 17, 2023

So this is the sort of album bomb week that I always find interesting. Not that it happened and honestly caught me a bit offguard in a way it shouldn’t have - sorry folks, I have not seen Across The Spiderverse, it just totally slipped my mind that Metro Boomin curated a soundtrack that’s making waves - but that it effectively just replaced the album bomb from Lil Durk last week, so any chart motion feels relatively minor, all things considered. It’s still a big week, but with a little more variety, and that’s appreciated.

Of course, that does not apply to our top ten, where for another goddamn week ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen squats at #1. And honestly, I don’t know what’s beating it - it rules streaming, the radio growth has not slowed down, the margin it’s building between it and everything else is only getting bigger. And that means even if ‘Flowers’ by Miley Cyrus went up to #2 because it’s not losing as fast on the radio and is stable on streams, it’s not remotely a challenger here. Hell, while ‘Calm Down’ by Rema and Selena Gomez also rose to #3 with continued radio growth, it just doesn’t have enough everywhere else to make a run and I think it’s close to a peak. What makes this interesting is ‘Fast Car’ by Luke Combs up to #4 - given the radio and streaming growth, if there’s someone who could close the margin with Morgan Wallen it might be him, and if anyone had told me the duel for dominance of the top of the Hot 100 would come down between these two guys five years ago, I’d probably have called you crazy! Next as expected off the album bomb ‘All My Life’ by Lil Durk and J. Cole slipped back to #5 - the streaming ebbed back a bit, but radio is picking up the slack here - and ‘Kill Bill’ by SZA held at #6, mostly as streaming is stable as it slowly bled radio. Then we saw a slight pickup for Toosii for ‘Favorite Song’ to #7 - the album probably helped a bit for a jump on streaming to coincide with good radio, which is not something I can say for ‘Ella Baila Sola’ by Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma down to #8 as the streaming remains really strong but that’s all it has. Then we saw a slight boost for ‘Creepin’ by Metro Boomin, 21 Savage and The Weeknd to #9 - I’m guessing some residual crossover for Metro given his album bomb though ‘Creepin’ did have an okay radio week - but I put more of it to ‘Karma’ by Taylor Swift and Ice Spice dropping off sharply to #10 - it had a good radio week, but with streaming and sales down, it may have peaked prematurely here.

And on that topic, losers and dropouts! In the latter category, it was not a good week for Morgan Wallen’s lesser hits, as ‘I Wrote The Book’, ‘Everything I Love’, and ‘Man Made A Bar’ with Eric Church look like they’re all going to be well short of year-end territory, but what absolutely will be there is ‘As It Was’ by Harry Styles finally making its long-overdue exit. But as I said, there’s not that many losers here, with most coming off the debut like ‘Hits Different’ by Taylor Swift at 65 and two cuts from Lil Durk, with ‘Pelle Coat’ at 71 and ‘War Bout It’ with 21 Savage at 84. Outside of that… ‘Snow On The Beach’ by Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey lost all of its momentum off the return to 87, ‘AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM’ by Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar is continuing to slide at 66, and ‘Human’ by Cody Johnson falls to 79 as it looks like it’s going to fall out relatively soon - kind of a shame, the song just never got going the way I wanted it to break through.

Now for our returns and gains… and it’s a little odd, not gonna lie, especially when the returns include ‘Jaded’ by Miley Cyrus coming back yet again to 98 and ‘TRUSTFALL’ by P!nk slipping back at 100 - both of these tracks are floundering, all I’m saying here. But all of the gains are in country, with ‘Bury Me In Georgia’ by Kane Brown ramping to 77, ‘It Matters To Her’ by Scotty McCreery getting a boost to 49, and ‘I Need A Favor’ by Jelly Roll rising to 20 - in that case, I’m putting it down to his album dropping and giving him a boost, we’ll get to more of that later on. But now for the matter at hand: we are in album bomb territory with Metro Boomin and Across The Spiderverse, but only the fringes of it, which would imply anything below the top 40 and not the best nor worst. I’m going to be a little more flexible with this, given that accounts for all of the new Metro Boomin songs, so with that… ‘Danger’ by Offset and JID at 95, ‘All The Way Live’ by Metro Boomin, Future and Lil Uzi Vert at 61, ‘Am I Dreaming’ by Metro, A$AP Rocky and Roisee, ‘Annihilate’ by Metro, Swae Lee, Lil Wayne and Offset at 44, and ‘Calling’ by Metro, Swae Lee, NAV, and A Boogie wit da Hoodie at 41.

And now for a still considerable list of new arrivals, starting with…

92. ‘Peaches & Eggplants’ by Young Nudy ft. 21 Savage - I’ve generally avoided talking about Young Nudy on Billboard BREAKDOWN - hell, the few times he’s charted before now has been as a guest on other songs, predominantly with his cousin 21 Savage. But when you get a song with this title - I’m assuming it’s tied to the emojis and a spurt of TikTok virality is why it’s here… and god, what is it with this year and rap sex songs that just completely mishandle the mood? The grim, eerie synths around the trap percussion with the occasional bell, Young Nudy sounding weirdly hoarse and hushed on the hook as the ‘boaw boaw’ sounds fill in any sort of words, and 21 Savage once again proving that he shouldn’t be anywhere near sex songs. But he at least acquits himself better than Young Nudy, who only occasionally locks into a pocket and fills the rest of the bars with off-rhythm and increasingly ridiculous lines like ‘come suck the meat’ and and ‘we be geekin’ like sun to the moon’ and that his girl was leaking and that he beat the pussy loose to the point of knocking the walls down! And if was funny or delivered with any sort of flair, I’d be more forgiving, but ‘WAP’ this is not - they sound faintly embarrassed to be making this at all, so yeah, keep it in the drafts.

90. ‘Hummingbird’ by Metro Boomin & James Blake - This is the sort of song that doesn’t feel like it should be charting at all - riding an ancient sample of ‘Tonight You Belong To Me’ that’s pitched down and shifted into the swelling, synth-inflected elegance that’s been James Blake’s formula the past two albums, it feels indulgent with its five-plus minute runtime and Metro Boomin deliberately underplaying his trap percussion. But it’s an indulgence that works - it captures the grand scope of the tortured love song Blake sculpts in wondering if this woman will ever stick around past what she’s shown him about himself, and whether the love he blindly thought was unconditional can hold up now that his strains on it have been revealed. Hell, with its mature romantic framing it feels like something the artists smuggled onto the Spiderverse soundtrack to surprise audiences with something unfamiliar, given that James Blake still hasn’t had a proper mainstream breakthrough… but now that it’s here, even if it won’t last, really damn good!

86. ‘Save Me’ by Jelly Roll ft. Lainey Wilson - I was torn about this - ‘Son Of A Sinner’ is a good song, but ‘Need A Favor’ emphatically was not, and when you place this opposite Lainey Wilson’s collab with Hot Country Knights, I know what I’m going to seek out. Now this has a bit of an odd pedigree - it actually dates back to June 2020, where it was a swerve to Jelly Roll’s audience, now with a modern remix. And… well, it plays into a very similar arc as ‘Son Of A Sinner’ in clinging to booze and drugs for any stability, and while it does initially feel a bit oversold against the spare acoustics and pedal steel, by the time the song opens up it works a bit better, even if it does feel a bit odd to play this as a duet when the writing doesn’t really enable much interplay - it feels more commiseration than finding strength together. It’s fine, I guess… but I don’t think it works quite as well as it should.

69. ‘Ocean Spray’ by Moneybagg Yo - I’ll admit I’m a bit surprised there wasn’t more chart impact for Moneybagg Yo - I’ve never been a fan, but I know his fanbase is pretty active, and you’d think for his first project in two years there’d be a bit more. Anyway, this is one of two songs that charted… and I’m still not there, from the stock trap percussion to the hollowed out melody to how Moneybagg Yo has the same overstuffed triplet flows where his adlibs feel weirdly layered and he defaults to lean saturation and waffling on whether he wants to be with this girl or not. But at the same time, I can recognize enough small improvements in the flow and a pretty sticky hook that I get why this would work, even if I’m indifferent on it. It’s fine - the hook’s good enough that I could see it making a run - but it’s not special by any means.

62. ‘Self Love’ by Metro Boomin & Coi Leray - Look, this is going to come across as more negative than it is about this song in particular - because Coi Leray is capable of making better music when she doesn’t default to riding the laziest pop rap samples imaginable, and this song is a prime example! It’s not precisely great - the bleeping melodic loop against the snap and shuffling trap percussion is the definition of underproduced, and there’s a part of me that wishes Coi Leray would show a bit more flair, but the hook across the vocal line and synth is remarkably sticky and I like the content as well, highlighting how you can’t fully love a partner if you don’t love yourself, which gets messy when she’s feeling isolated and lonely along the way, potentially compromising trust when she tries to bring forth truth. And when the strings open up and then decay back into the synth… yeah, I really like this a lot, great little song.

59. ‘Keep It Low’ by Moneybagg Yo ft. Future - alright, another early song on the mixtape, this time with Future… all about how these guys love giving the toxic dick to women because they love it so much. I’m torn on this one - it’s clearly a dark power fantasy with the creeping dread of the pianos behind the sharper trap whir, and Future is probably the most aggressive he’s been in a long time. At the same time, we’re dealing with Moneybagg Yo’s overstuffed flow that can feel really clunky - especially when he brags that he has your girl ‘hooked on phonics’ - and Future’s flow can feel just as slapdash until he locks in on his verse, where he talks about having ‘mind control on bitches’ and telling her not to cry in his Phantom and that she belongs in the streets but all the bitches look up to him like God and… I’m sorry, this brand of malevolence is going past consent and it feels gross, especially when you know Future’s history with women. I get that for those who are a fan of vintage Future you’ll probably love this… but I can’t, not a fan.

48. ‘bread & butter’ by Gunna - I’m not going to wade into the discourse around the court cases with YSL and Gunna or whether he’s a snitch or not - the plea deal interwoven with the question of whether he’d testify at a later date is the sort of complexity that rap communities on social media are not equipped to handle well, especially when street codes often feel more like guidelines - he’s certainly seen more tangible backlash than I expected, which is likely more tied to his audience and connections and old allegations that have been dragged up. The point is that there’s been more discourse around this new song as he attempts to restart his career… and I’ll say this, I like this more than I thought I would. For one, the groove is really good - that bassline, the liquid guitar, the well-blended trap percussion, even if Gunna’s voice sounds a bit compressed, you could tell he cared about this, which is an attempt to clear his name of snitch allegations and point fingers at others who aren’t so clean, in this case suspected to be Lil Baby and folks tied to QC. But beyond those shots, the second verse is more revealing, as Gunna shows this sort of backbiting and slander to drive him out of the community is exactly what the lawyers and police want, and that sort of ostracism is weighing heavy. Do I believe him? Honestly, it doesn’t remotely matter what I think - I get the impression that Gunna really wants to get back to lightweight trap and rapping about brand names than stay messed up in this, and this is a balancing act trying to clear his name and not push too many buttons, and I’d argue this is well-executed enough to sell those who want to believe him. Also happens to be a pretty good song, for what it’s worth.

43. ‘Popular’ by The Weeknd, Playboi Carti & Madonna - so I’ve now seen some of The Idol - have to be honest, I wasn’t impressed, it’s not nearly as scandalous as it was advertised beyond some interesting commentary on performativity, mostly courtesy of an underweight script and acting that didn’t engage me. But The Weeknd is still trying to release music around it, so now he’s teaming up with Playboi Carti and Madonna… why not? In truth, both Carti and Madonna feel kind of perfunctory on this - Playboi Carti has a bouncy post-chorus that actually works, but Madonna sounds really flat and underwhelming - I get why she’s here given her relationship with fame and popularity, but it feels more for her name than anything else. And I’m not against The Weeknd playing the svengali as the ‘dark side of fame’, it’s the role he plays on the show in trying to find something ‘real’ in this brand of pop, basically with a lot of underpowered allusions to the 1980s, but the song is nowhere near strong enough to back that up, with the spare sandy and clanking percussion feeling very thin with some splashes of synths not having anything close to the punch it needs, especially in the melodies. It sounds sickly and unfinished, barely able to support any atmosphere… hey look, I might as well be talking about the show! So yeah, this isn’t good - next!

31. ‘Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 55’ by Bizarrap & Peso Pluma - it’s not surprising that Bizarrap got Peso Pluma on a session, but I was curious what the hell it would sound like, especially as Peso Pluma came up on a regional Mexican sound and even if he wanted to make reggaeton, Bizarrap’s synthpop production is normally in a different lane. So colour me shocked that this is just a more produced regional Mexican sound with the farty staccato horns and brittle acoustics and Peso Pluma’s nasal squawk as prominent as ever as he goes on about having his heart broken so he’s going to flex all the more now… but I’ll be damned if the added subtle balance and tighter pickups lead to a more refined sound even before we get a synth-inflected trap breakdown that should not work at all, but kind of did! Between this and Bad Bunny hopping into this sound, I think that if I found a singer with a likable voice and more focus on accordion over the horns and some halfway competent production, I could get into this! So yeah, I think this is decent, give it a shot!

13. ‘Put It On Da Floor Again’ by Latto ft. Cardi B - am I the only one who saw this collab and thought that it could be a really bad idea? Cardi B is the sort of performer who has enough charisma to blow someone off a track if she cares, and given how Latto plays in a lot of similar territory, it seems like it’s setting her up for a comparison or failure, especially as this is a remix of a song that didn’t really move a few months ago. I kind of get why - the creaking melody around the piano and very brittle trap percussion, and Latto trying to go hard and… well, I prefer this to her pop shit, but loading her verse with subs at Nicki Minaj is not exactly smart because Nicki is a better rapper and is petty enough to shoot back harder. Cardi’s verse is better, but it’s indicative of how I’d just prefer to hear her than Latto, even if I think she has the better subs at Nicki who’ll play the pen game and write so many bars, but Cardi will win in different ways mostly just by pithy remarks and blocking it - it’s Joe Budden versus Drake, the rapper who’ll bar you to death but that’s not the only avenue where beef is won in the modern rap game by playing smarter, not harder. But all of this leaves me with the feeling the discourse around the track is more interesting than the actual song, which is fine, but I’d rather just hear a new Cardi B album already.

So that’s our week… kind of a weird one, but I definitely have plenty to choose from with the best and worst. In the latter category… I’m going with disappointment as my primary factor to ‘Popular’ by The Weeknd, Playboi Carti, and Madonna here, just a total misfire with all of the talent that could have pulled off what they were attempting, tied with ‘Peaches & Eggplants’ by Young Nudy and 21 Savage for being an embarrassing mess - Dishonourable Mention to ‘Keep It Low’ by Moneybagg Yo and Future because it’s just gross. Best of the week… we also have a tie for the best and it’s with two sides of Metro Boomin, with ‘Hummingbird’ with James Blake alongside ‘Self Love’ by Coi Leray - what might be more surprising is ‘bread & butter’ by Gunna as the Honourable Mention… probably the closest thing to anything from Gunna I’ve liked or will remember. Next week… again, we have the fallout… probably something from Noah Kahan or that Madonna / Sam Smith collab because we’re not lucky enough to get anything from Janelle Monae, so stay tuned for that!