billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 20, 2021
This is one of those weeks where I’d love to say I called it, but not to this extent. Yes, I knew Drake was going to pounce on a weak hot 100 and potentially even debut at #1, that was very much in the cards, his team is smart enough to not make the same mistakes over and over again… but I was not expecting this level of impact, and I’m not even sure it was just him!
But that means our biggest stories are in the top ten, where in rapid success from Drake: ‘What’s Next’ hit #1, ‘Wants And Needs’ with Lil Baby hit #2, and ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’ with Rick Ross hit #3. They got here on good sales, insane streaming, solid YouTube, and with ‘What’s Next’ what seems to be a legit radio push as the next single. We’ll talk about my opinions on the songs themselves later on, but this is the first time any artist has debuted three songs at the very top of the Hot 100 in chart history - and the funny thing is that if Drake hadn’t dropped, we still would have gotten a new chart topper. That comes with the team-up single from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak under the name Silk Sonic ‘Leave The Door Open’ at #4 - first off it’s fantastic to see Anderson .Paak get the chart success he’s been long-overdue, but what I find thrilling is that they’re doing the rollout properly: the sales are strong, the streaming and YouTube is remarkably robust, and it’s got an even better radio run already. This looks like a hit with legs in the making, and honestly, that makes me really excited! It’s weird because this all shoves back ‘drivers license’ to #5 - yes, it will regain traction in the top 10, but its run in all channels is starting to stall out, even sitting at the top on the radio. Again, it’s vulnerable, and for me it’s just a matter of time when ‘Up’ by Cardi B makes up the margin beyond #6 - sales, streaming, and YouTube are all better, it’s just a matter of margins as it surges up the radio. Then we have our two songs by The Weeknd - ‘Save Your Tears’ holding at #7 and ‘Blinding Lights’ at #8 - and as much as I don’t want to admit it, they’re kind of in the same situation as of now - stumbling on streams and sales, and while ‘Blinding Lights’ is fading a bit faster, they both are stalled on the radio around a similar position. This leaves the remix of ‘34+35’ by Ariana Grande, Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion down at #9, where it spent wavering on the radio where that’s about all it has, which is mostly true with ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #10 except it’s just in active freefall.
And while we’re here, losers and dropouts - and we had some big ones in the latter category. Yeah, ‘hole in the bottle’ by Kelsea Ballerini was heading out, we called that, but the other dropouts seem like they’ve clinched year-end slots and where I have mixed opinions at best: ‘Lemonade’ by Internet Money, Gunna, Don Toliver and NAV, ‘Laugh Now, Cry Later’ by Drake ft. Lil Durk, ‘lonely’ by Justin Bieber and benny blanco, ‘I Hope’ by Gabby Barrett and Charlie Puth, and ‘Bang!’ by AJR - this might rebound if the album has any chart penetration, we’re not out of the woods here yet. But we also had a fair numbers, which is what you expect when you have so much impact near the top - the quick stories are ‘Beat Box’ by SpotemGottem losing its gains to 25 and ‘AP’ by the late Pop Smoke skidding to 99 off the debut, but trap as a whole didn’t have a great week. ‘For The Night’ by Pop Smoke, Lil Baby and DaBaby fell to 24, ‘Whoopty’ by CJ slid to 29, ‘Without You’ by Kid LAROI fell to 44, ‘Throat Baby (Go Baby)’ by BRS Kash hit 46, ‘Neighbours’ by Pooh Shiesty and BIG30 hit 87, ‘Finesse Out The Gang Way’ by Lil Durk and Lil Baby hit 91, and ‘Tyler Herro’ by Jack Harlow skidded to 94 - kind of a mixed bag which might survive and which are on their way out, but it is interesting. Then from there… ‘Good Time’ by Niko Moon took a hit to 33, ‘willow’ by Taylor Swift fell to 42, ‘Down To One’ by Luke Bryan looks to be stalling out a bit at 48, ‘Holy’ by Justin Bieber and Chance The Rapper is getting rotated out at 49, ‘Beers And Sunshine’ by Darius Rucker dropped pretty hard to 69, and ‘Lifestyle’ by Jason Derulo and Adam Levine fell to 81 because I’m fairly certain I’m the only person who actually likes that song - oh well.
The funny thing is that we didn’t get much to fill in the gaps, though - no returns this week, and only a few gains, most of which seem to be slow burners. Of course country was of no help whatsoever because ‘Breaking Up Was Easy In The 90s’ by Sam Hunt picked up to 82 off the debut, and ‘What Your Country Song’ by Thomas Rhett got a boost to 30, from what looks like an okay radio presence. Beyond that… ‘Pick Up Your Feelings’ by Jazmine Sullivan actually got a light boost to 85 courtesy of the video, and ‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ by Masked Wolf is still rising to 37 - the sales and streaming traction behind this song is interesting to note, this could become more of a thing in the near future, just warning y’all.
And on that questionable topic, we have our new arrivals - and they don’t start all that well, opening off with…
100. ‘Lil Bit’ by Nelly & Florida Georgia Line - and on our left, an act of complete desperation - and I’m honestly not sure who needs this more! Yes, Nelly hasn’t had a hit in years, but he can coast off of legacy where Florida Georgia Line are still trying to have hits, and that’s a dicey prospect! Now originally this was a Nelly song that dropped in October last year and then got another remix from Florida Georgia Line to get tacked onto their album, but the original is technically what charted… and of course it’s bad, what did you expect? Say what you will about the ‘Cruise’, it at least had Florida Georgia Line sounding interested and not going into desaturated minor tones where they seemed to forget groove exists in exchange for a fuzzy blend of fast-picked banjo and trap hi-hats, all playing off a painfully cheap-sounding drum machine and a staccato guitar pickup that leaves the mix just sounding barren. And that’s a sleazy vibe for a pickup track - again, at least ‘Cruise’ could be fun and not have all three men sounding like they’re trolling for girls and Nelly calling himself the black Tom Brady. In other words, this reminds me of the worst of bro-country: sleazy, lacking in groove, badly produced, trying for hip-hop they will never get, and nobody is having any fun. This sucks, as does…
97. ‘Life’s A Mess 2’ by Juice WRLD, Clever & Post Malone - so I can say it: the original ‘Life’s A Mess’ is a good song - Juice WRLD and Halsey had good chemistry, it felt low-key and heartfelt, and the more I sat with it, the more I wished the two of them had more chances to salvage good material. So naturally what you want to do is remix the song, take Halsey off, and put on Clever and Post Malone. What feels kind of gross about this is that this feels like it’s being pushed by Clever more than anyone - really hunting that crossover for a posthumous remix, which somehow feels even worse than when Kid LAROI has done it! But fine, outside of punching up the acoustics a bit and adding some strings, does the remix work? Well, not really - it loses all the subtext surrounding Juice WRLD’s passing and shifts into more of a bog-standard commiseration song, and while Post Malone mostly captures the reckless, stumbling melodrama of his verse - up until the implied suicidal moments which is absolutely in bad taste - I get none of the pain or presence from Clever at all, the personality is just not there. I think my larger issue is that this just feels pointless - it’s not better than the original, and it’s so mercenary in trying to ride coattails that have no respect for what’s added - in other words, not good.
74. ‘Hellcats & Trackhawks’ by Lil Durk - okay, context here: even though Billboard only credits this song to Lil Durk, it’s not technically just his: it’s in the time-honoured tradition of a successful rapper trying to get his entire crew up and this comes with his Chicago collective Only The Family. As of now, unfortunately due to King Von’s murder Lil Durk is the only rapper to have seen success from this crew… and he’s also the only one on this song, so how did turn out? Well, it’s one extended verse with no hook and certainly going way harder into aggressive, bassy drill where the mixing is utterly swamped out, and I’m of two minds with this approach - on the one hand it’s a homecoming, but on the other it was a chance for Lil Durk to refine and punch up the fine details to elevate his crew, and while he does shout them out, you’d think the song would have a bit more refinement to amplify them, especially when the rest of the content circles around fucking girls in graphic detail and shooting other rappers. This is what worries me about Lil Durk, as much as he’s got popular momentum, he slides back towards some old bad habits that show him not taking advantage of the support and budget he now has - ergo, this is fine, but I’ve definitely heard him do this before.
54. ‘Beautiful Mistakes’ by Maroon 5 ft. Megan Thee Stallion - and to think we were almost done with Maroon 5 - but no, this time following off of when they got SZA and Cardi B, now they got Megan Thee Stallion to back them up here… but what’s more notable is the cowrite from blackbear, whose flow is distinctly notable behind Adam Levine and it sneaks into the on-and-off again hookup vibe of the song, to say nothing of the liquid guitars behind the trap-pop fusion production they’re going with. Now I will say Adam Levine staying away from his falsetto makes this generally more tolerable… but then Megan Thee Stallion shows up for her verse and a sung bridge and she’s got so much more personality and charisma to utterly take control of the song. Granted, the song still sounds a bit flat without much melodic modulation, and you can tell Adam Levine feels a bit suffocated, but that being said, he doesn’t do anything bad or stupid here, so mixed blessing? I dunno, I’ve seen more folks praise this than I was expecting, and while I don’t think it’s bad per se, it’s absolutely late period Maroon 5 surrendering any shred of personality left and Megan Thee Stallion slumming it on a pop verse. Everyone here has done better, and this is pretty forgettable.
34. ‘Real As It Gets’ by Lil Baby ft. EST Gee - I’m of a few minds with this song - on the one hand, it’s absolutely Lil Baby running in place when it comes to his general approach - a desaturated melodic loop behind bog-standard trap percussion that really should sound better at this point, and the content… look, Lil Baby’s flow has gotten sharper overall, but the ‘more money, more problems’ posturing is starting to wear thin, especially without much in the way of lyrical detail that really jumps out. On the other hand, I won’t deny the hook is pretty sharp and this is the right way to elevate a member of your own crew with EST Gee, who has a more expressive delivery and a pretty sharp flow of his own. I won’t say I’m impressed by the content - it’s pretty standard gunplay and holding down his block - but to hold one’s own as an unknown alongside Lil Baby’s flow is impressive, I’ll give him that. Not going to say this is great or anything, but there’s not much to dislike here so… yeah, I’m fine with this one.
26. ‘Hold On’ by Justin Bieber - I don’t know how to feel about Justin Bieber’s album rollout - I didn’t like ‘Holy’ whatsoever, ‘lonely’ was about as bad… but then ‘Anyone’ might stand as one of Bieber’s most propulsive pop songs, even if you could have given it to its cowriters and it probably would have hit more strongly. And that did set expectations when I saw a lot of the same crew backing this song - which dropped a bit when I saw that there was a melodic interpolation from Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, but that’s more in the vocal line that can feel weirdly thin opposite the pulsating groove, mostly a factor of Bieber having no tangible texture or edge to his delivery. In fact, this is one of those overlooked issues that came with an 80s-inspired bigness to production, if you don’t have the pipes or vocal arrangement to back you up, you’re going to sound over your head… and yeah, that’s the case here. And the content doesn’t help - it’s trying to be a song about reassurance, that he’ll be there for someone, that he’s been down that road before… but he just had to sneak the line into the hook ‘we all know I should be the one / to say we all make mistakes’, which is another callback to his past behaviour and it adds to the weird insincerity that’s been lurking behind every attempted apology! I’m not denying the groove has promise - when you have the production team and writers Bieber does, that should be expected - but I liked this premise a lot more when Wilson Phillips had the song of the same name in 1990, just saying.
4. ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic - let me start by saying the obvious: the song is goddamn excellent. It’s leaning into the loose silliness of mid-70s soulful hookups where the cheesiness swings around to be awesome, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak have fantastic chemistry in the ad-libs and vocal arrangement, and the mix has the plush twinkle and groove that I absolutely adore from this era, especially with the subtle squonk of noiser guitars nestled into the mix. It’s a note perfect recreation of how this sound works, and it’s a great song - but note the word recreation. Because even fans of the song can’t deny that it’s a little derivative in its approach and tone, and more to the point, I wish this felt a little more organic. I actually own a bunch of those old 70s soul records on vinyl and most of them did not have the chops and refinement Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars have… but that was also a big part of their charm, and while they avoided the very obvious record crackle to open up the song, I wish they didn’t play this quite as safe as it is. Yes, I absolutely know that I’m nitpicking here, that you probably couldn’t get a soul track with those weirder edges to the top 5 - I know this because Anderson .Paak has been trying for years to make it work - and the song is still fantastic… I think I’m just waiting for the album cuts, and we’ll see how that goes.
3. ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’ by Drake ft. Rick Ross - the last three we’re talking about are Drake songs - if you’re thoroughly sick of him and you think you already know what you’re getting, I wouldn’t blame you at all for stepping away now; it’s not like we’re dealing with a grand sonic innovation coming from Drake at this point - it’s from a sequel EP here, we get this gist. As such, this is the Drake song that falls into the category of ‘extended braggadocious freestyle to convince people I still rap set to a spare groove and a prominent vocal sample’, and this time he put it alongside Rick Ross because when you want to make a perpetually empty flex, you call the professional. And look, I could highlight the details in Drake’s verse that just feel weird - saying he fucked a notary public, the Demar Derozan reference that makes me question how many Raptors games Drake really follows, the mundane details of picking up his kid from school, how you don’t want to talk about having everything despite that filling out your entire goddamn verse, more complaining about people fake liking him at his funeral - but the line that really stood out to me was how he highlights there just aren’t that many parallels left between him and everyone he’s talking down to. So congratulations, Drake, you’ve long ago stopped being all that likable or relatable, I’m glad you’re now admitting… and man, when it runs over six minutes, I have no use for this.
2. ‘Wants and Needs’ by Drake ft. Lil Baby - you know, I’m happy the general consensus is that Lil Baby won the song, for as much as that matters - his flow was sharper, and even if Drake found a weird pocket for his verse that kind of made sense, on his verse he’s bragging that Views is a classic - it’s not - that he thinks he can charge an ex of his for a feature - which either means he’s talking about SZA or Jorja Smith and I know at least the former might kill him if he tried - and that he should link up with Kanye to find Jesus… which isn’t likely, given how much sinning he’s got ahead. But am I the only one who finds this song just by-the-numbers anyway - the bassy knock against the watery melody, the autotune that’s slathered on Drake’s voice and doesn’t flatter the rest of the song, and that overall it just kind of sounds cheap, the sort of song Drake has made a dozen times over and has Lil Baby literally referencing Drake’s old hits… and not some of his better ones. If we’re at that stage of Drake’s career… well, I didn’t know it was possible for me to care less.
1. What’s Next’ by Drake - I’ll give Drake the slightest bit of credit: this is a tone that I don’t I remember him approaching throughout his career run, especially in the buzzy synthesizers. That credit is taken away near immediately because it sounds like it was imported from ‘Ayotechnology’, a song that I’m fairly certain killed 50 Cent’s hit-making career in the 2000s with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland, and somehow the clunky trap percussion here is even worse. It’s weird because I knew it was only a matter of time before this particular sound in hip-hop made its recurrence, but I didn’t expect it from Drake… and yet the funny thing is that of the three songs, I probably like this one of the most. It still has corny lines - why you thought that cookie crumbles bar on the second verse was a good idea, I don’t know - but the hook is catchy and there’s enough groove to the song that I can appreciate how exasperated Drake sounds… even though most of his complaining is rooted in expensive and exclusive jewelry, which he seems to overvalue to the point where he actively criticizes someone giving their chain away. It reminds me of that line in ‘Started From The Bottom’, where he wears every single chain even when he’s in the house, an internal reinforcement of the success, so why would you part with any of that and expose yourself - proof that Drake’s paranoia hasn’t really gone away, it’s just picked up a miserly streak that doesn’t make him nearly the boss he wants to be. Look, it’s catchy, I like it more than when Drake debuted on top with ‘God’s Plan’, and maybe it might grow on me like ‘Money In The Grave’ did, but this is a much uglier song to swallow, and if Drake is talking about what’s next, I’m not all that interested.
But I will say this, Drake at least managed to dodge both the best and worst this week, the latter of which is going to that goddamn disaster that is ‘Lil Bit’ by Nelly and Florida Georgia Line, with the Dishonourable Mention for ‘Life’s A Mess II’ by the late Juice WRLD, Clever, and Post Malone. Best of the week is easy with ‘Leave The Door Open’ by Silk Sonic, but Honourable Mention is tougher… I’m going to go with ‘Real As It Gets’ by Lil Baby and EST Gee - what can I say, even if it’s working the formula, it’s solid all around. Next week, the fallout - stay tuned!