billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 16, 2020
It’s practically a meme now on this channel that I’m sick of Drake. Hell, I’d want to think that the general public is joining me in that but we got an album bomb of his leftovers, the majority of which landed in the top 40 which means I’m covering them! And I could go on about how I’ve covered nearly a half dozen of these things from Drake alone, or how you can’t even pretend that this music matters or will be remembered outside of isolated personal favourites, or that to add insult to injury, Lil Baby released the deluxe edition of his album and we got a bunch of that forgettable worthlessness too… but really, who cares? Outside of me, who has to go through the excruciating endeavour of editing all of this for an episode that I’ve already had fans tell me, ‘listen, we like you, but we’re skipping this newest episode of the Drake show’ so it’s going to get less traffic, if this sort of thing didn’t ultimately cause more ripple impacts on the Hot 100, nobody would care. Even the Drake stans will move on to anticipate the second album he’s dropping later this year, and I’m stuck questioning if your streams are bought and paid for either through playlists or less savory measures, how much does Billboard’s system of record even matter, especially as Spotify and Apple Music have no reason not to participate in chart manipulation, given it’s just more of their stats to pad.
But speaking of chart manipulation, our top ten and new #1: ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat, featuring a bunch of separately counted remixes from Nicki Minaj. And I have to ask, Nicki, was it worth working with an accused rapist in Dr. Luke with some of your laziest performances on record, or working with trash like 6ix9ine in your last desperate attempt to reach the top with ‘FEFE’? Was it worth your fans doxxing the @chartdata guy on Twitter? You know this isn’t going to last or happen again, right - and that’s why Nicki’s obsession with the numbers has been so revealing and so embarrassing. Because as I’ve said, the Billboard Hot 100 is a stat pad that’s kind of like money: it only has significance because we give it significance; but Nicki has never treated the numbers like that in public. She feels like, as the ‘best female rapper in the game’, she’s owed the accolades and stats to support it - like 50 Cent and DJ Khaled, she equates chart success with talent - so when the numbers haven’t delivered, they place her obsession with them in sharp relief, especially when she then tries to ‘expose’ all the tricks when they don’t go her way and yet not complain so much when they do. Now there have been a lot of suspicions that Nicki’s been chasing that #1 because of label drama and deals she’s been denied by not getting one, but let’s be real, she got there by gaming the system like damn near everyone else, not by ‘transcendent talent’. But it’ll be enough for the fans to ignore how Nicki’s music has been mediocre at best throughout the past decade, or how said fanbase now has roughly the same reputation as Tool fans if not worse, or how this might be the only #1 Nicki ever gets, and never one by herself! Compare this to ‘Savage’ by Megan Thee Stallion remixed with Beyonce at #2, which hasn’t peaked yet! Here’s where this gets funny: ‘Say So’ had to leverage massive sales and near-top radio performance to get to #1, whereas ‘Savage’ is a streaming monster and still rising, so when everything cools down next week, Megan will probably get her first #1 anyway - but let’s not talk about that yet, shall we? Now all of that makes the rest of the top 10 kind of tedious - ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd still rules the radio to hold #3, ‘Toosie Slide’ by Drake actually falls to #4 because despite good streaming and radio it’s not a dominant force, ‘The Box’ by Roddy Ricch held at #5 because it’s not losing slow enough to blunt its inertia, and ‘Don’t Start Now’ by Dua Lipa actually gained a spot to #6 despite losses across the board! Then we have ‘Pain 1993’ by Drake ft. Playboi Carti at #7 - we’ll get to talking about this later, but it’s here on streaming and won’t last - and to round things out, ‘Circles’ by Post Malone holds at #8 because the radio still loves it, ‘ROCKSTAR’ by DaBaby ft. Roddy Ricch rebounded at #9 on holding steady on streaming and a nice YouTube kick, and ‘Intentions’ by Justin Bieber ft. Quavo is still at #10 because despite sales losses, the radio hasn’t killed it yet.
On that topic, losers and dropouts, and because we have mulitple album bombs, we’ve got a lot of both. In the latter case, ‘ROXANNE’ by Arizona Zervas, ‘Heartless’ by The Weeknd, ‘HIGHEST IN THE ROOM’ by Travis Scott, and ‘10,000 Hours’ by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber all clinched their year-end list spot as they exited, while cutting both ‘Stupid Love’ by Lady Gaga and ‘That Way’ by Lil Uzi Vert short early - man, looks like Gaga got ‘Perfect Illusion’ part two here. But now we’ve got nearly a third of the Hot 100 losing, so let’s go through this from the top: of the debut to nobody’s surprise, ‘THE SCOTTS’ by Travis Scott and Kid Cudi fell to #12, ‘Righteous’ by Juice WRLD slid to 42, and ‘All In’ by Lil Baby fell to 59. Then we had the songs that kept losing like ‘More Hearts Than Mine’ by Ingrid Andress at 69, ‘JUMP’ by DaBaby and YoungBoy Never Broke Again at 83, and ‘Find My Way’ by DaBaby at 98. Then we had gains cut short like ‘Pu$$y Fairy’ by Jhene Aiko at 79, ‘OUT WEST’ by JACKBOYS ft. Young Thug at 77, and ‘If The World Was Ending’ by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels at 71 - it’ll rebound, we’re not saved from this yet. Then we have songs gracefully making their exit having clinched their spots: ‘Hot Girl Bummer’ by blackbear at 43, ‘Heart On Ice’ by Rod Wave at 46, ‘Ballin’ by Mustard and Roddy Ricch at 47, and ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I at 49; I guess you could probably through ‘Godzilla’ by Eminem ft. Juice WRLD, ‘you should be sad’ by Halsey, and maybe ‘Slide’ by H.E.R. and YG in there too. And the rest - oh god - ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ by Carly Pearce and Lee Brice at 50, ‘Level Of Concern’ by twenty one pilots at 60, ‘In Your Eyes’ by The Weeknd at 62, ‘Dior’ by the late Pop Smoke at 63, ‘Walk Em Down’ by NLE Choppa ft. Roddy Ricch at 67, ‘I Love Me’ by Demi Lovato at 70, ‘Yo Perreo Sola’ by Bad Bunny at 73, ‘Catch’ by Brett Young at 78, ‘BELIEVE IT’ by PARTYNEXTDOOR and Rihanna at 80, ‘Slow Dance In A Parking Lot’ by Jordan Davis at 90, ‘Homemade’ by Jake Owen at 92, ‘Be A Light’ by Thomas Rhett and others at 95, ‘Come Thru’ by Summer Walker and Usher at 97, 'and ‘Turks’ by NAV, Gunna and Travis Scott at 91 - my expectation is that this might rebound next week, so yeah, stay tuned…
Now like most album bomb weeks, we didn’t get much in the way of gains here - ‘Party Girl’ by StayStrong Rocky got a boost to 64 - I blame TikTok - and ‘Emotionally Scarred’ by Lil Baby got a boost riding the deluxe album pickup to 56, which I’d argue also accounts for ‘Heatin Up’ with Gunna and ‘Grace’ with 42 Dugg reentering the chart at 96 and 88. Unfortunately that doesn’t count as a full-fledged album bomb there, so the songs that fall out of my range are basically three cuts from Drake: ‘War’ at 52, ‘Losses’ at 51, and ‘From Florida With Love’ at 45. And the rest…
Well, our list of new arrivals will take a while to get to Drake, starting instead with…
100. ‘Don’t Rush’ by Young T & Bugsey ft. Headie One - so I’ll admit I’ve been dismissive of songs that have blown up on TikTok, especially when you can tell they’re underwritten or barely formed beyond a hook - it was my big issue with a lot of Vine hits back in the day - but the flipside to all of this is if they actually launch acts that are outside of the American mainstream, that could be really cool. And hence we have this: a rap song from the U.K. six months ago! So the main duo is Young T & Bugsey - they’ve blown up over the past year, they dropped their debut in March of this year, and this is actually their second biggest song in the U.K. thus far, collaborating with UK drill artist Headie One. And while I can’t say this is unique - there’s a lot of brand name flexing and trying to pick up a girl as they brag about their come-up - and I won’t say anyone here as a ton of personality or charisma like Skepta or Stormzy, they don’t really embarrass themselves either. Granted, part of this song is pushed through UK slang to which I’m not really familiar, but the groove here is good too - the bassy echo and textured clank of the percussion off the vocal sample is minimalist, but not in a way that feels undercooked. So yeah, I don’t really expect this to last beyond the meme and challenge… but it’s fine while it’s here, I’ll take it.
87. ‘One Margarita’ by Luke Bryan - you know, I can argue the hidden winner of the charts this week is actually Kenny Chensey of all people - he wound up beating Drake with his newest beach party of an album, which does surprise me given how nobody’s outside! I guess folks are looking for escapism, which is likely why Luke Bryan is trying to rip him off here with the rubbery acoustics and touches of organ as he’s trying to make a smoldering beach drinking anhem. And look, it’s not bad: the production is more organic than Bryan’s normally is, and I’m usually a fan of the swampy electric guitar and bass tones… but note the word ‘swampy’, which doesn’t really match up with the brighter, sandy textures that make the best beach anthems. And this isn’t surprising because Luke Bryan’s production has been sounding overworked and slapdash for years now - it sounds like he’s trying to reverse-engineer the formula to making a beach song and thus the effort shows through on what should sound effortless. Now granted, he’s certainly done a lot worse, but if this is Luke Bryan’s later career pivot, Kenny Chesney has nothing to worry about.
86. ‘Humble’ by Lil Baby - first off, Kendrick did the song title more justice, and secondly, why on earth is Lil Baby trying to convince us he’s humble when through his entire career he’s been bragging and flexing against a chipmunked sample before we drop into an overweight trap clunker where the bass and vocals sound really sloppily mastered? Hell, he’s flexing on most of this song, in between complaining about getting betrayed amidst the constant grind and lines about how he hopes he has a daughter so he’ll ‘see women differently’ - uh, you can do that without having a child, Lil Baby! But like most modern Lil Baby songs, it just sounds flat and really forgettable, especially with his run-on sentence flow. And on that note…
81. ‘Low Down’ by Lil Baby - another bass knock with trap percussion, limited melody and sloppy mixing, and Lil Baby droning through even more bragging to prove humility is out the window, where the general mood seems to be surprise that all of his success is piling up - I share that emotion, even as if he talks about taking my girl and giving her a facial as he now says he’s sick of strippers and is going after medical professionals! And outside of a weird Dora The Explorer reference, it’s nothing remotely memorable or interesting - but speaking of his newfound interest in medical professionals…
65. ‘Social Distancing’ by Lil Baby - might as well say this: I’m already sick of “quarantine music” - we already have ‘Level Of Concern’ and that Uncommon Nasa EP, I don’t think we need any more, especially not from Lil Baby, who is using social distancing as a metaphor for how much further he is from his competition and as an excuse to drink more lean as his flow clashes in a really unpleasant way with what sounded like a really promising melody, and that’s before we tack on the usual bad mixing and mastering! Coupled with comparing his crew to apes and gorillas - not gonna touch that one - and a lot more boring flexing as he runs through women… yeah, not only is this instantly dated, off the initial tune I thought this had potential, and thus I’m a lot more annoyed that it’s crap - next!
61. ‘We Paid’ by Lil Baby & 42 Dugg - Lil Baby keeps trying to put on this 42 Dugg guy, and I’ve stopped caring somehow has the worst percussion mixing off wonky chords where the faux operatic vocals don’t match how blown out the autotuned vocals are! And for what - more by the numbers brand name flexing, screwing girls, and shooting people? If there was some vestige of wit or flair to their delivery or any sense this felt like it meant something to anyone involved I might get it, but this sounds bored - trying to be dark, it’s just lifeless. And crap, that too - next!
58. ‘Six Feet Apart’ by Luke Combs - oh god Luke, I just said I didn’t want any more quarantine songs, even if you were to do it well, you’re already pushing ‘Does To Me’ and that’s a great song, you don’t start rolling out the new single this early! That said… this is actually pretty good - organic percussion, a mostly distinctive melody that’s blended well, a good hook, and hey, it’s Brent Cobb cowriting so that helps flesh out the homespun detail I like from both of them! And I do appreciate how world-weary Luke Combs sounds - he doesn’t know how long any of this is going to last and he’s bored, but optimistic and looking for when this’ll be over, while reflecting how it might just change his routine in little ways. So yeah, pretty understated for this sort of one-off single, but if more quarantine songs were like this, I’d probably like them more. Good stuff.
39. ‘Landed’ by Drake - alright, five Drake songs ahead, so start with a lot of runny synth blending opposite the trap beat and Drake sounding oddly out of breath with his adlibs as he runs through flexing, some messy tension with an old flame, and implications he’s been traveling around. Honestly, it’s just kind of undercooked, all about sticking the landing but I’m not sure much has taken off - kind of a throwaway in every sense of the word.
35. ‘When To Say When’ by Drake - you know, this was actually one of the moments I was hoping would work - I’m not the biggest fan of the Kanye-esque chipmunked sample but I like when Drake gets into his more structured, free-flowing raps and this at first seems like a good one. Yeah, it’s still paranoid but feels a little more secure and cognizant of his failings the past couple of years, and I don’t mind the flip in the second half of the song as he starts drilling into the haters who can’t repeat their flash of success without Drake’s cosign, especially when there are a whole lot who will compromise in order to preserve a false relationship. I’d say all of this connects… until Drake outright says he has their girls begging for him upstairs in his house and he’s taunting those guys to ‘say when’, and all of that cultivated dignity he was going for is out the window. So yeah, promising tune, ugly ending - next!
34. ‘Demons’ by Drake ft. Fivio Foreign & Sosa Geek - am I the only one naturally suspicious of any unfamiliar name that shows up on a Drake feature, if only because the odds are stacked against them that their career will survive? For those who don’t know - and I include myself before this song - Fivio Foreign and Sosa Geek both seem to be part of the rising New York drill scene, so it looks like Drake has found his newest sound to sample and drop his UK hip-hop accent over. And the odd thing is that it’s not bad - I like the vocal swell against the heavier knock of the beat and the splinters of percussion, Drake can play a faded and moody flex well, and the hook is good… but then we have our two guest rappers. And while the stop-start flow seems to be a thing in New York drill, it sounds really forced and awkward - not terrible when Fivio Foreign tries it but really clunky when Sosa Geek does. They’re also the sort of cosigns where you can tell both of them are eagerly name-dropping Drake and it feels really forced, especially as I get the feeling it’s not gonna lead to a lot down the line. In other words… kind of patchy, there was potential for this to work… shame it kind of doesn’t.
32. ‘Deep Pockets’ by Drake - apparently Drake recorded this as a throwaway from the Scorpion-era - and instead of throwing it away like nearly everything from that era, he dropped it here with its fuzzy warbling shouts and leaden percussion that doesn’t blend well with Drake’s voice. A few have compared it to Nothing Was The Same-era Drake, but that had a level of gloss and care this doesn’t, where he’s musing about his come-up again with the faded spectre of violence and old crimes as he now stacks a different kind of cash… and I wish this did more than capture a flickering mood, or didn’t focus so much on Drake’s envy management for other people. I dunno, I don’t think this is bad - hell, I’d probably take over a fair few cuts on Scorpion - but I get why it was cut. Again, kind of just a throwaway.
30. ‘Time Flies’ by Drake - given how the majority of Drake songs and albums seem like they go on forever, him saying that time flies is at least somewhat ironic, especially against a song that’s basically just leaden bass, distant fuzzy synth, and a clicking trap beat. And yet that’s all he really needs here, because again, I don’t think this is bad - not unfamiliar as Drake is lurking outside this girl’s place and he’s hoping something can connect given he’s bored and lonely and misses her… but seems just realistic enough to know that’s not something that can happen. And when he starts actually singing on his second verse before the song starts fracturing, there are a few really good lines: ‘you believe in angles more than angels’, that fits well. For Drake in his R&B lane, of course he’s done more and better, but this is a lot better than I expected; good stuff.
29. ‘Be Kind’ by Marshmello & Halsey - I think the perception is that I dislike both of these artists, but if I’m being honest, it’s more that I find them vastly overhyped by a larger audience who’ll settle for an approximation of competence rather than anything else. So I was expecting a lot of mediocrity with this… and I’m pleasantly surprised, because this is actually pretty good! There are problems with it - Marshmello still puts too much compression on vocals and I’m not sure playing the hurt/comfort mold is a natural fit for Halsey, but she’s competent in making a generally pretty song with good keys, a solid groove, and guitar touches that don’t feel oversold. More to the point, Marshmello actually got the hell out of the way here so his flattened one-note drop doesn’t make this sound interchangeable! Granted, Halsey had a song like this back in 2017 - it was called ‘Strangers’ with Lauren from Fifth Harmony, and this is not better than that - but on the list of Halsey singles actually shipped to radio, this is pretty good, I’ll take it.
27. ‘Desires’ by Drake ft. Future - so I’ve been familiar with this song for a while, basically because I listen to the Joe Budden Podcast and they had a lot of fun with this song’s rampant toxicity, of which I have very mixed emotions. I know I’ve cultivated a reputation of having a moralistic streak in the music I like, but the larger truth is it’s all based on how you sell it; I don’t hate ‘Hot Girl Bummer’ by blackbear because it’s toxic, but because it’s pathetic in selling it but trying to frame it with real emotion. And that’s linked to my issues with this song - it’s creepy that Drake talks about stashing girls in the middle of nowhere to curtail their desires, but when you match it with the rote synth work and the flat trap beat and Future trying to play both lovestruck and dismissive, and then an influx of bad lines from Drake, it’s clumsy in the wrong way. ‘How you go vegan but still beefin’ with me’ is a bad line that’s all the more ugly when Drake gets controling and concern-trolls about her travelling before a third verse of projection and gaslighting! At least he’s somewhat aware part of this is his own fault, but that doesn’t excuse it - at the end of the day, it’s got the icky vibe only for guys with too much money and not enough problems, aka Joe Budden. Next!
25. ‘Not You Too’ by Drake ft. Chris Brown - …you realize you don’t have to keep propping up Chris Brown’s career, right Drake? The only reason he had a mediocre hit last year was you, and the hilarious thing is that I think Drake gets that, because Chris Brown only provides backing vocals that are so low and drowned at the back behind the trap skitter and bare loop that you can’t barely hear him if you’re not paying attention! And look, I tend to like Drake singing and he doesn’t sound bad here - but man, he’s got to try a lot harder than this underwritten piece to get me to care about getting betrayed by a girl, especially as the vibe of the song has him being magnanimous and letting her back in, even as he’s going to guilt trip her for it. I guess I do hear what could work with its very spare, lonely vibe… but I’m not going to say it does.
19. ‘D4L’ by Drake, Future & Young Thug - so let me get this straight: to flesh out this tracklist of throwaways, we got a remix of a Dreezy and 2 Chainz song… and you didn’t get either of them to contribute? Likely better than whatever yammering nonsense we’d get from Young Thug or Future, which is more sloppily mixed trap complete with tacked on airhorn squeals, brand name porn, and some of the worst sounding percussion I’ve heard this week - including from Lil Baby! And even if you can call it a hype anthem, it’s messy as hell - all Young Thug contributes is adlibs and parts of the hook, Future’s third verse doesn’t know how to start properly, and even if I can see this going off, it’s some of the most lazy work from everyone here. Disposable - next!
14. ‘Chicago Freestyle’ by Drake - I’ve seen some people try to connect this song to some of Drake’s other ‘time in certain cities’ songs, and I don’t think that works at all. For one, they tend to be well-written and occasionally thought-provoking, whereas outside of Giveon doing a nice Sampha impression opposite the piano before the bare-bones trap beat slides in, probably the most interesting thing about this lyrically is Drake interpolating Eminem’s ‘Superman’, a song very much of its time in sound and subject matter. But I don’t mind how Drake flips it here - an endless stream of cities, trying to call the numbers of the girls in each, but with some regret knowing it’ll never last and he’ll be left lonely and drunk on the runway. It actually comes together for what this is, and while I do find it a little underproduced and fractured, I probably would call this decent enough… unlike…
7. ‘Pain 1993’ by Drake ft. Playboi Carti - let’s be brutally honest: Drake got Playboi Carti on this for the memes and nothing else. He knows how to read and exploit the internet and Carti’s recent flare-up of controversy thanks to the Uzi fight, that’s the only reason he’s here. Hell, I would say Drake is doing Carti’s shit even better - his flow is structured against the more layered production from Pi’erre that actually sounds pretty good thanks to the Toro y Moi sample, and even if the majority of the song is mindless flexing, Drake can brag better than most people - like how he bribes police officers! Of course, I would say that if he didn’t reference Kawhi Leonard with just enough bitterness for me to realize it still stings him he couldn’t convince him to stay in Toronto last year… and then there’s Playboi Carti, who can’t stay on flow and somehow sounds worse than normal, unable to translate his yelping delivery into something smoother and cooler, and he just sounds awkward. Even the fans of Carti weren’t really on-board with this, and if that’s not a mark against his shelf-life and meme on what could have been a much better song, I don’t know what is.
But that was our week… long as hell, but not quite as terrible as I was expecting to be brutally honest? Hell, Drake was close to getting the best of the week with ‘Chicago Freestyle’ or ‘Time Flies’… but I’m actually going to give him a three-way tie along with Halsey and Marshmello and ‘Be Kind’ as the Honourable Mention while Luke Combs gets the best of the week for ‘Six Feet Apart’, which is the least flawed and most consistently produced of the songs here. Worst of the week is actually much simpler: ‘Social Distancing’ by Lil Baby easily gets that, and ‘Desires’ by Drake ft. Future gets the Dishonourable Mention, if only because at this point of his career, Drake can be a lot better at being this toxic. Next week, providing we don’t get a NAV album bomb, we’ll see the fallout, so stay tuned!