billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 9, 2020

You ever have those weeks where you wind up surprised, but you really shouldn’t be? Yeah, maybe call this looking past everything because I expected a cooldown, but I’d argue the Hot 100 was more chaotic this week than the last, and with another godforsaken Drake album bomb likely coming, it’s not going to make this easier. But seriously, another minor album bomb from YoungBoy Never Broke Again, even more single releases…

And, of course, a new #1, which takes us to our top ten and that new song: ‘THE SCOTTS’ by Travis Scott and Kid Cudi. Yes, I knew this song existed, but I honestly didn’t think it’d pick up much traction beyond a smattering of fan support. Apparently I was very wrong, because riding that huge Fortnite concert Travis Scott put on, this went to the top with huge sales, huge streaming, huge YouTube… and absolutely no radio. So in other words, it’s not holding the top spot, especially against a Drake release, but I’m not going to deny how significant this is: it proves Travis can go to #1 off the jump, and this is Kid Cudi’s first ever #1 - hell, it’s his first top ten hit since ‘Day N’ Nite’! Now I attribute at least a part of this success to ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd not exactly being an incredibly dominant song, as it fell to #2 with losses across the board; even the radio started dripping away, which indicates this might have peaked already. Hell, that could be coming true for ‘Toosie Slide’ by Drake too, which might be bound for #1 thanks to what’s coming, but for now despite an absurd radio run, it’s not really dominant on streaming or sales in the same way. Frankly, I’d put more money on the success of ‘Savage’ by Megan Thee Stallion, which recently got a remix with Beyonce but even before that is at #4, riding a considerable search across the board. This pushed back ‘The Box’ by Roddy Ricch to #5, which seems to be fading naturally on streaming and hit its peak on the radio… which may also be the case for ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat down to #6, which also got a big remix with Nicki Minaj which’ll boost its radio, but it hasn’t really produced the same spike in sales and streaming you’d expect to shore up its weaknesses. That’s not being done for ‘Don’t Start Now’ by Dua Lipa sliding to #7, but I’m not surprised: all it really has is radio and that’s not built to last forever, which might be true for ‘Circles’ by Post Malone too down at #8 as it fades even more. I’d like to say that’s true for ‘Intentions’ by Justin Bieber ft. Quavo at #9, but even as radio growth is slowing, it lost a step because it got overtaken, and only didn’t loose more because ‘Adore You’ by Harry Styles collapsed to #10 as its radio is now in freefall.

On that note, losers and dropouts… and I’ll admit I was surprised here again. Yes, ‘BOP’ by DaBaby clinched its year end spot and finally we’re rid of ‘No Guidance’ by Chris Brown and Drake, but along with ‘Tusa’ by Karol G and Nicki Minaj falling away yet again, ‘BEST ON EARTH’ by Russ & Bia hit its twenty weeks and fell off, and from the looks of things it’ll miss the year-end list - thank god! Anyway, our losers are much more predictable, most of them linked to DaBaby’s album bomb fading: ‘NASTY’ with Ashanti Megan Thee Stallion sliding to 96, ‘Find My Way’ losing all of its gains to 67, and ‘JUMP’ with YoungBoy Never Broke Again dipping to 58. Then we have the expected dropoff for ‘More Hearts Than Mine’ by Ingrid Andress to 43 and the continued collapse of ‘Stupid Love’ by Lady Gaga at 61 - man, that’s underperforming - but what’s more telling is the sharp drop for ‘I’m Ready’ by Sam Smith and Demi Lovato at 63 - you’re really sure you want to scrap the previous album rollout and run with this, Sam Smith… really?

Now the larger story comes in our gains and returns, and there were a lot of them rushing to fill in the gaps or capitalize on momentum. In the latter category, that means ‘B.S.’ by Jhene Aiko and H.E.R. is back at 93, but also ‘Underdog’ by Alicia Keys at 94 and ‘I Love My Country’ by Florida Georgia Line at 95. And Travis Scott rode his big virtual concert wave with ‘HIGHEST IN THE ROOM’ surging back to 38 and even ‘goosebumps’ at 49, a song I still really like to this day! And I wish I could be as positive about our gains - yes, ‘Pu$$y Fairy’ by Jhene Aiko back at 64, ‘After A Few’ by Travis Denning rising to 44, and ‘Does to Me’ by Luke Combs and Eric Church continuing to 30 are good news - I’ll even stick up for ‘Savage’ by Megan Thee Stallion breaking into the top ten and ‘Bluebird’ by Miranda Lambert getting an unexpected boost to 70. But the rest of these… for one, I’m surprised ‘God Whispered Your Name’ by Keith Urban caught a boost to 81 and ‘Here And Now’ by Kenny Chesney getting up to 73 - it’ll be up more next week - but it’s at least better than Don Toliver’s ‘After Party’ up to 78, or ‘Ride It’ by DJ Regard at 80. Then we have 'Emotionally Scarred’ by Lil Baby being pushed as a single to 71, ‘OUT WEST’ by JACKBOYS and Young Thug refusing to go away at 60, ‘Supalonely’ by BENEE and Gus Dapperton at 48, and ‘Beer Can’t Fix’ by Thomas Rhett and Jon Pardi at 40. But I want to highlight a cluster of awful that’s been slowly rising and it’s all really bad: ‘If The World Was Ending’ by JP Saxe ft. Julia Michaels at 59, ‘Heartless’ by Diplo and Morgan Wallen at 57, and ‘Sunday Best’ by Surfaces all the way at 28 - again, two of these I called potentially being big, and this is a prediction I really don’t want to come true…

That being said, how much any of it survives Drake next week is open to debate, and since we have a hefty list of new arrivals - YoungBoy Never Broke Again didn’t quite have enough for the album bomb, more’s the pity - let’s get started with…

99. ‘Thug Of Spades’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again ft. DaBaby - I mean, it’s just returning the favour, right? Shame it’s not as good as ‘JUMP’, mostly because for some ungodly reason YoungBoy decided to dispense with any coherent flow and let DaBaby take over most of the song, which actually seems to have an emotional throughline and take itself a bit more seriously… until DaBaby says people are comparing him to Tupac… uh, no, not even close. What frustrates me is that it’s a song that’s trying to be aspirational, or at least defensive about the successes they’ve had… until it just defaults into default gunplay and flexing against below average production, where the bass is leaden and the synths sound painfully chintzy, especially on the outro. So yeah, not a good start nor a good sign for the rest of this.

97. ‘Drinking Alone’ by Carrie Underwood - well, about time she started pushing this. Now I’ve said I didn’t really like Carrie Underwood’s last project from 2018, but this was one of the better songs and I stand by that. It’s not great by any means - the percussion and guitar mastering is really tinny in the upper register and there’s too much compression on the whole thing, which doesn’t help the bassy vintage touches flatter the mix at all, and it all feels claustrophobic, which is about the last thing you should want for her voice… but with better production, this might have been workable. For one, it plays into sour, lonely bitterness pretty effectively, especially for how much this hookup is probably going to be kind of lousy, and not only can she sell it, but there’s enough detail in the writing to make it feel real. If this song was produced competently, it’d be one of her better hits in a long time… as it is, just good. It should be great, though.

92. ‘Rough Ryder’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - back to YoungBoy for a bit, and for a second I thought this was a tribute to that late 90s hip-hop collective that had DMX and The LOX. Sadly, it’s not - that might have been competently structured beyond the generic trap skitter and pileup of flows as YoungBoy tries to force his awkward delivery into a lot of threatening gunplay. It might be better mixed than the last cut, but between YoungBoy forcing or outright dropping rhymes and imitating Young Thug at his least interesting, this song feels really unfocused and lacking potency, not helped by the liquid guitar that’s better suited for a Rod Wave song. It just sounds like a mess, and not even an interesting one - next!

90. ‘Bout My Business’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again ft. Sherhonda Gaulden - the album opener from YoungBoy where he actually got his mother to support him for a verse here on a song supposedly dedicated to his grandparents who came up from the bottom… which is why it’s such a disappointment that YoungBoy defaults to questioning some girl’s loyalty as he wants to start killing people again. Hell, I think his mom sounds okay in her verse - the flow is more basic, but it’s got structure and stays on topic, which in comparison with YoungBoy’s haphazard diction that has him say ‘I watched my grandpa save pennies’ but come out like ‘I watched my grandpa say penis’, it’s a jarring contrast! That said, the production off the pianos and more spare snap beat is fine, even if I think YoungBoy’s voice is way too loud in the mix… I get the feeling this song is going to be remembered for the wrong reasons, unfortunately.

86. ‘Diamonds’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - you know, at least when YoungBoy talks about his guns and shooting people there’s some sense of drama, whereas him flexing luxury brands, like usual, is boring as tar. To his credit, he’s at least trying to be a bit more focused on reflecting on his past come-up before shooting more haters and then cramming in a few bars about loving someone… and again, not only has he hammered this ground before, even if the pianos are fluttery and pretty the really ugly vocal mixing is not doing him any favours! So no, YoungBoy, this does not ‘motivate my soul’ - if anything, given how often you want to shoot people, I’m not it could.

84. ‘Party Girl’ by StaySolid Rocky - hey look, amidst all the mediocre trap from YoungBoy we’ve got a mediocre trap song from a nobody, really breaks up the monotony here! And in this case, it seems like he only has the one song, which blew up on TikTok because of course it did… and at first I thought it might be okay - piano line sounds okay, the vocals were monotonous but that can work if the hook clicked… and then the bass came in and swamped out everything. And while I get why this got popular off the hook alone, you dig into the one verse about this girl… and he’s saying ‘she’s boo’ed up off the meth’. I dunno, dude, maybe her blowing you off the entire song might be a good thing if she’s on meth and still likes drugs and guns! So yeah, there are songs that catch on TikTok where I get the staying power… I don’t think this has it.

83. ‘Ain’t Easy’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again - and let’s round out the YoungBoy songs with what at least sounds like the best produced cut here? Seriously, even if the beat is overweight and flooding the mix, the jittery piano, bass, and guitar have okay interplay, this could have some promise… until we’re stuck with YoungBoy bringing out more threats amidst the brand name flexing and screwing girls. And I’ve got two comments here: one, it’s hard to buy into your lonely angst when you consistently rotate through women almost dispassionately, and two, if this is your comeback for a reason… for one, you weren’t gone for that long, and for another, what reason? Everything I’ve covered here is not as developed nor as interesting as he’s been in the past, and most of the production is just cribbed from Rod Wave. And while I’ve been predicting YoungBoy would exhaust his audience, with his album bombs getting less and less traction, the overexposure might do it for him, especially without real growth in content or delivery or sound. Even if this is his best this week, it’s still mediocre - next!

68. ‘Cool Again’ by Kane Brown - desperate times where I’m stuck looking forward to a new Kane Brown song of all things in between all the forgettable trap… and wow, that was a mistake on that stuttering guitar melody alone! This is the point where I’m reminded that Kane Brown’s brand of pop country comes with some really ugly overproduction, like the tropical stutter of percussion opposite the trap skitter and the awkward autotune dropped onto the bridge, and a sandy feel to the hook that’s trying to be breezy but that Kane Brown is delivering with no passion whatsoever. I guess that might be appropriate, given how the entire song is an extended reminiscence about some girl from the previous summer that he wishes to now be cool with… but man, it feels blase and undercooked; Kane Brown might be questioning where things went wrong, but I’m more confused what the hell happened in the first place. But now Kane Brown has come out to say it’s more about things going back to the way they were pre-pandemic, which feels like one hell of a stretch to try and make this relevant. But even if it was… man, it would not be good.

65. ‘Sasuke’ by Lil Uzi Vert - okay, I have to ask: Uzi, what are you doing? You put out entirely too much forgettable mediocrity not that long ago, and then in the midst of a beef with Playboi Carti where I think everyone lost, you push this? The one thing I can say for it is that the production is pretty - ghostly backing melody behind pretty standard percussion - but emphasized above everything is Uzi doing a Carti impression and just confirming how goddamn annoying both of their voices really are! What’s frustrating is that Uzi has proven he can rap, he doesn’t need to double down on formless adlibs and mindless repetition of brand names and girls sucking his dick with no teeth. And it’s a bit rich for him to say that Carti’s biting him when Uzi has been co-opting flows and styles from plenty of other rappers the past five years! But the biggest problem is similar to what I heard on Eternal Atake - after a while, the flex just gets really tedious, and that happens within the confines of the song here - the most interesting thing is probably the Naruto reference, and even then it feels barely explored. So yeah, this is bad for everyone involved - next!

45. ‘All In’ by Lil Baby - hey folks, for some ungodly reason did you want to hear more Lil Baby from that last album? Welp, he’s got a deluxe edition coming and this is a single from it - and look, I’ve never liked this guy, so am I supposed be interested in more newfound flexing where his flow barely connected and rhymes, followed by him saying his haters have ‘women tendencies’ - yeah, if that was an insult, I’m fairly certain a rapper like Megan Thee Stallion could turn you to lunchmeat, especially when on your second verse you’re interpolating ‘Thotiana’! And for a song about going hard or ‘all in’, you’d think the production would give him something, beyond your utterly standard trap beat, clunky autotune, and spare synth atmospherics. It sounds incredibly undercooked. In other words, to me it just exposes that upcoming ‘deluxe’ album as an obvious cash grab that will probably do more to overexpose him as well… charming, because this isn’t good.

11. ‘Righteous’ by Juice WRLD - well, this was only a matter of time. I knew we’d be getting the posthumous Juice WRLD projects sooner rather than later given that every remix with him on it has overperformed, but I still had no interest in hearing it; I wasn’t a fan, he’d put out a lot of bad music, I had no expectations this would be good. And… it’s actually alright. Yeah, this is fine - the dreamy guitar layering, the more lethargic feel that the trap skitters work into pretty wel, it’s certainly sounds better produced than a lot of Juice WRLD songs, and the content actually works for the vibe. It falls into the limited vein of Juice WRLD songs I actually liked, which were more about trying to coast out of the misery that came with drug abuse and inner demons, where all the flexing isn’t helping, and this song captures that well. Now it’s not really going deeper than just the experience - and it does pick up a lot of haunted context given his passing - but unlike most of XXXTENTACION’s posthumous work, this feels like a song Juice WRLD actuallly fully completed before he passed away. Hell, if he had released more stuff like this, I might have wound up liking him more… so yeah, good song.

1. ‘THE SCOTTS’ by Travis Scott & Kid Cudi - and now we have our new #1, the big breakthrough I’ve been hyping this entire video… and seriously, this is it? And yes, this is near identical to the reaction I had when ‘HIGHEST IN THE ROOM’ went to #1, but I think it’s valid: it’s two verses with pretty standard flexing content that serves more to hype up the collab rather than add detail, there’s no hook, and while the outro sounds pretty kickass with the cascades of gummy synthesizers, that doesn’t compensate for most of the rest of the song sounding really offkilter and flat in the background - hell, some of the synthesized guitar pickup sounds like it’s in the process of dying altogether. It feels more like an intro or transitional passage than a full song, riding on a promise of more than what it actually delivers as we get glassy trap flutters off the leaden bass. I mean, in comparison with the rest of this week it sounds okay, but as I said before, this is a song riding hype more than sustainability, and if it loses the #1 pretty quickly, I won’t be surprised.

And that’s the week… man, two weeks in a row of flat garbage, my god. The worst… you’d think ‘Sasuke’ by Lil Uzi Vert would get it, but ‘Cool Again’ by Kane Brown is the song I’d argue is the most worthless here, so Uzi only gets the Dishonourable Mention. Whereas for the best… I’m going to go with ‘Drinking Alone’ by Carrie Underwood for the Honourable Mention - if the production was good, it’d have the top spot, but that’s actually going to ‘Righteous’ by the late Juice WRLD; hey, it’s a good song. Next week, we get entirely too much Drake, so strap in, folks…