billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 19, 2020

You ever encounter those weeks where you expected there to be a lot more chaos… and then things wound up being normal? Yeah, that’s this week - it almost seemed like it was resetting to be less weird than usual, with only a small album bomb from Big Sean and nothing from 6ix9ine - guess the Soundcloud waifu and his meme are finally played out, thank god, especially with more of his tricks being exposed and removed; good.

Anyway, we’ll start in the top 10 here, where to no surprise, ‘WAP’ by Cardi B ft. Megan Thee Stallion returned to #1 - the streaming and YouTube are enormous, the radio run is still moving, and it even had a bit of a sales recovery. It didn’t come close to the colossal sales that ‘Dynamite’ by BTS had at #2, but when your radio run starts to stall out and your streaming falls off, you’re not going to hold the #1. But holding at #3 we have ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’ by Drake ft. Lil Durk because streaming is supporting its own radio run despite weak sales - I still think depending on how well streaming traction holds, this might be a contender for longer than people want. Then we have ‘ROCKSTAR’ by DaBaby ft. Roddy Ricch at #4, which pretty much got a last-ditch boost thanks to the radio while its streaming continues to slide away, which is not an escape given to ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd somehow holding at #5 despite losing everywhere. What I’d argue is a stronger contender is ‘Mood’ by 24kGoldn and iann dior up to #6 - streaming is rock solid, sales are there, and it’s currently on one hell of a radio run, I’ve been saying it for a while now, but this is a major contender! Blew right past ‘Watermelon Sugar’ by Harry Styles at #7 - not surprising, as a good sales week can’t prop up radio instability - and ‘WHATS POPPIN’ by Jack Harlow and crew at #8, which might be stable on streaming but spent the week wavering on the radio with questionable sales. Then we have ‘Savage Love’ by Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo, and I’m still waiting for this song to make a move that’s not happening - the sales are there and it’s on a radio run, but the streaming keeps holding this back - perplexing. Finally, thanks to the video we have a re-entry into the top 10: ‘POPSTAR’ by DJ Khaled ft. Drake, which might have given just enough of a sales boost to match the song’s considerable streaming and quietly really strong radio - yeah, that kind of snuck up on me, I’ll admit it.

Anyway, losers and dropouts - and there were a few big ones in the latter category, specifically in country with ‘Done’ by Chris Janson, ‘I Love My Country’ by Florida Georgia Line, ‘God Whispered Your Name’ by Keith Urban and ‘Be a Light’ by Thomas Rhett and crew making their expected exits. Now our losers were a split between songs that are just continuing to fall off - ‘Need It’ by Migos and YoungBoy Never Broke Again at 99, ‘Why We Drink’ by Justin Moore at 93, ‘my future’ by Billie Eilish at 90, and ‘7 Summers’ by Morgan Wallen just crashing at 72 - what astroturf was behind this song initially, I have to ask - and songs that dropoffs from their debut. And that group includes ‘Ice Cream’ by BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez at 49, ‘Starting Over’ by Chris Stapleton at 83, and ‘Over Now’ by Calvin Harris and The Weeknd at 78 - actually, not a great week for The Weeknd, as ‘Smile’ with the late Juice WRLD also fell to 74. Beyond that… ‘One Margarita’ by Luke Bryan is making its expected exit at 56 - it’ll have its year-end list spot - and ‘Kacey Talk’ by YoungBoy Never Broke Again to 87, which I expect will rebound if YoungBoy sees the album bomb success I suspect he’ll get from next week.

Now our gains and returns did feel a bit weird this week - ‘Do It’ by Chloe x Halle got a really big remix with Doja Cat, City Girls and Mulatto so that probably took it back to 63, but our gains are mostly continuations of established traction. I’ve already mentioned the rebound for ‘Popstar’, but then we have ‘One Of Them Girls’ by Lee Brice at 22, quietly becoming on the mainstream Hot 100 his biggest hit, followed by ‘Lemonade’ by Internet Money, Gunna, Don Toliver and NAV at 38 for being inexplicably popular - I don’t get it, but I have friends who like it - and ‘ily’ by surf mesa and Emilee at 59 because breezy radio filler. Outside of that… yeah, ‘Breaking Me’ by Topic and A7S got its boost to 60 and ‘One Beer’ by HARDY, Lauren Alaina and Devin Dawson got a spike to 57, but I want to talk about ‘More Than My Hometown’ by Morgan Wallen at 53 - yes, this has radio support and sales, but the fact that Morgan Wallen’s mostly stable radio success and the fascinating dropoff of ‘7 Summers’ gives me the impression that someone tried to work TikTok and other tricks to give that song an artificial shot of life that doesn’t represent his true popularity, which is probably more in line with ‘Chasing You’ and ‘More Than My Hometown’ - and yet for a few weeks, Morgan Wallen was the talk of so many country outlets because of that unexpected burst and probably got himself way more free publicity as the ‘next big thing’. I’ll give credit to Wallen’s promo team for pulling this off - this was a trick that worked on a lot of folks, and those of us closer to the grassroots should be aware when this happens, because it will happen again, and the song will likely not be as good.

One quick thing to mention before we get into the new arrivals, though: as of this week, Billboard has rolled out their Global Hot 200, a list of songs aggregated across the world. A few things to note here: I’m not sure what the recurrent rules are, if they even exist, and while it contains sales, streaming, and YouTube, but it doesn’t seem like it has radio in any capacity, so that means specific genres reliant on that format are going to be hedged out. What concerns me is that given a lot of stream-farming and YouTube botting is done worldwide to juice numbers but often filtered when considering just the Hot 100, I’m curious how Billboard and those other platforms accommodated for that, otherwise it could be skewed. Nevertheless, this is a chart I’ll be watching and tracking for my personal records, but I won’t be covering on a daily basis - this MAY change in the next Billboard year, because the United States does not run everything and as a Canadian I wouldn’t mind a global perspective here, but to me that’ll be dependent on how much fluctuation the chart experiences, which will take some time to observe.

Right, with that, onto our new arrivals, starting with…

97. ‘Why Would I Stop?’ by Big Sean - So we got five Big Sean songs debuting this week, most of which are the first cuts off the album and the one song that got a video - and if this isn’t the warning shot that making bloated albums aren’t the guarantee for massive chart debuts, unless you are a top shelf megastar - and Big Sean has never been this - overloading your album to stream troll only makes it worse. And it’s those missteps that makes Big Sean playing the ‘effortless braggin card’ all the more hard to ignore, especially off that warped wiry guitar, drowned out airhorn, and his triplet flows on a pretty rote trap beat. Now to his credit, there’s a lot of subtle wordplay across each bar here that has shown Big Sean improving - the problem is that once you get past it, there’s not much else that really punches in a higher weight class - a lot of paranoia, keeping it in the family, a few passing references to other, better songs from other, better artists… and outside of that, it’s an intro… and not one of his more interesting ones either.

96. ‘Everywhere But On’ by Matt Stell - this is one of those cases where the b- and c-list men in Nashville country have done a really poor job differentiating themselves, because while I remembered ‘Prayed For You’ existed from last year, I couldn’t recall much about the song or Matt Stell. Apparently this is his follow-up, also from the same EP that had his first hit - well over a year after the EP, so nice job capitalizing on momentum - and while I do not think this is precisely bad, I can see exactly why it’d be just as forgettable. The blend of drum machines and live drums with the cymbals being louder than damn near everything in the mix, a not particularly distinctive vocal presence or guitar line, where even the solo seems a little suffocated, and one decent lyrical conceit - he’s moved everywhere… but he hasn’t moved on from this girl, which is an easy way to crowbar in your listing of country things as a hangover from bro-country. Look, I hate to say it, but maybe the reason momentum has been sporadic is because there’s not much here, because I think I’m going to wind up forgetting this in record time - next!

95. ‘Body Language’ by Big Sean ft. Jhene Aiko & Ty Dolla $ign - this is probably close to one of the better songs on Detroit 2 - and none of it has to do with Big Sean. Now to his credit, he’s not terrible in what he’s expected to do, open up and be a little more relaxed with Jhene who for some ungodly reason is still with him - the problem is that a song like this relies on charisma and chemistry, and while Jhene can deliver a lot of the latter, even with Ty Dolla $ign stepping up for support Big Sean just can’t nail this vibe. Hell, you could even argue the production is giving him an assist with the backing vocal flip of a Shawn Harris song and a more restrained, sandy groove, but Big Sean just sounds dejected and tired throughout the song, and not even in a way that feels meditative. And I’m being critical here because outside of Sean, the song is great - solid production, Jhene and Ty Dolla $ign can sell this, I like the sample… but as such, it’s merely good. It should be better.

91. ‘Love You Like I Used To’ by Russell Dickerson - no jokes here, I was in Nashville briefly last year and there was an opportunity for me to get tickets to see Thomas Rhett, Dustin Lynch, and Russell Dickerson live in concert. I’m fairly certain it was the inclusion of Dickerson on that bill that had me in a dive bar in East Nashville instead, because he sure as hell isn’t good. This is a single pushed in a rollout for his upcoming album, and I think where this song goes awry is actually a bit tricky to pin down - sure, Dickerson isn’t much of a vocal presence and the song starts with some impressively stiff drum machines, but it does pick up more melody and overall sounds fine… until you dig into the content. See, when you have the phrase ‘I don’t love you like I used to’, which is the foundation of your hook, the implication is normally that something isn’t right or it’s not going to end well, but Dickerson is trying to make it mean, ‘no, we might have been good before, but now things are even better!’ But if you’re describing your emotions in a commonly framed negative phrase, it warps how the song appears and somehow makes it a lot less interesting, because now there’s that gap of where it didn’t work that gets no attention or detail!. In other words, a weirdly constructed song that only sours its appeal - could have been just forgettable, next!

82. ‘Deep Reverence’ by Big Sean ft. Nipsey Hussle - I’m actually relatively pleased that Big Sean stacked a few of his better songs closer to the front of the album, and again, this is one of them. It helps that he opens the song with Nipsey’s shorter verse before getting into the aftermath and how he’s coping, peacing things up with Kendrick as he continues his hustle, focusing more on black ownership and succession, and his own demons which include credibly sold anxiety and depression and the possibility that he and a partner lost a child in a miscarriage. And in this lane, with a more straightforward flow and less obviously clunky lines - although the one about girls being obsessed with social media and they could be writing encyclopedias was iffy - it feels more weighty and introspective. Probably helped by the mostly obvious Drake influence in his flow, but the rougher trap skitter and sharper keening synths does feel more distinctive in terms of production, and it helps Sean make this his own - another solid highlight from the album, good stuff.

69. ‘Lithuania’ by Big Sean ft. Travis Scott - look, I mentioned this in the review, but it bears repeating: while I understand why Big Sean works with trap artists on trap beats, I’m not at all convinced it’s a workable lane for him, and it starts with the Travis collab that got the video. The offkey guitars off the muffled snare drums from Hit-Boy where I kept feeling like there was a drop to a sharper hi-hat that only occurred when Big Sean’s verse came in - you don’t put Travis on the trap percussion, but you put Big Sean on it, which to me seems crazy because Sean can do more than just your standard triplet flex! Granted, the entire song is some pretty empty bragging where neither artist is all that interesting outside of why this song is called ‘Lithuania’, which folks on Genius are claiming it’s tied to how that country got passed around during World War II. To me that feels like a complete stretch and another indictment of why you don’t base your lyrical interpretations on the crowdsourced opinions of that site, where it seems more like Travis Scott was looking to fill a rhyme in a weird way and didn’t really care about the meaning - he’s done that before. Overall, it’s not terrible by any means, but it’s not one of the better album cuts and adding more forgettable Travis Scott collabs onto the charts is not a win - let’s move on.

65. ‘Wolves’ by Big Sean ft. Post Malone - and here we have another collaboration I don’t think works at all - not for Big Sean’s lack of trying. I get him trying to play up the darker, ‘my friends will kill you’ vibe to play into his paranoia, and that even could make sense on a spacey trap progression - hell, I like him here more than on ‘Lithuania’. But then Post Malone shows up and it feels like a regression for him - I liked the thicker, smokier trap he was making last year, on a more spare beat he sounds unsupported and not all that impressive, especially when the groove isn’t great and Post Malone is going to spend most of the song bragging about jewelry - which doesn’t match the tone at all. Apparently A$AP Rocky was originally intended for this song, and while I don’t think he’d have been much better, it still feels like a cut made to satisfy label obligations than any sort of creative spark, especially as it completely kills the flow in its placement on the album. So yeah, not terrible, again, but I can’t recommend it.

64. ‘Relacion’ by Sech, ROSALIA, Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Farruko - am I the only one who is starting to get a bit tired of reggaeton and Latin trap artists just overloading the songs with guest artists to game search algorithms? I get why they’re doing it for the crossover, but I think it can detract from a strong individual performance if everyone can’t deliver on the same level. But with this song, I can’t say any one of them stand out all that much beyond ROSALIA, and that’s more because she winds up as the focal presence of the content, when she plays a girl who was abused in a relationship who is now free, confident, and turning the tables, with every other guy here playing the spectators. Which for Daddy Yankee and Farruko of all people, that’d be fine as they’ve got the character and flair in their delivery to stand out, but outside of that, I think the only reason Sech is here is because it’s his underlying song they remixed. And even then, I wouldn’t say the production is great - the reggaeton percussion might hit harder, but there’s barely any melody that supports the bass and beat, and what does just underscores the vocal line. In other words, it feels like the names were just hear to get this popping up, because there’s not much else here - next!

62. ‘The Voice’ by Lil Durk - credit to Lil Durk here, he’s riding the biggest guest verse of his career to some actual traction on the Hot 100 with this as the lead-off single to his next album, where I’m actually a bit surprised just how well this debuted. And… oh, I wish I liked this more than I do, which might as well be the tagline when it comes to most Lil Durk that I’ve heard, but it’s especially true here. The production, for one, had a lot of promise - the brighter keys and guitar gave me a bit of a more textured and soulful Rod Wave vibe and it could have worked with the sharper, crunchier Chicago drill percussion… but then we have the autotuned crooning for Durk on the hook, and he just sounds suffocated and swamped out; it feels like a clumsy overstep to create an effect that could have been undersold, and the mixing as a whole feels kind of unrefined, and not in the organic way. And it’s a shame because the content kind of clicks - again, you can make the YoungBoy, Polo G, or even Rod Wave comparisons, but Lil Durk does bring some unique detail - his friend crying in jail after getting thirty-nine years, the insomnia, how he can’t bring himself to even cry at funerals and can’t mourne right, and the reference to how he can’t even vote for someone who might make things better because felons can’t vote rings particularly hard, especially as that disenfranchisement is very real right now. Honestly, this might be a song where the good elements might wind up cutting through the roughness in a similar way to how it did for ‘Murder On My Mind’ last year, but as it is… this is really good, but I want it to be great.

29. ‘Hit Different’ by SZA ft. Ty Dolla $ign - I think just about everyone is annoyed with the social media theater going on between SZA and TDE label head Punch - we know your adversarial back-and-forth was a carefully timed game just like half of it was last time with Ctrl,, you’re just building things up for a pretty big return, with Ty Dolla $ign showing up for support because why not add fuel to your fire for a big single produced by The Neptunes? And it’s a good cut: the hook might be repetitive but SZA and Ty Dolla $ign have decent chemistry and I think the sharper, dense percussion does balance everything else in the watery mix… maybe even too watery, as there are points it feels like both Ty and SZA are getting swallowed up a bit. And the storytelling isn’t bad - it’s a song about the side partners in an open relationship, and the messy dynamic when you start catching feels and want to deflect from it by playing distant despite yourself… but ultimately, it still hits different. That’s a complicated vibe and while I think the hook could have done a bit more to flesh it out, this is still solid R&B. Not either artists’ best - Ctrl still has stronger cuts and I’d argue Ty Dolla $ign sounded better on ‘Body Language’ just this week, but it is good, I’ll take it.

And honestly, it led to a tougher choice for the best and worst of this week than I expected. For the best… I wanted to say ‘Body Language’, but ‘Deep Reverence’ felt like it played into Big Sean’s strengths more with Nipsey Hussle, so it’ll get the best with ‘The Voice’ by Lil Durk getting Honourable Mention - I get the feeling if this song sticks around, it might sneak up on me, and it had some real power to it. Now the worst of this week… ‘Love You Like I Used To’ by Russell Dickerson easily gets that, but I’m thinking Dishonourable Mention will fall to ‘Lithuania’ by Big Sean and Travis Scott - just feels like the clunkiest track here, and I hope it falls out fast. Next week, though, let’s see if YoungBoy Never Broke Again actually comes through with the meaty album bomb, it’ll be interesting…