billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - february 10, 2024

This is one of those weeks where it almost feels like there’s too going on, where any number of bigger stories could have monopolized the week for better or worse - hell, we didn’t even get all of them that I thought we would! Hell, I’ve gotten multiple people reaching out saying how much they were looking forward to me tearing into certain songs on this list… and I dunno, if I thought that there was some new observation that could be gleaned outside of a mess culminating for things I already knew, I’d be more excited - strap in, folks, I can’t promise this will be fun.

But for a nice change of pace, at least it’s gonna start relatively well with the top 10 and our new debut at #1: ‘Hiss’ by Megan Thee Stallion. I’ll talk a lot more about the song later on, it smashed through on tremendous sales and streaming, it actually saw a bit of radio traction… and it’s not going to last this high beyond this week. And that shouldn’t be a surprise: diss tracks are rarely ever this big, I’m shocked the radio is touching this at all, and quite frankly, the fact she won on the commercial side is going to matter more to her opponents than anyone else. I personally am not going to complain she pushed ‘Lovin On Me’ by Jack Harlow back to #2 - he’s probably going back to #1 next week as he is dominating radio and streaming is rock solid, but I’m grateful for small victories. This elbows back ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift to #3, where streaming was stable but the radio is dumping the song… albeit slowly, the margin is going to take a while to come down. She did hold over ‘Lose Control’ by Teddy Swims at #4, though - that margin is tightening quick, he has better streams and the radio is throwing real muscle behind him, the run is happening here, rolling over ‘greedy’ by Tate McRae at #5, where it looks like she hit a radio peak and streaming is on the decline. Then we have ‘I Remember Everything’ by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves at #6 - again, I think this is playing the position game as the radio has never taken to this even as his streaming is solid, especially compared to ‘Agora Hills’ by Doja Cat holding at #7, as she continues to make steady radio gains to compensate for the streaming not being there. Then we have another new arrival to the top 10, this one much worse: ‘Beautiful Things’ by Benson Boone at #8 - chalk this one up to really good sales and streaming, the radio is not onboard yet, let’s hope to god its viral moment fades before that happens! Finally, we have two songs switching places: ‘redrum’ by 21 Savage at #9 thanks to the streaming as the radio just isn’t there, and ‘Snooze’ by SZA at #10, where both streaming and airplay is on a steady decline.

That takes us neatly to our losers and dropouts, and there’s a healthy spread of both. In the latter category, Olivia Rodrigo in particular took some hits with both ‘get him back!’ and ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’ both falling out - neither song took off the way they should have - but we also saw exits for ‘Virginia Beach’ by Drake, ‘Save Me The Trouble’ by Dan + Shay, ‘El Amor de Su Vida’ by Grupo Frontera and Grupo Firme, and ‘Segun Quien’ by Maluma and Carin Leon - kind of a mixed bag here, to be honest. The losers… kind of all over the place, but let’s start with the 21 Savage album bomb continuing to fade: ‘nee-nah’ with Travis Scott and Metro Boomin at 56, ‘prove it’ with Summer Walker at 70, ‘n.h.i.e.’ with Doja Cat at 71, ‘all of me’ at 72, ‘should’ve wore a bonnet’ with Brent Faiyaz at 76, and ‘sneaky’ at 95. Then we had ‘No Caller ID’ by Megan Moroney lose pretty hard off the debut to 88, as well as ‘02.02.99’ by That Mexican OT losing all of its gains to 93, and Peso Pluma didn’t exactly have a good week here with ‘Igual Que Un Angel’ with Kali Uchis down to 34 and ‘Bellakeo’ with Anitta at 63. Outside of those… ‘Northern Attitude’ by Noah Kahan and Hozier slid to 97, ‘Strangers’ by Kenya Grace is losing traction at 55 - looks to be a similar case for Mitski with ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ at 52 - ‘First Person Shooter’ by Drake and J. Cole is making its exit comfortably clinching its year-end spot with 45, and can probably say the same thing about ‘Lil Boo Thang’ by Paul Russell at 38. Finally, ‘FTCU’ by Nicki Minaj fell to 40 - I don’t know if that is tied to a certain other debut from her this week, but I don’t think it helped - and ‘yes, and?’ by Ariana Grande fell out of the top 10 to 17… and beyond my lukewarm reaction to the song, I’m not surprised that both radio and streaming have been slow to take it on.

This takes us to a much, much smaller list of returns and gains - in the former group, we have ‘Wildflowers and Wild Horses’ by Lainey Wilson back at 96 - I wonder if the big Grammy win for her gives this some traction - and in the latter group, ‘Made For Me’ by Muni Long is just charging up all categories to 28… still not wild about the song, but it’s clear it’s gonna be a thing.

And I guess I should be thankful that list is small, because have a lot of new arrivals, and they’re all over the damn place… so let’s start easy with…

98. ‘All I Need Is You’ by Chris Janson - I made a joke the last time I covered Chris Janson here for his song ‘Done’, and even then I was surprised at his charting longevity. That was four years ago, and here we are with another single getting through from his album last year… and like ‘Done’, there’s not really a lot to say about this. It’s certainly pleasant - Janson is smart enough to know how to pivot more towards neotraditional tones that feel more organic across the board, the strings are nice even if that electric guitar lead feels a bit flat, and while the lyrics feel a bit generic in listing everything he wants before highlighting all he needs is ‘you’, it’s a breezy formula that works. It’s neither offensive nor all that memorable… it’s fine, I guess.

92. ‘La Intencion’ by Christian Nodal & Peso Pluma - I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Christian Nodal is back charting and with Peso Pluma - I mentioned this back when I covered him in 2021 for a more traditional drinking song where I didn’t really have the vocabulary to fully describe the regional Mexican scene, but now I somewhat do and this makes plenty of sense. This is very much in that corridos tumbados lane with the farty horns and jittery acoustics with more panning than you might expect for some reason, and I do like Nodal’s impassioned singing a bit more than Peso Pluma’s nasal squawk, but then you translate the lyrics and realize this is a song where they’re with some girl who is cheating on her partner, and they’re trying to entice her to leave him - it’s not quite ‘Treat You Better’ territory, but there’s a sleaze to this that I don’t remotely find flattering. Far from the worst thing I’ve heard in this lane - the production is more strange than incompetent - but I’m not sure I have much incentive to revisit it.

89. ‘Creek Will Rise’ by Conner Smith - another week, another artist from Music Row that I don’t recognize who has managed to play the TikTok game well enough to catch some success. So enter Conner Smith - he went viral around 2021 and that got him signed to Valory, his first EP dropped in early 2022, and this song dropped in late February 2023 and has taken until he released his debut this year to finally chart. And… oh boy, I think I like this a lot more than I should! It reminds me of the bro-country that actually bothered to have tempo and a bass groove - a lot less of it than you might remember - down to Conner Smith rapping on the verse and the very rural party hookup where he’s hoping the creek floods from the rainstorm so he and this girl can hook up. That has the potential to be sketchy if it wasn’t for the fact she’s very into it, down to skinny-dipping and they don’t have enough dry clothes afterwards - hell, the fact that he even implies sex happens afterwards is further than most bro-country went in the early 2010s! What I think really makes this work is the tempo and live drums - it creates that slight edge of panic at getting caught in a storm, not really danger but more flavour… and yeah, this is fun. Interested to hear more, really good song!

79. ‘One Call’ by Rich Amiri - So I’ve been aware of the hype for Rich Amiri for a while now - he’s put out a few albums, this song comes from his second project in 2023, I’d seen influences being described from Future to YoungBoy to Lil Tecca, so I wasn’t sure what we’d get here… and while I understand the hype, I don’t think I’m onboard. For starters, the leaden bass and buzzed out rage synths swamp and clip the mix where the majority of any melody is carried in Rich Amiri’s vocals which definitely to remind me of an off-brand Future with more melody overall, where you’d think there’d be incentive for more of a hook or song structure but there really isn’t. And of course the content’s nothing special - brand name flexing, pills, taking some girl from a dude because he can buy her more brand name porn, and shooting up his spot. The only two lines that stand out are saying that he got so much gold in his mouth he hates the dentist - you’d think that’d be a person he’d have to trust given the work being done - and that he calls the Black girl he’s with ‘wet throat’, what a charmer. Again, I’ve heard worse in this lane especially with rage music, but that’s a pretty low bar - can’t say I care for this.

77. ‘Home’ by Good Neighbours - okay, I know I wasn’t the only one to see this song and this new duo and have no clue who they were, so here’s a bit of context. One is Oli Fox - pop singer-songwriter, he’s had a minor run of singles the past five years, actually supported Sigrid on tour - the other guy is Scott Verrill, who previously had an even more abortive run under the name kwassa… and now they’ve come together with this one song, the only thing they’ve released as a duo thus far. And wow, looks like that desire to cash on early 2010s indie rock is back in force… although given how thoroughly commodified that sound became, it’s probably not a good thing that the first comparison that came to mind was early Imagine Dragons with the blocky percussion, colourless guitars, goopy synths, whistle, and shouty squawk of vocals; if I didn’t know better, I’d say this was commercialcore from unnamed session musicians and I’d ask what ad it’s behind. It also reminds me of how these guys would write lyrics that would feel romantic until you gave them a second glance, like ‘wrap my name across your mouth’, or ‘you’re the song on the radio I never play’ - if this lovestruck feeling is supposed to make one feel homesick, it isn’t working! I honestly have no clue where the nostalgic momentum is to bring this back - I know Noah Kahan is trying to doggedly bring back pop folk, but this was the goopy followthrough that was rarely ever any good, and this is really bad; let’s hope it gets forgotten quickly.

74. ‘Praise Jah In The Moonlight’ by YG Marley - if you looked at this name and thought, ‘I wonder if he’s connected to Bob Marley in some way’… yeah, you’d be correct, this is his grandson… what you might not know is that his mother is Lauryn Hill! That’s one hell of a musical pedigree, and not only did Hill cowrite and coproduce this song, it literally samples an old Bob Marley track, the legacy is already doing a lot of heavy lifting here. And… look, I think I’m the wrong person to judge this, I don’t like a lot of reggae, and this isn’t changing my mind - the groove feels lumbering and humid, the vocal mixing feels more synthetic than it should in both YG Marley’s lead and the harmonies, and I’m not convinced YG Marley has anything close to his grandfather’s charisma, from his mushy delivery to the writing which seems to be focusing on some girl who left him behind that he wants to come back and give praise, at least that’s before the second half of the second verse wanders in to point fingers at those attempting to ‘control your soul’ - his way through God to win power is better. Maybe if I was more connected to Bob Marley’s legacy or I smoked pot, I would get more out of this… as it is, it’s hard to escape the feeling this is coasting on the name recognition rather that doing more - can’t say I’m a fan.

37. ‘Think U The Shit (Fart)’ by Ice Spice - …I mean, when you give me that title, which sets up every single music critic for the obvious lyrical breakdown… y’all do know she’s trolling, right, and that your scandalized reaction is doing her marketing for her? Anyway, apparently this is intended as a loose diss track towards Latto, incorporating an old Mario meme into… well, Ice Spice’s usual formula of flexing, sex, and stacking cash. What might be more surprising is that I kind of like it? Ice Spice sounds a bit more like she cares - debatable whether that works, she really can’t sell intensity - and while it feels she simplified her flow to do so, her bars at least connect playing to formula, and her comedic timing isn’t terrible. More to the point, I really like this production - yeah, the gurgling synth doesn’t have much to it, but it’s mostly catchy, that bass kick has real power without swamping the mix, and it’s probably one of her best non-drill grooves when the trap percussion comes in. Look, I know a version of me that would have hated this a decade ago… I’d like to think I’ve grown, this is way too stupid to hate, there’s craftmanship that I don’t think will be given credit… yeah, I’ll stick up for this one.

24. ‘Spin You Around (1/24)’ by Morgan Wallen - So a bit of context with this one - on one of Morgan Wallen’s original EPs in 2015, he cut this song back when he was trying to chase bro-country, and it was pretty mediocre - the overblown production picks up an odd sourness alongside Wallen’s minor key vocal line, the mixing especially of those drum machines is rough, and Wallen was still very much an amateur as a performer. Fast foward to now where his old label connections want to capitalize on Wallen’s popularity, and since he wasn’t really getting paid for that EP, he put together an acoustic rerecording of the song. And… look, he’s a better singer now even if the vocals are more touched up than they probably should be here - odd choice by Joey Moi - but the guitars are warmer and the spare approach allows Wallen to tap into the wistful loneliness that the original didn’t showcase. And honestly, it’s not bad for it - it kind of has me wondering what it’ll be like when Taylor Swift finally rerecords her self-titled debut and she takes any chances with the arrangements than playing them so close, whether there’s a chance for any of that small recontextualization… but that’s more a passing thought about a song that doesn’t have much to it, one way or the other.

23. ‘Big Foot’ by Nicki Minaj - …I don’t know why I expected better - it feels like ever since I started trying my best to give her the benefit of the doubt, the material has been haphazard at best and sadly a way too predictable disaster at worst. And at this point, even if I was giving her the benefit of ‘this is her ‘Charged Up’, I’m sure ‘Back To Back’ is right around the corner’… it’s been over a week, it hasn’t happened, and Megan hasn’t needed to shoot back - when your enemy is destroying herself, why interfere? Now I feel like I have to give some volume to the actual defenses made of this song from the Barbz or Joe Budden, the big one being that Nicki had a far better beat prepared for this and had to switch it out at last notice when she couldn’t get it cleared… and even if I agree that other beat is better, I’m sorry, if you’re preparing for war, you get your arsenal in order ahead of time, that’s not an excuse! But I have to wonder why Nicki shot back in the first place - you heard the ‘Megan’s Law’ line and that’s what set you off, only drawing more attention to the sub? Why expose so much of the song on Twitter and livestreams rather than concentrate your impact? And more importantly, why does this sound like total shit? I was willing to give the production a bit of grace with that oily synth and percussion switch ups, but Nicki switches across so many voices and messy flows that she can’t built momentum, I feel like I can hear every punch-in when she adds a new line and that’s before that faux-ASMR outro where she’s trying to sound threatening and fails utterly. And then you realize the disses are just weak - I can’t in good conscience be annoyed that they’re in bad taste if I want to defend Pusha T’s ‘The Story Of Adidon’, but that song wasn’t just coherent in its nastiness, there were layers and thematic structure whereas Nicki’s barbs are that Megan sleeps around, drinks a lot - which Meg has admitted preemptively, so that doesn’t really land even beyond the slut-shaming - and that she was lying on her dead mother… which doesn’t make sense because it’s not like ‘Hiss’ was some elaborate diss thrown at Nicki beyond the one line, so where are all of these lies? Oh, and Nicki also tries to play around with the event where Tory Lanez shot Meg in 2020… but why emphasize that she may have big feet at all if you’re trying to deny it happened - and more importantly, if you want to dunk on Tory Lanez in the song as one of the guys Meg was reportedly with, why take his side? What I later found more revealing is when Nicki went on Joe Budden’s Twitter space to rant that thanks to Tory shooting her, Meg got her ‘Rihanna moment’… which to me says a lot about how little respect Nicki has for Rihanna and by extension Jay-Z, which is certainly a fight to pick, but to me it stinks of jealousy and raging insecurity, that Meg got a sympathetic moment that Nicki didn’t when I’m almost positive that Nicki herself has had trauma the past fifteen years that was never taken seriously… in fact, I know that’s true because Nicki has brought it up on the more serious deep cuts nobody talks about. And that’s what makes this so goddamn sad on multiple levels: of course the song is atrocious and bitter and incoherent, where I’ve seen more than a few Barbz say ‘this isn’t it’, or start asking who is around Nicki helping her, or even if she needs rehab - and that’s not even including how hard it is to root for someone who didn’t just lose when you know they have the potential to do so much better, but is imploding in catastrophic fashion. And even if this is just for the Barbz and that she’s trolling from people to get a reaction, I’m sure the reaction she didn’t want was embarrassment and pity; just like Bigfoot, I think it’s better for the legend that nobody sees or hears this.

19. ‘Selfish’ by Justin Timberlake - Okay, now onto something that is way easier to handle - hey, Justin Timberlake is trying to launch another comeback, and it seems like in the aftermath of everything with Britney Spears folks are a lot less enthused! I originally thought my video essay exploring The 20/20 Experience and the intersection point of class and cool would be going too hard on Timberlake - I was not prepared for how well it would age and leave me thinking I didn’t go hard enough! But hey, there’s a new song… and oh dear, this isn’t good either. I know some folks have made the late period Robin Thicke comparison, but to me this reminds me of stiff and painfully dated late 2010s trap pop that sounds alarmingly cheap for Timberlake’s standards. At least when he worked with Timbaland there was texture and groove, what Louis Bell and Cirkut give him is this drippy synth, leaden bass, and fizzy percussion that even for a ballad feels limp and small, all of which highlights that without his swagger or intensity, Timberlake is a non-presence! And that’s a problem when you look at the lyrics, which is basically trying to be Nick Jonas’ ‘Jealous’ in how much he likes this girl, except with a splash of ‘Mirrors’ because he wants to ‘put her in a frame’, and that’s not even getting to the implication that his concern trolling isn’t for a current partner, but possibly an ex! I guess that’s where the Robin Thicke comparison makes sense, given how lightly pathetic it is, but as someone who will occasionally defend moments on Man Of The Woods, this is gutless and bland, the last thing Timberlake needed for his comeback. Lousy song… and unfortunately it takes us to…

16. ‘Facts’ by Tom MacDonald & Ben Shapiro - You know it’s a bad thing when Nicki Minaj cosigns this song, and that cosign might make everyone look worse. But at this point I’ve said my piece on Tom MacDonald’s long-running and increasingly tedious grift and adding Ben Shapiro to the pile doesn’t make this interesting; I’m certainly not scandalized by it. You could focus on the hypocrisy given that Shapiro doesn’t think rap is real music, but doing that is playing his game and giving this more dignity than it deserves, in the same way pointing out that despite the hook running on the line ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’, the second line of the song of there being only two genders isn’t factual by scientific consensus across the board, or that he called himself the ‘biggest independent rapper across the board’, which did get a big laugh out of me. But at this point Tom MacDonald is just repeating buzzwords and a mix of bad arguments and outright lies - if the police were actually defunded, someone should really tell Joe Biden, I think it would be news to him and his policy platform - and he thinks we’re all triggered and so mad about this and… no, Tommy Boy, you’ve been repeating the same shit for years, this isn’t new or interesting! And what’s funny to me is that I think Ben Shapiro gives the game away, because he can’t hide his contempt for hip-hop culture, especially flexing - in other words, he’s attempting something that Lil Dicky already parodied, or that The Lonely Island did with ‘YOLO’ and Kendrick Lamar eleven years ago - and the rest of his verse is playing into memes about himself, calling Lizzo fat, giving Nicki Minaj a shoutout, and cussing out the ‘woke Karens’ in his comment section; and I find that interesting because ‘Karen’ is usually derogatory for white women, who probably make up a significant chunk of his and his sister’s audience! But again, he clearly doesn’t care about something he doesn’t respect as art - not that it’s worth respect given the production is a trap NF knockoff and MacDonald can’t sell anything with melody even if he adds autotune, and Shapiro’s verse sounds like was recorded in a different studio with much worse equipment - it’s intended to trend and cause controversy, and Shapiro is very obviously using Tom MacDonald to do it, and MacDonald’s willing to be used because he hasn’t hit the Hot 100 in about three years. But there’s a template to baiting liberals to outrage… and I think what’s very revealing is that it didn’t work - unlike what Shapiro said to end his verse, this didn’t come close to #1… you wanna know what did?

1. ‘Hiss’ by Megan Thee Stallion - You know, even though it won’t last at #1, I’m happy that Megan got here this way - ‘Cobra’ primed the pump and honestly should have done better, and ‘Hiss’ is a wallop even outside of the line that sent Nicki into a downward spiral! Now I do have critiques of it - I think the spoken intro could have been tightened up, it feels like a mistake to go without a proper hook that could have given this real staying power, and as much as I like the darker piano around the rumbling percussion, one more change-up could have knocked this out of the park. And let’s be candid, this is far from the first time where Megan has aired out internet gossip and other rappers trying to make her life miserable - this might have a better shot of putting it all to rest, but a song this big is giving some folks more attention than they deserve, and it seems like Drake is the only one smart enough to stay quiet! Outside of that, this really goes off - Meg hops across flows effortlessly, the quotable lines pop off the page, she sells it all with righteous fury, and she managed to preemptively flip one of the bigger shots Nicki took at her in how she sleeps around - Meg admits it and says not only does the buzz help her, but the fact she doesn’t name names on her exploits while they get in their feelings about it shows her power, not theirs; her sex positivity is an asset, not a liability! And once she mops up the Tory stans who made her life miserable and seem a lot more invested in hating her than propping up his music while behind bars, it’s hard not to feel like she cleared the table for whatever crossover hit is on its way next. A great, bruising song, where even if it doesn’t last… it was a moment.

But one I’ll chronicle by easily giving it the best of the week, with Conner Smith getting the Honourable Mention for ‘Creek Will Rise’, that was a really pleasant surprise. Worst of the week… ‘Big Foot’ by Nicki Minaj and ‘Facts’ by Tom MacDonald and Ben Shapiro are tying here because really, what else was I to do, with Dishonourable Mention going to ‘Home’ by Good Neighbours, my god that was a really unpleasant surprise! Next week… the fallout from all of this, stay tuned for that…