Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Shape of You" - Ed Sheeran (=) -- Ed now has nine weeks at No. 1 and is just one week away from being yet another song that has gone 10 weeks on top. From 1958 to 1991, this only happened twice. Now it's a regular occurrence. But the big question right now is how long will "Shape of You" reign at No. 1? At this point in its run, it shows no signs of slowing down as it peaked at just the right time as it has taken advantage of the weak competition while being stronger than ever. Bruno is about take the lead in sales, but Ed's radio is closing in on record levels and streaming is still super high, so Bruno is in no position to take the title away from Ed. I think last week I said 10-12 weeks for this song. Now I'm thinking its more along the lines of 12-14.
2- "That's What I Like" - Bruno Mars (=) -- As I just stated, Bruno's sales are doing well and will probably overtake, but Bruno is nowhere near Ed in streaming and radio, so this looks like it will be camped out at No. 2 for a while longer. And I'm fine with that. Many are sick of Ed at No. 1 right now and want a new chart topper. I'd be fine with that idea, but at what cost? Out of our current songs in the top 10, "Shape of You" is still the second best song out of the bunch of them, which "Something Just Like This" being the only one ahead of it. I don't really enjoy "That's What I Like" or anything else for that matter, so let's let Ed keep his place at top until something worthy comes around to take his place.
3- "I Don't Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker)" - Zayn & Taylor Swift (+1) -- Don't be too surprised to see Zayn and Taylor retake the top spot. It's nothing that they did. This song isn't that strong as has no chance of overtaking Ed or Bruno. It's just that "Bad and Boujee" is falling a whole heck of a lot faster, so it just naturally jumped up by default. Something has to be at three.
4- "Bad and Boujee" - Migos featuring Lil Uzi Vert (-1) -- I'm certainly glad that this fell a spot once again, but can it please fall even faster? At this point I'll even take "Tunnel Vision" or "Passionfruit" instead of "Bad and Boujee," but I hope that The Weeknd and/or The Chainsmokers can jump ahead instead.
5- "I Feel it Coming" - The Weeknd featuring Daft Punk (=) -- I'm really happy to see this stay consistent at No. 5. I feared it would take a fall after last week's iTunes discount gave it a huge boost. I guess nothing is really strong right now, so this song just stays here by default. And if "Bad and Boujee" continues to bleed, perhaps "I Feel it Coming" gets pushed up even higher. And if Taylor and Zayn start losing radio, maybe this jumps up and camps at No. 3 for a while? That would be cool.
6- "Tunnel Vision" - Kodak Black (=) -- I keep thinking "Tunnel Vision" might be another candidate to hit top 10. But it has zero momentum right now with only streaming going in its favor, so I want to say this drops here soon, but again if everything above loses steam faster, then it could still sneak into the top 5. Moral of the story is we're ready for another major shift in the top 10 right now, but nothing seems to want it. Katy Perry will be back next week as "Chained to the Rhythm" just added the iTunes discount. And I sure hope that Lorde can start gaining traction.
7- "Something Just Like This" - The Chainsmokers & Coldplay (+1) -- This I feel is a strong contender to go top five here soon. I don't know if it is going to get strong enough to jump ahead of Ed and Bruno, but everything else is just so weak right now and I feel this has enough traction right now to jump as high as No. 3. And I'm certainly happy about that. Best song in the top 10 right now!
8- "Passionfruit" - Drake (new) -- A lot more on Drake here coming soon, so I'll keep this brief. Drake's new album was released last week, which affected the charts in a major way as Drake has all of the tracks from the album on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. That's 21 new songs for Drake debuting, which is a record that was previous set by himself last year with "Views." An annoying trend to say the least. There's not much good here to talk about, but at least the best song debuted highest. Last year all the songs from "Views" were stubbornly consistent. Let's hope this year is different as I'd really like them all to go away. But that's probably not going to happen. At the very least let's hope this album doesn't give him another No. 1 hit.
9- "Portland" - Drake featuring Quavo & Travis Scott (new) -- "Passionfruit" is the only Drake song that I can really tolerate from this album, so if we had to debut a Drake song in the top 10, I'm glad that was the one. The problem, though, is that Drake becomes the second artist after Ed Sheeran a couple of months ago to debut two songs in the top 10 at the same time and "Portland" is easily the worst from the album. Let's please hope that this is a one and done in the top 10.
10- "Paris" - The Chainsmokers (-1) -- "Paris" drops to No. 10 this week. But it's not all that bad for it actually. With Drake debuting two songs in the top 10, "Paris" could've easily dropped out, but instead it was "Love on the Brain" and "iSpy" that got the boot instead of "Paris," so that shows me that it still has a bit of staying power left and could jump up a notch or two next week if our two Drake songs take a hit. With Katy surging in sales this week, at the very least I think "Paris" gets one more week at No. 10, but we'll see what happens.
Rising on the Hot 100:
15- "Fake Love" - Drake (+16) -- With Drake debuting 21 new songs this week, there weren't a lot of high risers. Most songs either got pushed down or shoved out. That should mean this section will be very crowded next week, though. Or so we all hope. The 22nd and final song on Drake's album is this one and since it has been out since December, it's here on the rising list instead of the new arrivals. Let's hope this is just a one week boost for this song because I really don't want to see it back in the top 10. Sure there's a lot worse songs from the album, but as you will quickly learn, that's not saying very much.
16- "Body Like a Back Road" - Sam Hunt (+2) -- Out of all songs to still do well this week despite Drake, why this one? If Sam Hunt breaks top 10 with one of the worst country songs I've heard in a long time, I'm going to be angry. I could agree that country deserves a little more love when it comes to the very top of the charts, but this isn't the song I want breaking the trend. Keep it away.
21- "Stay" - Zedd & Alessia Cara (+6) -- There's a lot worse things going on right now, so I'll hold my complaints about this one for now. Even if it's a bad Zedd song, it's still good to see Zedd because that means good Zedd still has a chance.
New Arrivals:
8- "Passionfruit" - Drake -- You ready for all of this? Lots and lots of Drake to talk about, so let's get started. Although that YouTube video just above is NOT Drake because he doesn't do the YouTube thing that successfully. But anywho. We start with track No. 3 from Drake's new album. Our highest debuting song is actually the best one on the album, so kudos there. Right off the bat, though, they do a weird thing where they start the beat and after a few seconds, Moodymann comes in saying they need to start the record over as if they messed up. I have no idea why they included that in the intro to the song. But the rest of the song has a bit of a tropical house beat to it with Drake's rap sounding more like pop than rap, which gives this a decent groove. The lyrics aren't anything too special, but compared to most of his lyrics it's not bad. He's talking about his struggles with maintaining a long distance relationship with this girl and thinks they should break things off because it's just not working out. So the intro bothers me and the lyrics are nothing special, but for Drake standards this is passable. I also don't know why he calls the song "Passionfruit" since he doesn't use that word at all in the song.
9- "Portland" - Drake featuring Quavo & Travis Scott -- Track No. 11 from Drake's new album. While I think "Passionfruit" is the best from the album, "Portland" is a complete abomination of a song and is easily the worst song from the album. It's really disgusting and shameful to the music industry that this now has the label of a top 10 hit. This song combines two of my least favorite rappers right now, Drake and Quavo. Drake is boring, emotionless and lazy with his rap while Quavo, and everyone else from Migos, implement the most annoying elements in their rap that is being copied by everyone. That being scattering annoying sound effects and echoes throughout their songs. I consider it a badge of honor that I even made it through this song once because I wanted to gouge my eardrums out the entire time as it started from Drake at his worst and then jumped to Quavo and his extremely annoying brand of rap from Migos. The only slightly positive thing is that Travis Scott had an actual rap verse included that didn't make me hate life while listening. But even his lyrics were pretty tasteless.
18- "Free Smoke" - Drake -- Track No. 1 from Drake's new album. We start the album by Drake talking about how he has come to dominate the rap scene, an unfortunate fact given how lazy and dull his music is. I don't get. But nonetheless, the song starts off interesting with an intro by Nai Palm singing and playing the piano, which almost gave me hope that the album could be better than expected. But then Drake comes in and starts rambling on about how he went to not even being able to pay the bills to being king of the rap world. It's a boring song with no substance. We close with an unintelligible outro by a guy named Baka that leaves us on a weird, sour note.
29- "Gyalchester" - Drake -- Track No. 9 from Drake's new album. This one is also pretty awful. Another situation where I have no idea why he named the song what he did. Drake's not Jamaican, so he shouldn't use the word gyal instead of girl. And what does the "-chester" refer to? Who knows. It's not really referenced in the song. What I do know is the song is yet another rap song that has decided to mimic the horrendous new trend in rap music started by Migos where we use a ton of annoying echoes and noises scattered throughout the song. I hate every song that does this. This is another instance where it completely drags the song down. And this song is pretty low to begin with as Drake's arrogance is at an all time high with him bragging about how famous and awesome he is. The second worst song on the album behind only "Portland."
35- "Teenage Fever" - Drake -- Track No. 14 from Drake's new album. A song that samples Jennifer Lopez' "If You Had My Love." He uses that song's chorus for the chorus in this song and sings around it, turning it into an artificial duet. I mean, the two parts fit together. She's singing a hesitant love song where she obviously has trust issues while he's bitter over their breakup and blaming it all on her while essentially admitting that he can't stop thinking about her while he's hanging out with someone else. Very much like an immature teenage reaction, which he fully admits to and embraces. As you can expect, it doesn't work for me. Now I'm not morally opposed to sampling, but this sampling just feels lazy and out of place, especially since J Lo's sampled chorus is muted when compared to the original, like he's lazily and angrily attacking J Lo. And if he's not doing that, then why didn't he bring on an actual singer to sing with him in the song?
36- "Sacrifices" - Drake featuring 2 Chainz & Young Thug -- Track No. 12 from Drake's new album. In this song Drake claims he wrote this song on January 21? Ummm... happy birthday to me? But not really, because this would be a pathetic birthday present. Coming straight after "Portland," the positive here is that this is listenable. I don't hate life while forcing myself to listen to the whole song. But this song is just boring. Something about sacrifices is what made Drake famous, which is cool and all, but sounds more hollow than anything when you look at the lyrics. A lot of sports references and stuff scattered throughout. We do get a break from Drake for the last two-thirds of the song, but 2 Chainz and Young Thug sound just as bored as Drake is on the track and the flow is just as lifeless, so it's not really much of a break. Just a song that would put me to sleep.
38- "Blem" - Drake -- Track No. 7 from Drake's new album. And in figuring out what in the heck blem means, I learned it may be slang for being high on marijuana. So then in that context, the main line here is "I'm blem for real, I might just say how I feel." Meaning he's only going to tell the truth to this girl when he's high? Is that what he's getting at? If so, no wonder the girl doesn't want to talk to him and keeps going back to her ex. Yet Drake blames it all on her being crazy. Just Drake being dumb again. The song doesn't hurt my eardrums, but when I try to figure it all out, I just roll my eyes at how lazy and dumb Drake is with his music.
40- "No Long Talk" - Drake featuring Giggs -- Track No. 2 from Drake's new album. This one features British rapper Giggs, who I've not heard of until now as this is one of two features he has on Drake's album. A bit of research taught me that he's had four studio albums, the most recent one released last August and sold quite well over in the U.K. While it would be unfair of me to judge his previous work with this being the first song I've heard from him, based on this I'm not super interesting in looking him up. This song does have a darker, more intense production which may have made the song work if the lyrics were even remotely interesting. Drake and Giggs each get half of the song. Drake's first half, I don't even know what he's talking about. Giggs' second half is more interesting as far as the flow and the passion goes. It seems like he actually cares, but I still don't know what he's talking about or why the song is even called "No Long Talk," so I don't really care for this.
45- "Get it Together" - Drake featuring Jorja Smith & Black Coffee -- Track No. 5 from Drake's new album. The song that "Jorja's Interlude" sets up, which I'll talk about in a second. And this is actually a decent song... until Drake shows up. The reason that this a decent song is that most of this song samples a great song called "Superman" by a South African DJ named Black Coffee featuring vocals from a South African singer named Bucie. The lyrics of "Superman" and the lyrics of "Get it Together" are almost the exact same. The girl is singing that she's been hurt so many times that she needs someone to hold her and love her. In the "Superman" version of the song, she then sings that she needs a guy to come be her Superman. In the "Get it Together" version, Drake cuts in and simply says that she needs him to get his *crap* together so they can be together. Jorja Smith does a decent job singing Bucie's lyrics, but Drake's chorus feels so out of place. Good sampling work has been done in the past, but this is an example of sampling a great song and completely butchering it, thus I give Drake zero credit for this travesty. Although I do thank him for introducing me to the original, so take that for what it's worth.
48- "KMT" - Drake featuring Giggs -- Track No. 15 from Drake's new album. This is the second song on the album that features British rapper Giggs, the first being track No. 2, "No Long Talk." Much like in the other song, Giggs actually seems to care a lot more than Drake about this song. Drake's half of the song is him doing more boring complaining about breaking up with some girl and claiming he's moved. I'm trying to figure out why it's called "KMT" and all I can come up with is the final line of Drake's verse that says "kissin' my teeth." Say what? Giggs comes in and is much more interesting, but has no substance outside him talking about girls in a creepy, perverted way and something about money and a Batman reference at the end? I'm just going to move on.
49- "Jorja Interlude" - Drake -- Track No. 4 from Drake's new album. And this one is barely a song. It's less than two minutes long as it only has one verse from Drake and a short refrain from Jorja Smith, who plays an major role on the ensuing track "Get it Together" that I just talked about, hence the name "Jorja Interlude." A song like this is more track filler to introduce the next song and shouldn't be a song that debuts on the charts. Drake's verse is boring and on this interlude song, Jorja Smith has a voice in such a high register that you have no idea what she's saying. Pointless song.
50- "4422" - Drake featuring Sampha -- Track No. 8 from Drake's new album. The weird thing about this song is that it is listed as "Drake featuring Sampha," but there is no Drake on this song, so I don't know why we are calling this a Drake song or why it's even on the album. Since Drake and Sampha collaborated twice in the past, perhaps Drake called up Sampha and asked if he wanted to write and sing a song for his new album. Drake would take full credit for the song, but it would put Sampha on the map again with a feature credit, so it was agreed to. That's how I imagine things went. Anyways, it has been suggested that this song refers to the scripture Isaiah 44:22, which is God telling someone he has forgiven them and wants them to return. That context makes sense since Sampha is talking to someone saying they claim they've changed, but never have. It's better for my ears to listen to Sampha rather than Drake, but the majority of this song is Sampha repeating same two lines over and over in between a short intro and outro. Like Sampha had an idea for 30 seconds of a song that was instead stretched to three minutes because Drake didn't want to add anything to it.
51- "Madiba Riddim" - Drake -- Track No. 6 from Drake's new album. A song that's not awful. It has a groove similar to that of a poor man's "One Dance." In other words, a lesser version of Drake's biggest career hit. The lyrics aren't awful, but they're also fairly shallow. He's just having a hard time discerning between who are his real friends and who are his friends because he's famous. In other words, he's finding a dumb way to complain about being famous that comes off as a bit arrogant towards those who are actually trying to make good music but can't find success while Drake doesn't seem to even try and gets super successful anyways and still finds ways to complain. So yeah, I don't dig this. And I don't know why it's called "Madiba Riddim." But there's worse on the album.
54- "Glow" - Drake featuring Kanye West -- Track No. 18 on Drake's new album. And what a joy it is to have my two least favorite rappers together on one track. Yes, that was sarcastic. The positive here is that these two have done a whole lot worse. Every time I see Kanye on a track these days I brace for the worst and, while I very rarely get anything worth anything, it's somewhat nice when he doesn't deliver absolute dog crap. But yeah, both of them are just rapping about how awesome they are. I don't care to count how many times on this album Drake has spent bragging about his fame and how he's the best rapper on the planet. I don't get why this subject matter is interesting to anyone. I get annoyed with overly cocky people. But I guess this is cool music these days?
60- "Do Not Disturb" - Drake -- Track No. 22 on Drake's new album. The final track on the album. And it's one giant verse with no flow and nothing interesting going on. A lame way to end a lame album that I'm really upset was able to chart every single song. That's all I have to say about this one. And perhaps I'll add for the heck of it that Drake should just not disturb me in the future. I wish he would just go away, but he'll probably be back later this year or early next year with yet another album that will chart all of its tracks, unless Billboard does something in the meantime to prevent that from happening.
61- "Nothings Into Somethings" - Drake -- Track No. 13 from Drake's new album. And man this song drags. Not helping the fact is that Drake sounds bored and depressed as he's complaining that his former love interest has now announced her engagement to someone and wouldn't even give him the decency of letting him know as he found out through a friend. This is a subject matter that Drake could've made something interesting out of, but he doesn't. As I said, the song drags and Drake is singing super slow. Then the song just ends. Two short verses with a chorus consisting of a lot of nah-nah-nah's. The only reason why this barely tops two and half minutes is the dragged on instrumentals. So yeah, there's literally like nothing here.
62- "Ice Melts" - Drake featuring Young Thug -- Track No. 21 on Drake's new album. And if you're jumping around following this track by track and suddenly you're wondering where track No. 20 went, that track is "Fake Love," which debuted towards the end of last year. I included it on the rising songs section. Track No. 21 is the second time Young Thug shows up on the album. And for the record, I really don't know why someone would choose to name themselves "Young Thug." It's a really dumb rap name. And no surprise that I don't think I've ever heard an intelligent song or verse coming from Young Thug. I don't get the appeal. Him and Drake inform us in this song that ice melts. Did you know that? I mean, who would've thunk it? Yeah, I think I've lost my sanity here. It doesn't help when this is the upteenth time Drake is whining about a failed relationship. He's begging her to let the ice melt between them and give him a second chance. But he's really not making much of an effort to prove that it would be a worthwhile second chance. He just hates being lonely, so it's all hollow.
64- "Lose You" - Drake -- Track No. 16 from Drake's new album. This is the third longest song on the album and the longest song that features only Drake, so it's the song where he has the most to say. Although none of it is even interesting. Just two long verses both followed by a short chorus of him asking "Did I lose you?" a few times. I got bored halfway through this song because Drake was too boring here. I glanced over the rest of the lyrics to see if I missed anything from the second verse and nope. Just boring old Drake music.
70- "Since Way Back" - Drake featuring PARTYNEXTDOOR -- Track No. 19 on Drake's new album. This one includes Drake and Drake wannabe, Mr. PARTYNEXTDOOR. Who is going to be the most boring and lifeless person on this track? It's hard to tell. I think Drake called up PARTYNEXTDOOR and challenged him to see which of the two could be the most boring and dull in a collaboration and I think they tied. Not helping things is that this song is over six minutes long. Because... why? And it drags like crazy.
76- "Skepta Interlude" - Drake -- Track No. 10 from Drake's new album. Drake has done an interesting thing by featuring a lot of British rappers and singers. Drake has apparently been a fan of Skepta for a while, so I guess he wanted a Skepta song on his album. This is one of a couple of songs that has no Drake on it. Yes, this song is 100 percent Skepta. So I'm judging this as a Skepta song, not a Drake song. Which is funny because in this instance, Drake decided not to even list Skepta as a featured artist. He's just in the title. Being that I've never heard a previous song from Skepta, this is brand new territory for me. I'm also not super familiar with a musical genre called Grime, but apparently that is what this is and with Drake featuring a lot of British rappers, I'm gathering that he's trying to popularize that genre over here. I will say that Skepta is more interesting than Drake. That said, this song has a lot of interesting references, some that I understand and am confused as to why they are here and some that I don't understand probably because I know nothing of the urban lifestyle in London. Perhaps some will like this and be glad that Drake brought it over, but in my opinion I think this and Skepta should probably stay over there in the U.K. It's better than Drake, but I still don't like it.
82- "Can't Have Everything" - Drake -- Track No. 17 from Drake's new album. And since I actually went through this album in order, and did so over the course of several different sittings, this is where I really started to get tired of this album and wanted to be done. But I decided to be objective anyways and endure to the final track. But this didn't help because Drake is just rambling on about how he wants everything, but he can't have everything. The one thing interesting in this song is that the outro is a bit from a lady named Sandi Graham that is talking to Drake (yes, talking -- not singing) saying she's concerned about his negative tone these days and gives him some advice on how she thinks he should be living. It sounded a lot like motherly advice to Drake, so I looked her up. And yes, Sandi Graham is in fact Drake's mother. So yeah, he included some actual advice to him from his mother. That's an interesting thing to do.
88- "At My Best" - Machine Gun Kelly featuring Hailee Steinfeld -- We'll end our long list of new arrivals this week with three songs NOT from Drake. And perhaps it's because I just put myself through 21 new Drake songs, but listening to this song was like a breath of fresh air. A rapper who writes lyrics he seems to actually care about that gives a good flow intermixed with a chorus from a pop singer with a great voice. This I can get behind. Now Machine Gun Kelly previously collaborated with Camila Cabello on "Bad Things," a song that a lot of people hate. I'm not madly in love with the song, but I'm not among the group of haters. Machine Gun Kelly has proven to be a tolerable rapper for me. In "At My Best," his rap is an attempt to be inspirational. He wants to help others who are going through a hard time and he encourages them to keep their head up and keep moving forward. He doesn't dive into any specifics, so I don't know if this is a song that people will latch onto, but it's certainly a lot better than all this Drake crap I had to wade through this week. There's not a whole lot of Hailee Steinfeld in this song. She's just there so we have a bit of a pop balance on the song instead of it being all Machine Gun Kelly, which is probably a good thing.
97- "Trap Trap Trap" - Rick Ross featuring Young Thug & Wale -- It's probably bad timing on the part of Rick Ross to release his album at the same time as Drake. Had he waited a week or two, perhaps he could've had more albums chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and at a higher position than No. 97. But let's all take a moment and thank whoever made this bad decision because I would hate to have to cover a whole ton of Rick Ross. I'll cover the songs if more of them show up in the future, but based on this I'm not even going to get close to this album of his. This song is pretty bad. Rick Ross isn't boring and dull like Drake is, but he's not interesting to listen to at all. In addition to repeating the word trap over and over in his chorus and giving a verse that I don't know what he's talking about, we also have two awful verses from Young Thug and Wale that weren't pleasant.
98- "Swalla" - Jason Derulo featuring Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign -- Every once in a while Jason Derulo releases a fun, catchy pop song. But those are few and far between. In fact, I can't even remember off the top of my head the last time I enjoyed a Jason Derulo. He's been mostly tasteless and annoying as of late and I'm also glad he's had a hard time getting back into the top 10. Let's hope this song continues his losing streak. It has a fun groove to it that makes it more tolerable than a lot of the garbage from this week, but that's it. Nick Minaj, who proved last week that it's possible for her to write songs that I don't hate, is at her absolute worst in this song. Ty Dolla $ign is barely in the song (thank you), but is so forgetable that by the end of the song I forgot he was in it. And Jason Derulo is outright annoying with a lot of "shimmy shimmy yay" and "swalla-la-la" festering throughout the song that I hope doesn't catch on. Let's hope this song quickly dies.
