Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "God's Plan" - Drake (new) -- Last week I predicted that Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" would go back to No. 1 this week. While I was on the right track there, we'll get to that in a second, shortly after posting I saw the initial sales estimates for this song and I knew that Drake was debuting at No. 1. That sales number is 127,000 first week sales. And with a number that high for a rap song, you know that the streaming is going to be through the roof as well, because streaming is completely owned by rap music. And yeah, that streaming number for Drake is 82.5 million U.S. streams, which is the fourth highest streaming total ever, behind the first two weeks of "Harlem Shake" and T-Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do." The thing to follow for this song is what it does next week. Last year Drake also debuted two songs in the top 10, "Passionfruit" at No. 8 and "Portland" at No. 9, and they lasted two weeks and one week respectively, which actually surprised me because I thought at least "Passionfruit" would stick around. If "God's Plan" fails to gain traction moving forward, it could be gone in a month or so from the top 10. Or this could be like Drake's "One Dance" from 2016, which spent 10 weeks at No. 1. If I had to make a bet right now, I'd bet on the latter and tell you to prepare for a 10-12 week run here for Drake. I'll get into my opinion down below, but you might be shocked to hear that I don't mind this song.
2- "Perfect" - Ed Sheeran (=) -- When I said that I was on the right track when I said "Perfect" would go back to No. 1 this week, the tea leaves were telling me that "Havana" was going to drop as that's what usually happens the week after an album release, which was the reason the song got such a huge sales and streaming boost. And that fall totally did happen. "Perfect" went ahead of "Havana" again. It just so happens that "God's Plan" spoiled his return to the top, so instead "Perfect" stays put at No. 2 while "Havana" falls two spots. If "God's Plan" ends up being a one week wonder, "Perfect" could return to the top next week. Or this could end up being stuck at No. 2 for a while.
3- "Havana" - Camila Cabello (-2) -- Again, zero surprise that this fell. I would've been more surprised, although certainly not disappointed, if this had stayed ahead of "Perfect." But do know what? It may have been only for one week, but I'm really glad that Camila got her seven days as queen of the Billboard charts. In other Fifth Harmony news, it appears that Lauren Jauregui has also signed, or will sign soon, a solo record deal, which would probably spell the official end of the group. Not that they were able to do anything post Camila anyways, but it's worthy of mentioning. Now we'll see what Lauren can accomplish with a solo career, whenever that starts.
4- "rockstar" - Post Malone featuring 21 Savage (-1) -- It's good to see this fall a spot. But it needs to fall faster. The only reason this fell this week is because of Drake's debut. It's time the world is able to let go of this song, which was never interesting.
5- "Finesse" - Bruno Mars & Cardi B (-1) -- While normally I'd be happy to see "Finesse" NOT rising above the songs ahead of it right now, Bruno and Cardi performed this song at the Grammy's on Sunday, which will most assuredly give this a huge boost on next week's chart. The question will be how big? Will it be able to jump up all the way to No. 2 next week? Or even No. 1 if Drake to maintain momentum? Let's hope not, because this song is not a good song. And in case you missed my personal rant on Facebook following the Grammy's, I am furious that Bruno's album won the award for best album of the year. It might be the worst best album winner in the history of the Grammy's. And if you think I'm crazy, then find me a winner that's worse and we'll see.
6- "Bad at Love" - Halsey (-1) -- Halsey also essentially holds even from last week, which isn't encouraging, but at least it's not getting higher. If "Bad at Love" ends up with only week week in the top five, that'll make me happy.
7- "Diplomatic Immunity" - Drake (new) -- The other song that Drake debuted in the charts this week. With this being the lesser of the two songs in terms of sales and streaming numbers, I'd confidently bet that this only stays here for this week. Last year when Drake debuted two songs in the top 10, the lower of the two songs, "Portland," departed after that one week. And when Ed Sheeran also debuted both "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" in the top 10, "Castle on the Hill" exited after one week while "Shape of You" was the one that stayed around. So this song is gone. I also don't hate this song, but it is by far the lesser of the two songs.
8- "New Rules" - Dua Lipa (=) -- I'm really encouraged that two new Drake songs debuted ahead of Dua Lipa, but she managed to stay put anyways. Meaning she essentially continued to rise this week. I'm guessing this song might have a hard time breaking the top five since the songs in the top five right now are pretty solid still, but I'd certainly be happy if it did. At the least, I now expect this to hang around in the bottom half of the top 10 for a while.
9- "Thunder" - Imagine Dragons (-3) -- It makes me super happy to see Imagine Dragons finally tumbling with three songs jumping ahead of "Thunder." This song never belonged close to the top five in the first place, so please let this be the final week!
10- "No Limit" - G-Eazy featuring A$AP Rocky & Cardi B (-3) -- It's equally as pleasing to me to see this also fall three spots. Let's bring in a few new songs into the top 10 next week. If "Meant to Be" (No. 12), "Let You Down" (No. 14) and "Love." (No. 15) were those three songs, I would be super excited! Although "Say Something" by Justin Timberlake will probably spoil that party as it's having first week sales numbers close to 100,000 sales. And I certainly hope Migos doesn't sneak one into the top 10 as their new 24-track album "Culture II" will probably find a huge presence on the charts next week as all their streaming numbers seem to be pretty solid.
Rising on the Hot 100:
12- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (+5) -- With Drake's two entries debuting in the top 10, it stalled our potential new entries for these rising songs, completely stalling out "Let You Down" by NF and "Love." by Kendrick Lamar. But amidst all the action, "Meant to Be" managed to rise five spots all the way to No. 12. That's a very encouraging sing that makes me confident that it'll make the top 10 next week. And I hope that's not just hopeful thinking on my part because I really enjoy this song. Bebe and FGL work great together.
31- "Roll in Peace" - Kodak Black featuring XXXTENTACION (+5) -- I'm upset that I have to bring up this song again this week. I really hope we can leave Kodak Black and XXX in 2017 and not carry their unfortunate success into 2018.
43- "Keke" - 6ix9ine, Fetty Wap & A Boogie wit da Hoddie (+21) -- I'm not surprised here. At least this song isn't as bad as "Gummo" and "Kooda." And at least both "Gummo" and "Kooda" took pretty big tumbles this week. So this week is a net positive with 6ix9ine mostly failing. Let's just please get rid of this song fairly quickly, too, and pretend that none of this 6ix9ine stuff ever happened.
51- "Outside Today" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again (+20) -- No! Let's not give YoungBoy a big hit. It's bad enough that this song debuted. We don't need it sticking around.
61- "No Smoke" - YoungBoy Never Broke Again (+17) -- What did I do to deserve TWO YoungBoy songs rising significantly this week? And why did both of them get such huge boosts? No more of this, please?
64- "Five More Minutes" - Scotty McCreery (+19) -- Is Scotty going to actually get a bonafide hit? He may have been a really popular American Idol winner who's had a few songs chart, but none of them really did much. So this would essentially be a first. While I'm not really happy about that as I've never thought Scotty was particularly talented, I suppose there's worse things that could be happening right now.
New Arrivals:
1- "God's Plan" - Drake -- I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what I thought of Drake's "One Dance" when it experienced it's monstrous reign on the Hot 100, but if I was angry at it, that anger has certainly subsided because in 2017 we have experienced a whole lot worse than Drake on the Hot 100. "One Dance" isn't a song that I voluntarily turn to very often, but it's an enjoyable enough song, at least when it comes to rap standards. I bring that up because "God's Plan" reminds me a lot of "One Dance." It has a continuous beat in the background that does a good job of carrying the song. Then I feel the rest of the instrumentation builds on that successfully throughout the song to make this have a really good flow. I've actually played the song on repeat while typing this post up, which is something I've never done with a Drake song. Lyrically I don't think this is anything inspiring as you might normally think with a song referencing God's plan for someone. I just think Drake is talking about how everyone wants him to fail, but he's not going away as God is going to help him succeed. Now personally I don't think God cares much for how successful Drake's rapping career is, but usually Drake feels very lazy with his rap and this time it seems like he actually tried.
7- "Diplomatic Immunity" - Drake -- You didn't think we were actually going to go two for two this week on Drake, did you? Now in comparison to most of the horrible rap of 2017, this song is very tolerable, which is why I said earlier that I don't hate this song. But mostly this is just boring. Even though the writing is on par with "God's Plan" in terms of it seeming like Drake kinda tried with both of these songs, we have the same beat in the background with a four-note progression that repeats itself throughout. And that's it. Nothing interesting happens musically like in "God's Plan." And the structure with Drake's rap is just four long stanzas. So even though the song is only a minute longer than "God's Plan," it feels like it's twice as long as I was tired of the song after a minute, yet it drags on for four minutes. So overall there's definitely been worse for Drake, but this is a song that I'll probably forget about in a few weeks.
56- "Mine" - Bazzi -- I have no idea who Bazzi is and Google seemed equally as confused when I tried to do a search. I found out via Genius that this song is popular because of a viral internet meme it's included in as well as a fancy Snapchat lens you can download. So that's wonderful. Apparently we're still going to let dumb memes power songs in 2018. The song itself is barely a song as it clocks in just over two minutes and the lyrics are super generic as he's just saying that the girl is his. The Snapchat lens throws in a bunch of hearts and flowers on the screen combined with SpongeBob images when it hits the word "mine," so I guess it's a dumb little thing to post around Valentine's Day? Hopefully this means the song will be gone just as fast as it showed up.
65- "Sick Boy" - The Chainsmokers -- The Chainsmokers spent most of their career releasing individual, non-album singles before they finally caved and put together a debut album last year. The only songs they pushed from that were "Something Just Like This" and "Paris," two songs that they released before the album came out. Now it appears they've abandoned that album completely as they didn't push any other song from the album. I suppose that's a good thing because that album was horrible, but I just find it amusing because "Sick Boy" is again a non-album single. As far as The Chainsmokers go, I really enjoyed them... BEFORE they got super mainstream. After "Closer" exploded, they spent the rest of their career lazily copying and pasting "Closer" over and over with uninspired songs that weren't even set up to dance to. With "Sick Boy" I appreciate them doing something a bit more creative as this isn't just a retread of "Closer" or "Roses." We start and end with a simple piano ballad while building in the middle. Yet the song still lacks a drop, thus making it so you can't play this at dance parties like you could with most of their early songs. The lyrics are a bit more interesting than most of the stuff on their album. It seems like Andrew Taggart is trying to make some sort of statement on America or how the public views him, but it doesn't quite land. Taggart also needs to stop singing on his songs because The Chainsmokers are best when they feature someone who is actually a talented vocalist. So I don't hate this. But it also doesn't take The Chainsmokers back to their old form.
71- "Supplies" - Justin Timberlake -- I think I was one of the few who defended JT's "Filthy" from a couple of weeks ago. I think people were expecting another "Can't Stop the Feeling!" while forgetting the type of singer he is on his actual albums. And compared to his usual stuff, "Filthy" was a pretty decent song. This one I can't defend, though. The fact that it debuted at No. 71 instead of debuting in the top 10 like "Filthy" did or "Say Something" seems to be heading towards next week means that the rest of the country doesn't seem to be able to defend this either. This is choppy, slow and has some annoying sound effects repeating in the background. The song itself isn't that inspiring, either. Granted "Filthy" didn't have the greatest lyrics either, but this feels like a boring re-telling of how he met this girl and is promising her that he's the guy for her. He'll be the light when she can't see, the wood when she needs heat, the generator that she can turn and stuff like that because he's got the supplies. The album comes out this week, so we'll see quickly here if this album is actually worth anything. "Say Something" is a duet with Chris Stapleton and it's pretty decent, so that's two for three thus far. Hopefully "Supplies" will just be a small bump in the road.
82- "No Name" - NF -- I was really happy to see NF show up on the charts a little while back and I assumed it would be just for a few weeks, but now the song is knocking on the door of the top 10 AND we have a follow-up song charting as well. Is NF here to stay? That would be encouraging because it's a great change of pace to see rappers who actually put some thought into their lyrics doing well on the charts. "Let You Down" was a personal song song for NF as he reflects on his childhood and feels like he let himself down. "No Name" seems to be a reflection on his journey since "Let You Down" blew up on the charts. While most rappers would get lazy at this point and brag about how rich and famous they are, I really appreciate NF as it appears he is still focusing on being grounded and true to who he is while trying to become a better person. Now I've previously stated that NF is a Christian rapper and I suppose it's more fair to clarify that he is a Christian who is a rapper as his songs aren't necessarily all Christian songs. But the Christianity in himself definitely shows up as he has a few references to God in this song even though the song itself is more about his journey and not about God. If that makes sense. But I'm coming to really like this guy because, not only is he actually really talented with his rap, but he feels very personal and authentic. He's good at telling good stories about himself or other things he cares about rather than lazily rapping about a bunch of nonsense like a lot of other rappers today.
99- "Rock" - Plies -- Our final song comes from a rapper who I also hadn't heard of. Although unlike Bazzi, Plies is an actual rapper who seems to have had a career for a long time. He even had two top 10 hits around 10 years ago, with "Shawty" featuring T-Pain peaking at No. 9 in 2007 and "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" featuring Ne-Yo peaking at No. 7 in 2008. Although he hasn't really charted much since and I certainly didn't follow rap much 10 years ago, so can you blame me for this guy flying under my radar? Although after listening to this song, it doesn't appear that I was missing a whole lot. The beat is interesting enough and he's rapping about this girl being his rock, so this could be a lot worse, but on this song he doesn't spend much time finishing his words. He rarely pronounces the last consonant on the word and the song is super choppy, so I'm not a fan. But compared to most modern rap these days, this is tolerable, so if it kept a placeholder on the charts, I would be fine with that.
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