Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Nice for What" - Drake (=) -- This week marks the third week of "Nice for What" at top with "God's Plan" following right after it at No. 2. That means had Drake not stopped himself, "God's Plan" would be in its 14th week at No. 1, with only two weeks left to go to tie the all-time record. But now that will never happen because "Nice for What" is solidly ingrained ahead of "God's Plan." However, "Nice for What" isn't portraying super great holding numbers. Sales tanked yet again. Radio is catching up, but isn't super strong at this point, and the streaming numbers, after being even the past two weeks, are now down 10 percent to 53.6 million. That means the moment we have another song that wants to jump ahead, the stage is set for that to happen. J. Cole wasn't quite strong enough this week, but Post Malone's new album impacts next week. There's a possibility. Although it'll have to mean excellent streaming numbers for these new songs because sales estimates are all pretty weak in compared to what "Psycho" and "rockstar" debuted with, so for the moment I'm not betting on Drake being dethroned.
2- "God's Plan" - Drake (=) -- I suppose for this song's 14th week on the charts, its streaming number of 40.8 million is pretty dang good. But sales continue to topple and radio, while still strong, seems to have plateaued a few weeks ago. So again I will say that the stage is set for something to take away Drake's control of the top two spots, but I'm not yet seeing what exactly that is.
3- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande (new) -- Debuting just under the two Drake songs is our new song from Ariana Grande, which I think is a solid output from Ariana, which gives me hope if this happens to be the lead-off single for a fourth studio album. More on that below, but the numbers here are encouraging across the board as she debuts with 100,000 in sales, 36.9 million U.S streams and 27 million in first week radio audience. I imagine that radio will eventually catch up and if sales and streaming can at least be decently consistent, I can see this song hanging around, which I'd be happy with. I'd love to see Ariana Grande get a No. 1 hit, but the song is going to have to debut some excellent staying power in the coming weeks to get that and that certainly won't happen next week with those huge sales numbers set to come crashing down, which is normal for a big debut. We'll see what happens over the course of the next month.
4- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (-1) -- Bebe and FGL celebrate a fourth week at No. 1 on the radio charts. But the bad news is that those radio numbers have now peaked. I imagine Ariana's second week tumble will cause this song to go back to No. 3 next week, unless Post Malone has a surprise in store with his new album, but given that radio is all that this song really has at this point, I think it's only a matter of time before it starts it's downward hike. However, that would require other songs to step up and want to be in the top five, which doesn't seem to be the case.
5- "Psycho" - Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla $ign (-1) -- It encourages me to see "Psycho" fall down a spot and get one step closer to finally disappearing from the top five. However, as I've mentioned a couple of times now, Post Malone's new album has been released and that will cause this song to recover and possible jump ahead of both Ariana and Bebe for the No. 3 spot. I'm hoping I'm wrong there, but unfortunately that sounds pretty accurate at this point.
6- "ATM" - J. Cole (new) -- J. Cole sets a record by getting three new songs to debut in the top 10 from his new album "KOD." Before last year, no one had even debuted two songs in the top 10, but now Ed Sheeran and Drake have both done that. With the rest of the top 10 being very weak, J. Cole took advantage and got three thanks to some strong streaming numbers across the board, despite not much else. I'm not so sure what I think about this trend, but only one song at most ever sticks around for multiple weeks, so I'm not expecting J. Cole to last. But I hope it doesn't mean Post Malone will also get a whole bunch of songs in the top 10 next week. I'll have plenty to say about this album as a whole, but this song individually I definitely don't like.
7- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (-2) -- Thanks to three new J. Cole songs and a new Ariana song, Zedd and Maren get booted from their top five standing down to No. 7. Yet that means if J. Cole and Ariana go away next week, this song just might rise up again next week. I'd be fine with that. I'd also be fine with Ariana sticking around, though. J. Cole's three songs can go.
8- "Kevin's Heart" - J. Cole (new) -- You'll find out below that I really appreciate J. Cole's new album as a whole and especially love the second half of it. But all three songs that debuted in the top 10 are from the first half of the album and that's the lesser of the two halves. This is a song about J. Cole, or possibly Kevin Hart, having struggles staying faithful to his girl. I get its placement in the album as a whole, but on its own, without the context, I think it's a second bad song.
9- "Look Alive" - BlocBoy JB featuring Drake (-3) -- The best part of this week's top 10 is seeing this tumble three spots. I would love to see it tumble further and fall out of the top 10 next week, but we'll see what happens with Ariana, J. Cole and Post Malone next week. There's not too many songs begging to be in the top 10 at the moment, so this could just as easily stay in the top 10 or jump back up a few spots.
10- "KOD" - J. Cole (new) -- The final song of J. Cole's album is a straight-up drug anthem. Again, the theme here is that in context, the album is actually an anti-drugs album where J. Cole is saying that life is going to throw you some hard curveballs and you're going to have to learn to make the right choices instead of letting yourself mix drugs with depression, which is a bad combination that J. Cole has personal experience with that he dives into later on. But on it's own, I don't want to see this song stick around. I'd rather see some of the other songs sneak up to the top. In other news, with a record-breaking four new songs debuting in the top 10, I'm happy to note that "Freaky Friday" is gone as is Cardi B's "I Like It" and Nicki Minaj's "Chun-Li." "Perfect" also slipped down to No. 11, but I'm keeping that a separate note from those other three songs because I still like "Perfect." And it could be back next week.
Re-Entry:
34- "Wake Me Up!" - Avicii -- You'll notice this week that my "Rising on the Hot 100" section is conspicuously missing. That's because all 12 of J. Cole's songs debuted this week, pushing everything down and there were no songs that rose high enough this week to qualify for this list. So for this week, and this week only, I'm replacing it with a re-entry section because I wanted to make note that "Wake Me Up!" by Avicii is back for a week on the charts after the tragic passing of Avicii earlier this month. This broke my heart as Avicii is one of my all-time favorite DJs and I might even do a separate blog post ranking my favorite songs of his in tribute to him. Avicii lived a troubled life surrounded in health issues and alcohol trouble. TMZ even reported that his death was due to suicide. I'm not one to judge his life, but that tells me that there were a lot of demons that he was dealing with on a regular basis. But yet he still managed to put his heart and soul into his music, which resulted in some fantastic music that helped change the EDM landscape, so that's what I'm going to remember him for. I only expect this song here for a week, but I'm glad to see that he is loved by enough people to get this song to re-enter at No. 34 as a result of his passing.
New Arrivals:
3- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande -- I've always loved Ariana's voice. She has one of the best female voices in the business when it comes to the world of pop music. I've not always loved her writing with her songs as the overall quality has been very inconsistent. As an example of that, one only needs to check out her album "Dangerous Woman," which has good songs such as "Into You" and "Dangerous Woman," but also awful songs such as "Focus" and "Side to Side." Again showing quality, since that album she joined with John Legend in credits version of "Beauty and the Beast" for the recent live action movie and did a cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to benefit those were victim of the Manchester tragedy on May 22, 2017. So the girl's got a lot of talent and one heck of a voice. Perhaps I just need to remember that she's just 24 years old at the moment, so maybe maturity in writing will come with age.
With this recent single that is most likely the lead single for her upcoming fourth studio album, she keeps things simple, which is probably best here. It's a song where she's ready to push herself forward after a sad breakup that left her devastated. But now she has no tears left to cry, so she's picking herself up. Nothing special there, but it's decent enough. But where the song really shines is in the chorus where Ariana allows herself to belt out in classic Ariana fashion. She has a very smooth, clear voice that's quite powerful that soothes my soul and causes me to appreciate this song. If there is an album coming out this year and she keeps to this style instead of trying to be popular and hip by fitting into the huge rap culture of today, I can see myself joining a new Ariana album. We need more pop music to shine right now, especially from female pop singers, so I'm crossing my fingers that Ariana can help us with that.
6- "ATM" - J. Cole -- I don't know much about J. Cole, so I was willing to give him a chance here. Me and him certainly didn't start off on the right foot here as this is the song that ESPN uses to advertise their NBA playoffs. Well, they use the chorus, anyways, which is just J. Cole repeating the phrase "count it up" over and over. I mute it every time, if you're curious. I'll give him some credit for having passion and flow on his verses, but ATM here stands for addicted to money. J. Cole says here that he thinks money is going to solve all of his problems and thus he enjoys falling in love with the big wheels and quick thrills while sleeping with your girl. Based on the rest of the album, I'm guessing that he's rapping about issues he's dealt with in the past. But if you single this song out, that's not made clear at all and thus this is just another song about a rapper flexing about his money and bragging about stealing your girl. I hate it when that's the subject of rap songs, especially in moments where that's all that's rapped about. As is, I'm never going to listen to this song on its own, so I can't give this song a pass.
8- "Kevin's Heart" - J. Cole -- Our second track from J. Cole's album feels a lot more dull than ATM. It's much slower and feels like it drags. Content-wise, is it any better? Well, not really. I suppose one could commend honesty in this track with J. Cole rapping about a struggle he has, or had, with drugs and cheating on his girl. Part of the song is him talking about how good and perfect his girl is, but then he discusses the temptation of his phone blowing up with other girls wanting to be with him and trying to resist, but ultimately failing. The title of the song refers to Kevin Hart, who admitted to cheating on his pregnant wife and has to deal with the criticism from the public after admitting to this while trying to use the experience to learn despite all the deserved negativity surrounding him. This I say confidently because Kevin Hart stars in this music video. But is the song actually about Kevin Hart? As in, is J. Cole singing from his perspective? Or is he using Kevin's story to relate to his own? I'm not sure. But either way, this song makes me slightly angry because if your girl is so awesome, then why cheat on her? Maybe I shouldn't judge because I have my own demons, as we all do, and looking at those demons on paper, I might get mad at myself for being stupid. But still. I don't know if I'm a huge fan of this one, especially not without context of the album.
10- "KOD" - J. Cole -- Here's the title track of the album. J. Cole confirmed on Twitter that this KOD acronym has a three-fold meaning: "Kids on Drugs," "King Overdosed" and "Kill Our Demons." So you get an idea of what he's going for with the whole album. The overall point is that he's trying to send a message about how bad drugs are and how there's always a choice when we're faced with tough challenges in life. We need to learn to face our own demons. But that's the album as a whole. This song on its own is one that I have problems with because it's a drug anthem. Perhaps he's highlighting the issue at hand or talking about personal experiences that he's had in the past. But like with "ATM" and "Kevin's Heart," I'm not ever going to listen to this song on its own. In fact, I initially listened to this song and was rather taken aback, but not surprised as most rappers love their drug anthems. So I had mean things to say. Until I listened to the rest of the album and then understood what J. Cole was going for. Out of context, this song is awful. But perhaps in context, that's the point. I don't know. As I said, I'm conflicted here. But if I revisit this album, I'd probably just skip this one and move onto the meat of the album where J. Cole has a lot to say.
14- "Photograph" - J. Cole -- "Photograph" is the song on the album that comes right after "KOD," our drug anthem that I just discussed. But this song is simpler and different. It's J. Cole falling in love with a girl that he sees from a photograph, yet complaining about how love has gone digital, which is something that he says in the song is not good for his health. So essentially this is a comment on social media and how that has become a drug. Because in this photograph of the girl that J. Cole sees, he says he follows the girl and hopes to get a follow back. Perhaps this girl is the one later on in "Kevin's Heart" that he admits to not being man enough to be faithful to as sleeping with various girls is also his drug? Maybe. But that's later on and I already complained about that song. Sticking with "Photograph," this is the first song on the album that I buy. There's a lot more meaning here. However, his chorus is stretched out like taffy, so I don't think the song flows as good as it could've.
15- "Motiv8" - J. Cole -- Using numbers to complete words. How original. Instead of trying to be cool and hip, how about you just name the title "Motivate"? Oh well. Moving on. In case you didn't get the message loud and clear in "ATM" that J. Cole is, or was, addicted to money, we have another song that's about him addicted to money and a chorus that's remarkably similar to the chorus in "ATM." Instead of J. Cole repeating the phrase "count it up," he repeats the word "motivate" while occasionally throwing in "get money." So he's motivating himself to get money so he can do his drugs. Granted, in context of the album, these two songs have more of a point to them, but this song on it's own isn't very good and there's a lot more mumbling and slurring than I care to hear. And the over-repetition I find about as annoying as "ATM."
20- "1985 (Intro to "The Fall Off")" - J. Cole -- Fast forward to the final track on the album, which apparently the intro to the next album he is currently working on, titled "The Fall Off." The script in this song is definitely flipped as the whole song is J. Cole, who was born in 1985 and is thus 33 years old, giving advice to all these awful, young rappers that have exploded on the charts. Quite honestly, I really love everything he's telling them. Essentially he tells that that, even though they think the money is never going to end, that's not true because they forget that they're just riding all the horrible trends of today. When all these immature kids grow up, they're going to learn that all of this music is awful and will stop listening to it, thus if these awful rappers continue down this trend, they're going to disappear into irrelevancy because what they're rapping about is a faster way to the ground. Which is very true. I highly doubt many of these rappers that you see me talking about every week will even be remembered in the not so distant future. Granted, I don't think many of the songs from this J. Cole album that I've talked about so far will fare any better, but I love this finale.
28- "The Cut Off" - J. Cole featuring kiLL edward -- J. Cole said in the first track "KOD" that he didn't feature anyone because they aren't worthy. So who is kiLL edward? Well, that's J. Cole's alter ego. So yeah, no true features on this song. Combining the two versions of himself makes for an interesting song here as we're back in the first half of the album. kiLL edward represents someone who is addicted to drugs and spiraling downward while J. Cole himself is rapping about cutting people out of his life who don't belong there anymore. The commentary on Genius gives an elaborate explanation of this where J. Cole is against drugs and doesn't want to see anyone suffer the fate that this kiLL edward voice represents. I don't know if I quite see that in this song as I think some people are adding words here that don't exist. And much of the anti-drugs stuff comes later on. But I do like the contrast of one voice representing a drug addict while the other is J. Cole saying he is forced to cut certain people out of his life that are a bad influence or aren't worthy of being in his life anymore.
30- "BRACKETS" - J. Cole -- Here's a fascinating song from J. Cole. I'll admit that it takes a long time to get started. It was slow and was just about money and climbing up in the tax brackets, so I initially thought it was another money song like "ATM" and "Motiv8," but then J. Cole comes in with a sharp, potent verse with two minutes left in this five minute song where he gets super political and angry about how the government is working and how he is mad that a bunch of old white people in Congress are spending his tax dollars while not even thinking of his particular community. If we would've had that J. Cole verse earlier on instead of slowly building up to it, I think this song would've been much better because I felt like there was too much fluff in the first three minutes.
41- "Window Pain (Outro)" - J. Cole -- Here's the outro of J. Cole's album, which actually comes right before "1985," the intro to his next album where he's giving advice to all of the dumb, young rappers. "Window Pain" is definitely the best song yet. In talking about "BRACKETS," I mentioned that if J. Cole had spent the whole song with his verse in the second half, then it would be a really good song. Well, that's what this is. The song is framed by a little girl talking about her cousin being shot and killed, then giving her explanation of why bad things happen. In J. Cole's chorus, which is the next layer of the song, after the girl's intro and before the girl's outro, he details how he essentially just wants to keep his family safe. He admits that he was caught up in the culture of drugs and money, but now he's changed, which I find really strong. Then in the middle we get his verse which is quite potent and blunt with the type of life going on around him. This is the type of rap song that would help me enjoy the genre a lot more if everything was like this. It also makes me think that I should forgive the nonsense from the first half of the album as maybe that was an honest reflection about where he was whereas this is a reflection of where he is now. But no, I'll keep this as is. I still don't like those early songs and I wish more of the album was like the second half.
46- "FRIENDS" - J. Cole featuring kiLL edward -- In terms of the acronym KOD that is this album title, "FRIENDS" is the song that deals with "Kill Our Demons." This is a straight-up anti-drugs song. It's framed with the speaker saying he got a lot of drugs today, then we get a bit from J. Cole's alter-ego kiLL edwardThe interesting bit comes in when J. Cole dives into a whole bunch of reasons why people in his community might be justified in having a hard life, but then explains that depression and drug addiction don't blend well, so a better option is to face the demons and challenges head on rather than slipping into a drug addiction. This is another powerful, meaningful song that makes me appreciate what J. Cole has set out to do here with this album.
47- "Once an Addict (Interlude)" - J. Cole -- Here's an interlude from the album. Although I'm not quite sure why it's labeled as an interlude because J. Cole has a really interesting story to tell in this full-length song. Most of it is about the story of him and his mom growing up. According to J. Cole in the song, his mom suffered from depression and was an alcoholic who never treated him well. All he wanted was to get out of that situation and run away. Looking back on the fact, he wishes he would've done more to help her as her life seemingly down-spiraled following extreme depression after her husband left her. The outro in the song states, "Life can bring much pain. There are many ways to deal with this pain. Choose wisely." Looking back on this whole experience diving into this album, I really appreciate that overall message, even though it could've been clearer in the beginning what this was all about. I still don't like the three songs that entered the top 10 or "Motiv8" when I listen to them on their own, but I appreciate the album as a whole and I really like the personal experience that J. Cole dives into with this particular interlude.
53- "Intro" - J. Cole -- And to finish things off with J. Cole, we have the intro of the album, which is just that. An intro. It's less than two minutes long, but has a good message to say. The female voice in this intro says that a baby has two forms of communication. Laughter, which means, "I love this" and crying, which means, "I'm in pain." Life can bring much pain. Choose wisely. It's a great intro because that's the theme of this album. And as I've chronicled, J. Cole then dives into several songs about drugs and money that I don't really like, before reeling us in and saying that drugs are bad and money doesn't matter. Overall it averages out to a C+ for me, but that doesn't tell the full story. If people say they love this album, I can totally understand why and I can agree with them for the second half of it where J. Cole gets real.
57- "OTW" - Khalid, Ty Dolla $ign & 6LACK -- Khalid is someone I'm usually down with. He's good at his relaxing tunes that have just enough groove to them. The problem with him is that he sometimes has poor choice with who he chooses to collaborate with. I actually think he works quite well with EDM artists, but more often than not he's hanging out with these thug rappers and that's not a very good look. In this song, Khalid does great and the chorus here is pretty darn catchy. The content is good enough as him and Ty Dolla $ign are talking about how they'll be there for their girls when needed. And yeah, surprisingly I didn't hate Ty's verse. I braced for bad impact, but got decent enough. It's that 6LACK verse that ruins everything. Not only is he lazy and near mumbling on the song, but he also condescending to his girl in telling her to get out of park and into drive while flexing about how awesome he is. So someone forgot to tell 6LACK that this was supposed to be more of a gentlemanly song. If we get a version of this song without him on it, then I'll happily listen to it. But as is, I'm not so sure.
72- "Babe" - Sugarland featuring Taylor Swift -- I have to apologize here because I am not familiar with Sugarland at all. In my defense, though, after looking them up, I learned they're a country duo who hasn't released anything since 2011 and were big in the 2000's, a time period where I certainly wasn't paying much attention to country music at all. But it did make me happy seeing Taylor Swift back associating with the country scene again. This is a simple country pop song about a broken relationship that fits Taylor quite well and she blends well with the singers of Sugarland. It's nice to see Taylor going back to her roots a bit. However, if this sounds like a song that should've come from her album "Red," it's because it was supposed to. She wrote it with the lead singer of Train while working on "Red," but it got shelved until now when she called up Sugarland and asked if they wanted to take it. Apparently this specific relationship is about Jake Gyllenhaal? I never even knew Taylor was dating him. And if I did, I forgot. It's hard to keep track of all that girl's ex-boyfriends as there's like 983 of them now.
74- "Te Bote" - Casper Magico, Nio Garcia, Darell, Nicky Jam, Ozuna & Bad Bunny -- Oh goodness. Why in the frack are there six people on this song? The answer is that this is a remix. The original version just had the first three, Casper Magico, Nio Garcia and Darell. I'm guessing they called Nicky Jam, Ozuna and Bad Bunny just so they could have a big hit with a huge collaboration with these hugely popular Latino singers. I listened to the original version first and it was kinda slow and boring. How do they manage to fit six singers in the remix? Easy. They make the song seven minutes long and each take turns. And it's still not a very interesting song. The problem with the remix is that it's not interesting AND it's seven minutes long. I didn't dive too much into the English translation, but with these Latino songs, I simply ask them to find the right beat. Either make it a good Latino dance song or a romantic Latino slow song. This falls awkwardly in between. Someone needs to do another remix where the tempo is taken up several notches, the song is back to four minutes long and only has a few singers.
81- "Dame Tu Cosita" - El Chombo -- I don't know where this thing came from, but someone needs to make it go away. Yes, in pertaining to the beat of the song, it's upbeat and dancy enough, but there are so many other things that make me scared and disturbed. All of the voices in the song are just not appealing to me at all and it's interjected with a lot of sexually-sounding female sighs. So when I translate "dame tu cosita" into English and find it means "give me your little thing," I've had enough. A dirty Latino rap song is not something I desire in my life.
95- "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" - David Lee Murphy & Kenny Chesney -- I don't know if any country enthusiasts remember David Lee Murphy, but he was a country singer in the 90's and early 2000's who hasn't released anything since 2004. I know nothing about him. I just looked that up because I was wondering who he was. But he's released in a new album called "No Zip Code" and this song features Kenny Chesney, which is exactly why it's here. I most certainly like Murphy's voice better than Chesney's. He has a calm, normal voice, if that makes any sense, while Chesney contrasts with a deep, cliche country voice. Me and Chesney aren't best friends, but "Get Along" from two weeks ago wasn't completely awful. I'd prefer a version of this song with just Murphy, but even then this is an extremely simplistic song, so I don't know how often I'd turn to it either way. It's also fairly harmless, too, so I can't complain. They're just singing that everything's gonna be alright and that's pretty much it. It did cause me to go listen to "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley, which uses those same lyrics, but in a much more energetic, uplifting way. If I want reassurance that things are going to be OK, I'll turn to Bob instead of David and Kenny.
98- "CLOSE" - Rae Sremmurd & Travis Scott -- We finish this long week off with Rae Sremmurd. I have found myself enjoying Swae Lee on occasion, but this is not one of those times. He is handling the chorus on this song and he's mostly on autopilot while for some reason thinking that spelling out the word close would be a good idea. "You're to C-L-O-S-E to me." I found that distracting. But not as distracting as Slim Jxmmi, who has never been useful or interesting in his career, or Travis Scott, who starts us off on a really bad note to begin with. Listen, nothing in this song worked for me and it's been a long week with all these new arrivals, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
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