Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "SAD!" - XXXTENTACION (+51) -- Take it, X. And keep it for as long as you want. I said this on my personal Facebook page the day the news broke, but this is a time when we put our personal feelings aside and mourn the loss of a 20-year-old kid. No one deserves to die, especially not someone that young. He had his whole life in front of him, which included the opportunity to change and become a better human being. And now that opportunity has been taken from him. No, I didn't like his music and no, I didn't think he was a very good human being. I mean, he was awaiting trial for domestic violence charges wherein he beat his pregnant girlfriend. So he probably belonged in prison for an extended period of time. But that's still not cause for celebrating his death, which I've seen some people on the internet do. That's disgraceful. On the flip side, I've also seen people praising him as a legend, one of the greatest rappers and/or this generation's 2Pac. Well, I'm certainly not going to complain about that. Just don't expect me to take it that far because I still don't like his music. But I sincerely mourn his loss. It's a tragedy that he was taken way too young.
In terms of this song specifically, I actually don't think it's that bad. And I said that when it debuted back in March. It leans towards pop more than hip-hop and musically it's a pretty good song. I think my biggest problem is that it feels underwritten. He has one short verse, then repeats the chorus six times. It would've been nice if he went in to more depth rather than just scratching the surface, but I would've been alright with this being a huge hit even before X got killed and I'm definitely fine with it staying here with all things considered. However, history suggests that songs that get a boost after an artist passes away usually only lasts a week, so objectively speaking I only expect this to stay No. 1 for this week, but if it sneaks in a few more, I'm totally fine with it.
2- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (+1) -- With "SAD!" being down at No. 52 before X got shot, it means had that not happened, Cardi B would've been No. 1 this week as she passed both "Nice for What" and "Psycho." I'm sure Cardi is totally fine with waiting a bit before getting No. 1. She does have strong competition for the spot, but the advantage she has on everyone else is that she's consistent in all three categories rather than just being lopsided in one or two, so my money is on Cardi getting No. 1 next week if X falls from the top spot.
3- "Nice for What" - Drake (-2) -- Drake may have been dethroned... again. But surprisingly I wouldn't completely rule out a fourth separate trip to No. 1 with this song as Drake's album gets released on Friday, meaning I fully expect both this and "God's Plan" to get a huge boost the week after next as album drops usually do that for an artist. But with fading totals in all categories, will that boost be enough?
4- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (+2) -- The biggest challenger for Cardi B on next week's charts is this song. Personally I would prefer this song over Cardi's as I still think this is a pretty good song. It's an absolute monster on streaming right now, with totals that very well could push it to the top despite lacking in the other two categories. I will say that sales are catching up, but still not super strong. Yet the big problem is that radio still hasn't touched this song as it hasn't even debuted on the radio charts yet. While streaming can carry this momentarily, absolutely no radio will hurt it in the long run. I'm honestly confused why radio hasn't given this more of a look. All the other rap songs in the top 10 right now have decent radio. Even if you hate this song, is it really that much worse than the likes of Cardi B and Post Malone?
5- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (=) -- My nightmares of this song sticking around for a long time are coming true. Radio is starting to eat this up as the numbers continue to skyrocket. Meanwhile sales are still really good and streaming, mostly thanks to the YouTube, is also surprisingly strong. Yet every time I see the title, it's the Kip Moore song titled "More Girls Like You" that I start singing while I'm not even able to recall this tune unless I go relisten to it, which I haven't cared to do much because I never cared much for it in the first place.
6- "Psycho" - Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla $ign (-4) -- This is my favorite part of this week's top 10. Seeing "Psycho" plummet from No. 2 to No. 6. When I first saw this, I literally was as giddy as a little school boy. It's about freaking time. Oddly enough, it's the streaming that's the problem for Post Malone. The sales are declining, but not by a lot while the radio is mostly steady. But the streaming completely bottomed out this week, sending this falling out of the top five.
7- "Boo'd Up" - Ella Mai (=) -- I've said this for several weeks now, but despite great streaming, the radio and sales just aren't rising fast enough for Ella, thus she seems to remain stuck here at the bottom half of the top 10. Honestly I'm kinda surprised that radio hasn't moved very fast as its still below the top 10 at No. 15 overall and no where to be heard on pop radio. I mean, why is pop radio playing Post Malone on repeat and falling in love with Maroon 5 again while tossing Ella Mai to the curb? That confuses me.
8- "God's Plan" - Drake (-4) -- "God's Plan" spent a LONG time in the top five after debuting at No. 1. 21 weeks to be exact. In fact, this is the first week that it's been out of the top five. But as I said with "Nice for What," don't be surprised to see this get a boost in two weeks when Drake's album, which releases on Friday, will impact the charts. It should at least celebrate one final week in the top five when that happens.
9- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande (=) -- I'm really glad that pop radio has fallen in love with this song by Ariana. It's a fantastic pop song. I'm kinda sad, though, that the other categories don't have as much life in them comparatively, thus leaving Ariana stranded at No. 9 yet again, instead of going up on the charts like she deserves.
10- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (-2) -- One more week for this trio of acts in the top 10 as they hang on for dear life to the No. 10 spot? This song is still No. 1 on the overall radio charts, which is the reason it's maintained enough momentum to still be here, but it's started to plummet on pop radio while losing hard in sales and streaming. So yeah, this could be gone as early as next week.
Rising on the Hot 100:
15- "I'm Upset" - Drake (+13) -- We got an odd mix of new arrivals this week which combined with XXXTENTACION dominating with a whole ton of re-entries. "Moonlight" at No. 16, "Changes" at No. 18, "Jocelyn Flores" at No. 19, "F--- Love" at No. 28, "Everybody Dies in Their Nightmares" at No. 42, "The Remedy for a Broke Heart (Why Am I So in Love)" at No. 58 and "Numb" at No. 82. That means not a lot of rising songs this week, but I'm sure we'll get more next week. What we did get is Drake's next single looking like it's heading for a top 10 spot, which is unfortunate. The song got a huge boost this week thanks to the music video and will get another boost in two weeks with the album. Yes, I liked both "God's Plan" and "Nice for What." I do not like "I'm Upset," so I'm not happy that it's gaining traction. You can say... I'm upset.
49- "Youngblood" - 5 Seconds of Summer (+30) -- We jump straight from No. 15 to No. 49. No rising songs in between all of that. But I'm sure next week will compensate for that, though. This week 5SOS got a pretty big boost with their album release. I haven't listened to very many albums this year, but this one certainly wouldn't be high on my list to catch up with. That said, I don't hate "Youngblood," so who knows.
63- "I Lived It" - Blake Shelton (+13) -- Out of all the country songs this week that could've had a big boost, why this one? Oh. Because it's Blake Shelton. Lame. When will the world of country finally give up on this guy?
87- "Welcome to the Party" - Diplo, French Montana & Lil Pump featuring Zhavia Ward (+13) -- This song debuted a few weeks back, but has spent the time in between not being able to decide what it's going to do. It disappeared, then re-entered, then fell to No. 100. Now it jumped up to No. 87. What's next? I'd say get rid of it.
New Arrivals:
13- "APES---" - THE CARTERS -- The biggest story in the new arrivals section is the surprise album drop from Beyonce and JAY-Z called "EVERYTHING IS LOVE." On the album, their calling themselves THE CARTERS, which makes sense since they are the Carters, of course. Married since 2008. Together long before that. Of the nine tracks from the album, five of them debuted this week, most of them towards the bottom of the charts. But this song is the biggest new song from them, nearly getting them a top 10 debut. And yes, it's censored in this post because I don't type up curse words on this blog. Both JAY-Z and Beyonce released their own albums individually, "4:44" and "Lemonade." I think I was supposed to be madly in love with both of them. I wasn't. Sorry. Doesn't mean I hated them. I just didn't love them. Is that OK? If not, well, tough. It's my opinion. Thus I can't say I was excited when this album dropped. But I was curious to see what they came up with.
We're not off to a very good start with this first song, though. I can see the conversation right now. "Hey love, we should do an album together!" "Great idea! What should we sing about?" "Let's sing about how rich we are and about how we're on top of the music world." "Another great idea! Let's make sure we bring in Migos with our big single that we'll promote." "Perfect!" Yeah, these two are capable of MUCH better than this. The beat is fine and their flow with the rap is pretty good, but for crying out loud I don't give one iota about the content here. It's boring and lazy. And having Quavo and Offset on the song with their echoes and sound effects making it even worse for me. Quite frankly, Beyonce is terrible on this song as she sounds bored when she's delivering her lazily written lines. At least JAY-Z is on fire with his verse, but he's not in this specific song very much. And now I'm sure I'll have people trying to convince me of how much of a masterpiece this song is. But I don't care. I don't see it.
43- "Bed" - Nicki Minaj featuring Ariana Grande -- I consider myself a fan of Ariana Grande, but occasionally she frustrates me by doing stuff like this with Nicki Minaj. Granted, this is not as explicit and awful as some of their previous collaborations, nor is it close to as disgustingly graphic as last week's "Rich Sex" by Nicki and Lil Wayne, but this is still just a sex song. Ariana handles the chorus where she tells the boy that she has a bed with his name on it and a kiss with his name on it. And that's it. Those were the only lines that Nicki gave her in this song. She just repeats them a lot. Then Nicki in her verses talks about her thousand dollar sheets on this bed and the strawberry lingerie she'll be wearing while she's waiting. Her rap isn't as annoying as it often is, so I guess this is acceptable, but I'm mostly just bored with it. With this combined with "Rich Sex," I'm guessing Nicki has 19 tracks of sex and money that she'll be rapping about on her upcoming album "Queen" this summer. I couldn't be less excited at this point. Let's just hope she doesn't album bomb when it does get released.
53- "Bigger > You" - 2 Chainz, Drake & Quavo -- Oh my goodness, the stylization of this title gives me a huge headache. The title read out is supposed to be "Bigger Than You." But apparently 2 Chainz skipped math class in middle school because the symbol ">" does NOT stand for "Than." It stands for "GREATER than." So essentially what 2 Chainz has done is create a title that says "Bigger is Greater Than You." Which is a sentence that doesn't actually make sense. But, you know, as long as it LOOKS cool and hip, that's what really matters in the rap world, right? Well, as you might guess, the song itself is as unintelligent as it looks. Drake phones in a verse at the end. Like, literally. He mumbles and slurs his way through his verse that probably took him two minutes to write, record and send over to 2 Chainz. Quavo takes care of the chorus were he has some random, generic flex rap while 2 Chainz in his verses talks about all the fancy stuff he owns and how it makes him better than you. Yeah... snooze.
55- "DDU-DU DDU-DU" - BLACKPINK -- Let me start by fully admitting that this is an incredibly stupid song. And these girls need serious work when it comes to their lip-syncing in their music videos. I mean, they hit these super high notes, but in the video they're barely opening their mouths. That aside, this is the type of really stupid song that I will categorize into the guilty pleasure. It's like how we all have a ton of fun in dance parties when we ride on our invisible horses when "Gangnum Style" plays. It's really stupid. But a lot of fun. I think what makes this fun is that these girls have a lot of talent vocally. This plays into every K-Pop cliche by being a hybrid of every genre, but it does it well. The dance beats are strong and heavy. The vocals of these girls when it hits the pop portion of the song is off the charts. They belt out their verses and it's breathtaking in an Ariana Grande sort of way. Then when we get to the rap verses, they have some fire to that. Instead of lazily checking the boxes like our other K-Pop group, these girls check the boxes, but then go above and beyond with those cliches. If that makes sense. Most of the lyrics are in Korean, but then we have random bits of English like "toxic," "I'm foxy," "bad girl" and "test me." Then of course, in full English, we have the kicker, "Wait till I do what I do; Hit you with that ddu-du ddu-du." Whatever that means. In fact, I don't think it means anything in either English or Korean. You don't even need to look up the lyrics. You know exactly what they're saying.
On a side note, one thing I also appreciated is that there are only four of them and they all have distinct purposes and styles in the group. This is what a boy band or girl group should be like. Each member should have a specific purpose. When you have a group like BTS, who have 9,765 members and all but one or two of them are completely useless, that really annoys me.
74- "Born to Be Yours" - Kygo & Imagine Dragons --Kygo and Imagine Dragons? Are we topping our ice cream with a mix of onions, mushrooms and olives? I really love Kygo. I think he's extremely talented. And I used to be a fan of Imagine Dragons. But then they got extremely lazy and generic with their music, thus I turned against them. But maybe if we infuse their music with a bit of Kygo magic that would make them enjoyable again? And yeah, much to my surprise, this is exactly what happens. Although the big reason for that is that this is totally a Kygo song that more or less just features the voice of Dan Reynolds. I'm not sure why the whole band was credited or what they did in the recording session, but this is an EDM song that is fashioned perfectly by Kygo with a good tropical beat and a well-placed drop that will have you grooving at dance parties. The lyrics are simple. Dan is singing to a girl and telling her that he was born to hers as well as saying he never knew anybody until he knew her. It's good enough for the song, I suppose, although I could've used a bit more depth, especially since Dan recently just announced his divorce from his wife of seven years. So how does that play into this song? I don't know. I wish he would've explained.
77- "BOSS" - THE CARTERS -- Back to Beyonce and JAY-Z. Did they come up with something more creative with this next song? The answer is no. The good thing about this song when compared to "APES---" is that there are no Migos giving echoes and sound effects. It's just Beyonce talking about how they're boss and their ain't nothing to it. In other words, money and popularity comes easy to them. Maybe that's why she can afford to sleepwalk through this album because she knows she'll get praised to the high heavens for doing jack squat. Yeah, there ain't nothing too this song. The content is boring. Beyonce sounds bored. And not even JAY-Z is on his game this time around as he just talks about his $100 million crib and $3 million watch, all in a very choppy way. That was unfortunate because I thought at least I could count on him.
78- "Ocean" - Martin Garrix featuring Khalid -- Here's a combination that makes a ton of sense. Because Khalid collaborates with everyone, Martin Garrix decided he wanted in on the action and I'm cool with that because Martin Garrix is one of my favorite current DJs and Khalid does best when he's working with the correct people. Martin Garrix is certainly one of those. I will say first that Khalid does a bit more mumbling in this song that I prefer. He's a pretty chill singer to begin with, but he doesn't enunciate all his lyrics in a perfectly clear way. With that out of the way, I like how smooth and relaxing this song is, which goes to show how versatile Martin Garrix. A lot of DJs have their personal style, thus making it fairly easy to tell the difference between a Zedd song, a David Guetta song and a Calvin Harris song, for example, but Martin Garrix is a lot harder to pin down because he does whatever feels right for the song at hand. With a song called "Ocean" wherein Khalid is calmly saying that nothing is going to keep him and his lover apart, Martin Garrix framed that with a relaxing undertone that makes it feel like you are walking on a beach with your lover rather than jamming out to a hardcore dance song, which Garrix is also good at, but was smart enough to know that this wasn't the right song to implement those hard beats in, thus we are left with a relaxing love song that I found myself really enjoying.
80- "Hope" - XXXTENTACION -- This is the week of XXXTENTACION and as I've said above, I'm totally fine with letting him have it. "SAD!" was the biggest benefactor as it soared to No. 1 this week. But as I said in my rising songs section, there were a lot of others that re-entry. Well, here we have a leftover track from X's recent album "?" that never charted with the rest of the songs when the album dropped. Thus this will act as the final new entry from X, unless there ends up being more posthumous releases in the future that he recorded, but never put on an album. As a final entry for X, if that ends up being the case, "Hope" is a nice way to finish things off. Although if I'm being honest, what song suffers from his what the rest of the album suffered from. Being underwritten. X had a nice idea here as this song, as stated in the intro of the song, is dedicated towards those who lost their lives in the Parkland shooting. Or, well, family members left behind. The description on the song's SoundCloud is really nice and touching as he talks about there still being hope despite the fact that we've lost someone we loved. But he doesn't touch on that much on the song itself. It's the chorus repeated twice, wherein he's speaking as the voice of someone going through an awful time bridged together with a short statement saying there's hope for the rest of us. Again, a great idea and sad in retrospect, but I still don't think X ever learned how to properly write a full song. Still, this is acceptable.
84- "SUMMER" - THE CARTERS -- Song No. 3 from JAY-Z and Beyonce from their album. This song actually opens the album and had I listened to this album in order, I might be excited about what they have in store here because this is pretty decent. At least comparatively. The big difference here is that Beyonce is actually trying and she pulls out some classic Beyonce in her chorus as she uses her powerful voice that I know she has, yet also toning it down when she needs to in order to give us a good romantic vibe with this chill summer love song. Although the content of the song is pretty surface level here as she's just talking about making love in the summer time and it's JAY-Z's verse here that feels boring and lazy. Beyonce and JAY-Z have made their fair share of love songs in their days and "SUMMER" is one that I probably won't remember too much. I'd rather return to "Crazy in Love" than touch "SUMMER" again. But at least this is progress when compared to the other two songs. Or maybe the other songs are a digression since "SUMMER" comes first on the album.
85- "Drowns the Whiskey" - Jason Aldean featuring Miranda Lambert -- Any country song with an alcoholic beverage in the title is one that you can almost guarantee that I won't be impressed with. Especially not if it comes from a country artist as boring as Jason Aldean. What I was curious about, though, was the Miranda Lambert feature. She is a good country singer, but what is she doing on a Jason Aldean song about whiskey? Could she make it tolerable? The answer to that is possibly the most frustrating part of the song. Miranda Lambert provides backing vocals to Jason Aldean in this song and that's it. She didn't even get a solo part in the chorus or a verse of her own to counteract Jason Aldean. That could've been something interesting. I mean, he's just complaining about how whiskey is supposed to drown the memory, but the memory ends up drowning the whiskey. That's boring, cliche, country nonsense. Counteracting with a Miranda Lambert verse could've at least been something. But to have a boring country song that brings on Miranda, yet only uses her for backing vocals is a complete waste, turning this song from boring to frustrating.
95- "NICE" - THE CARTERS -- Song No. 4 from Beyonce and JAY-Z's album is indeed the fourth track from the album. So caught this one in the right order. We start with a decent love song in "SUMMER," follow it up with two really bad songs where the happy couple talk about how rich and famous they are. And then we get "NICE." Which is a slight step up from the two tracks following it, but not quite on the level of "SUMMER." I find this song mostly boring as we get the chorus with Beyonce and Pharrell that drags on like taffy and nearly puts me to sleep. Yet the chorus is a huge part of the song. And we also get a post-chorus bit with JAY-Z a couple of times where he says "Nice nice nice nice nice nice" in a very jarring, chopped up way, followed by doing the same with the words "night," "lights" and "ice." That part made me cringe. I thought JAY-Z's verse was fine. Beyonce's two verses were very carefree, which I was mostly fine with. But then in a very carefree, she includes some strange things. And we end the song with a verse from Pharrell. Because... why? His verse doesn't really fit in
96- "Cops Shot the Kid" - Nas featuring Kanye West -- I don't know if you all remembered our series of Kanye West produced albums this summer, but the fourth of five albums in that series, all released one week after the other, was Nas' album "NASIR." And he was only able to chart one song, so I'm just going to talk about this one song. If you are a Nas fan and want to tell me all about the album, then be my guest. But I'm not going to dive into it right now. This one song here is obviously a politically-charged song, which made me nervous because Kanye is on it and Kanye and politics do not mix at all. And I was right to be justified because the second verse, which is all Kanye, is his typical Kanye-isms with him trying to say important things but not being very good at saying them without throwing in at least a bit of controversy as Kanye had to throw in a bit about fake news. Throwing that aside, the rest of the song is actually really good. We start with a Richard Pryor bit about racism, then we get the line "Cops shot the kid" repeated throughout the song by Slick Rick, which includes a scream in it for emphasis. The first verse is Nas properly presenting what Kanye tries to present, that of racism and all the crap that the black community has to deal with when it comes to all the racist cops out there. It's nothing we haven't seen before and I'm not sure there's a conclusion that Nas comes up with or a course of action needing to be taken. I think he could've done that in a second verse, giving this song the impact of a Kendrick Lamar song, but unfortunately as I've mentioned, Kanye comes in and ruins what Nas starting, meaning this song had potential. Perhaps I should look up more of Nas' own stuff without Kanye's involvement as he impressed me.
99- "FRIENDS" - THE CARTERS -- We're going to finish off this mostly underwhelming album from Beyonce and JAY-Z with the sixth track of the album and fifth song that charted. There's four other songs on the album, "713," "HEART ABOUT US," "BLACK EFFECT" and "LOVEHAPPY" that I don't care to listen to because these others that charted had me not caring, so why should I continue? In this song, we have Beyonce and JAY-Z talking about their friends and how said friends have helped them out in their life. That's all fine and dandy. Better than lazily rapping about fame and fortune. However, Beyonce still turns this into flexing as her chorus that repeats has her specifically talking about how her friends are better than your friends. I mean, come on. Do we have to turn everything into a flame war? Why can't we just calmly talk about how good our friends our without bringing in the comparison? What also brings this song down is JAY-Z's super long verse that left me exhausted, even though his content is fine. And Beyonce has a refrain surrounding the chorus that is extremely repetitive. If you loved this album, then feel free to tell me why I'm so wrong. But from the five songs that I covered, I'm not impressed at all. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
