Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Nice for What" - Drake (=) -- I mentioned last week that this was a week No. 1. Now it gets another week at the top and it's an even weaker No. 1, but nothing was quite strong enough to jump ahead, despite Post Malone's iTunes discount getting "Psycho" awfully close. "Nice for What" is No. 2 on the streaming charts, No. 5 on the sales charts and No. 7 on the radio charts. It's only No. 1 because it's the most consistent song across the charts, but the second a new song debuts with a huge streaming number, Drake's reign will be over. Let's just hope said artist is NOT Kanye West, because his seven new songs from the thing he's calling an album (It's seven tracks and only 23 minutes -- feels more like an EP to me) are doing quite well and might all chart next week. Unfortunately for me, "Psycho" getting over the hump and hitting No. 1 is also a real possibility. In other words, I don't really know what's going to happen with "Nice for What" being so weak, but I'm rooting for Drake to sneak in another week because I really don't like our alternatives.
2- "Psycho" - Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla $ign (+2) -- Let's stop for a moment and evaluate this song again. At this point, the most generic and cliche thing that a rapper could rap about is all the money, jewelry, cars and other riches that they own. That's all this song is. The idea of rapping about this wasn't interesting to me the first time I heard it, whenever that was. And now that it's been rapped about in like 90 percent of the mainstream rap these days, releasing a song where you rap about how rich you are is the laziest and easiest thing you can do. It's the idea at the bottom of the barrel that rappers turn to when they have no other ideas. And since none of these mainstream thugs have very much creativity, that's all that they end up rapping about. To make things worse, not only is this a really lazy song for Post Malone when it comes to the lyrics, when you listen to it, it doesn't feel like Post Malone really cared. He sounds bored beyond reason as he lazily phones in the song because he doesn't have any other ideas. Now if Post Malone wants to be lazy and dumb, then fine. Whatever. But why are we as an American public still buying, streaming and playing the song on the radio to no end after 14 weeks of it existing? As I said, an iTunes discount on this song boosted its sales and got it to No. 2. I can only hope that it means that said sales will come crashing back down next week.
3- "God's Plan" - Drake (=) -- I'm not sure how much longer "God's Plan" is going to last. It's No. 8 on the streaming and No. 10 on the sales charts, but is being held up because it's still No. 3 on the radio charts. But its radio numbers are quickly diminishing. Like "Nice for What," the only reason it's so high is because nothing else has stepped up, so Drake will just calmly sit here with his two huge hits for the time being.
4- "This is America" - Childish Gambino (-2) -- With still very little radio, it jumped up to No. 43 on the radio charts this week, "This is America" is going to continue to fall down in the coming weeks as its sales continue to collapse and the streaming slowly fades away. Again, with the nature of this song, it makes sense that it's more of a frontloaded song rather than being one that sticks around for a long time.
5- "The Middle" - Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey (=) -- I wouldn't be surprised to see this song jump up a spot or two, simply on the strength of its radio, of which these artists are celebrating a fourth week on top and holding rather well. I wouldn't say the song as a whole is super strong. It's No. 22 on the streaming charts and in today's world, you need streaming if you're going to do well. The sales are fairly decent, though. But the radio isn't going away, which means this song probably won't go away, even if it camps out around this spot for a while.
6- "Yes Indeed" - Lil Baby & Drake (=) -- Much to my displeasure and utter confusion, this is our top streaming song of the week. Although it hits this mark not solely on it's own strength as it lost streaming this week when compared to last week, down 5 percent to 37.5 million U.S. streams. In other words, everything else ahead of it just fell harder. With sales and radio still M.I.A., this song might not last very long unless those two categories catch up, but "Look Alive" was propped up by streaming for several weeks while the other two metrics slowly caught up, which is why it stayed in the top 10 for so long. That could happen here, unfortunately. But I hope not.
7- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (+12) -- This is a bit of a surprise. Last week it appeared that the Cardi B song that had more momentum was "Be Careful," not "I Like It." I suppose they're taking turns with success as "I Like It" shot back up into the top 10 while "Be Careful" tumbled just below the top 20. Although the big reason that "I Like It" got a huge boost was from the release of its official video, so in that light, this makes sense. With that in mind, this is not guaranteed to stay around in the top 10 unless it can keep up the momentum from that video release. If it can't stick around, I certainly won't have any hard feelings. But if it does, well, it's better than "Be Careful," so I suppose I'll accept it. Although I don't ever see myself voluntarily listening to this version of the song over the excellent song it samples.
8- "Boo'd Up" - Ella Mai (=) -- Now that "Boo'd Up" is here, it's going to have to start catching up on radio and sales as opposed to just being boosted by its huge streaming numbers. Said numbers are catching up, but it still has a ways to go to make a huge impact. So for now it'll probably hang around this spot for a while.
9- "Meant to Be" - Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line (-2) -- On the flip side of things, it appears that the floor has finally disappeared out from under Bebe and FGL, but no complaints here from me as this song has had an absolutely solid run on the charts. It didn't quite hit No. 1, but it's still one of the top songs of the year thanks to how consistent it has been in the top five. In a year where mostly awful rap music has dominated the charts, it's been nice having this song around.
10- "No Tears Left to Cry" - Ariana Grande (-1) -- It's making me sad right now that Ariana is struggling to gain traction at the moment. Sales and streaming are starting to falter and, while radio is on the rise, those radio numbers aren't rising super fast. I want this song to climb into the top five and hang out there for a while, but right now it appears that it'll struggle to hold its spot in the top 10. I mean, come on pop radio. Stop playing "Psycho" on repeat and start playing an actual pop song from a great pop singer like Ariana. Let's get priorities straightened out here.
Rising on the Hot 100:
11- "In My Blood" - Shawn Mendes (+9) -- This is what I thought would happen last week following Mendes' BBMAs performance. But instead it got stuck. This week it was the album release that got the song kicked into gear, nearly landing Mendes his latest top 10 entry. If the song does get over the hump, I'll be fine with it. I mean, this is the lesser of his three new songs, with "Lost in Japan" and "Youth" being the other two better ones. But this is not bad. Mr. Mendes seems to be slowly figuring out how to right better music, which oddly enough coincides with the radio not having as big of a love affair with his music. I guess sometimes the radio simply loves dumb pop music and is more hesitant to play decent pop music. If this song remains consistent, maybe it'll help Mendes have luck with "Youth." That's the song I want to be here.
15- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (+20) -- I've been defending this guy these past two weeks as one of these new rappers coming out of nowhere who actual has a lot more talent and passion in his music than most, but I said that with the idea that this would a song hanging around in the middle section of the charts for a few months at best. Seeing it get a second huge boost in in as many weeks made me want to slam on the breaks and re-evaluate since I am shocked that it's now a top 20 hit that seems like its heading directly for the top 10, possibly as early as next week. It's a perfectly acceptable rap song and Juice WRLD is better than most of his direct peers, but is this worthy of a top 10 hit in my mind? So I re-listened, and, yeah. It is. In fact, I think that this has a catchy enough beat and a clean enough flow that I could see pop radio grabbing onto this rather easily, especially since they've fallen in love with Drake and Post Malone recently. This certainly seems more radio friendly that those songs. So in conclusion, I'm holding my ground. This is a good song and I'm happy for it.
28- "Delicate" - Taylor Swift (+6) -- I would also love seeing Taylor continue her momentum up the charts. There was a time where it seemed like any Taylor single would be a guaranteed radio smash, but she kinda messed that up with "reputation." However, it appears that "Delicate" is helping her get her good reputation back. I hope she learns from this moving forward so that she releases the proper type of singles moving forward that both fit her best and are the type of singles that the general public want from her, as opposed to her going a little crazy with her music. I mean, I've been mostly just fine with this whole ride, but objectively speaking a lot of the country hasn't. Which is why I'm glad to see "Delicate" finding success.
32- "One Kiss" - Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa (+11) -- I've said from the beginning that this feels like the perfect summer jam that Calvin used to put together before he meddled with a bunch of hip-hop artists and overstuffed singles that made his most recent album quite awful comparatively. I'm glad he's put together a classic Calvin song with "One Kiss" and I also hope it continues its momentum.
37- "Tequila" - Dan + Shay (+7) -- I still don't buy this country song. I feel it's very bland and cliche when it comes to country. A dude crying over his former girl after a drink of Tequila brings back all of her memories. What's interesting about that? And how is the music around those bland lyrics anything special? Yet, despite being boring and forgettable, at least this isn't offensive and awful, so it's whatever for me.
38- "Back to You" - Selena Gomez (+8) -- Is Selena going to gain traction with her "13 Reasons Why" song? I certainly hope so, because this is a dang good pop song from Selena that showcases her increasing maturity as a pop song. Instead of trying to prove to the world that she is a grown up woman, she's actually writing good music. I really hope this continues to rise and doesn't simply get stuck in the 20's or 30's. The current radio lineup is lacking new quality music right now, but if the radio rejects this song, then I will say the sub-par quality of the radio is certainly not due to lack of option, but rather the messed up priorities of whoever is picking the songs to play. And on a completely different tangent, when I initially covered this song, I said that I had no idea where it played in context of "13 Reasons Why." It seemed like the perfect song for Clay reminiscing about Hannah. It turns out that it instead ended up being a Justin and Jessica theme, which felt way out of place when it came to the season as a whole. But that was one of the many problems with the season itself, not the song, which is still a dang good song even though the show used it in a weird place.
47- "All Girls Are the Same" - Juice WRLD (+6) -- Juice WRLD's "Lucid Dreams" is the song maintaining all of the momentum while "All Girls Are the Same" seems to be slowing down. Now when I talked about expectations for "Lucid Dreams," the way that "All Girls Are the Same" is performing as how I thought "Lucid Dreams" would do. In hindsight, I'm certainly glad that "All Girls Are the Same" is slowing down, because it's the far lesser song that doesn't deserve the success.
New Arrivals:
19- "I'm Upset" - Drake -- Yeah, I'm upset, too, Drake. I look at this long list of new arrivals and they almost all look really bad. Then I try to look forward to next week and all we have to look forward to is Kanye West's new album that I'll have to cover. Anyways, we start out this week with yet another Drake single. Despite me enjoying "God's Plan" and "Nice for What," Drake is still a long ways away from being out of the dog house for me, especially since at the same time as releasing those two previously mentioned songs, he helped BlocBoy JB and Lil Baby soar into the top 10 with horrendously awful song. So good Drake is still more of the exception than the rule. Which is exactly why I wasn't disappointed or surprised at all when this song turned out to be awful. Instead of constructing an interesting song with lyrics that mean something, he's back to his normal lazy self. There's no catchy beat here and no interesting flow. The beat is simple and boring. And the flow is very block. Meanwhile, Drake is essentially complaining that he has to be responsible, which makes you want to just slap him in the face and ask him to grow up instead of relating with something that he's upset about. If Drake has an actual album coming out, I'm not excited for it.
45- "Praise the Lord (Da Shine)" - A$AP Rocky featuring Skepta -- It's "real world" stuff that A$AP Rocky is talking about on this song. Like making sure you don't answer when random people call you. Check your text message history first. That's what A$AP says about this. Some of these dumb rap songs have verified commentary from the artist on Genius and sometimes I listen to them. All I really got from A$AP on this song is that he came up with it while smoking weed and it's hard for him to describe the experience to sober people. Since I'm one of said sober people who doesn't understand the drug/weed culture, I'll just move on and let the druggies slobber all over themselves while listening to this song that doesn't make any sense when I try to figure out what it's about. A$AP says real world stuff. I just say random bars and random thoughts thrown together that have no connection as a whole. When it comes to the whole "Praise the Lord" stuff, A$AP has a whole spiel about his views of religion vs. spirituality on said commentary that's kinda interesting. Too bad none of it shows on the actual song. After the randomness of A$AP's verses, Skepta just comes in with a very blocky, annoying chorus talking about praising the Lord, then going and breaking the law. Because, you know, that makes perfect sense. I guess they believe in God and want to praise him, but don't think that God cares about them following rules. To each his own, I suppose.
46- "TATI" - 6ix9ine featuring DJ SPINKING -- We're STILL giving 6ix9ine a career? I mean, I'm glad we've rejected most of his stuff this year as he's starting to have a hard to maintaining traction after high debuts, but I would like it if we could get to the point where he doesn't debut at all, let alone in the top 50. His style of yell rap is not pleasing to the ears, especially when most of the content is pure garbage. Lots of gun shots in this song to go along with his yelling, because murder is his favorite subject to talk about. But thankfully he doesn't spend much of the song actually speaking of murder. Just yelling at his girls for being unfaithful with a bunch of sexual raunchiness thrown is. In other words, not a huge step up from his usual.
65- "Infrared" - Pusha T -- I'm not super familiar with Pusha T, but he has four songs on the charts this week thanks to the recent release of his third studio album "DAYTONA," which is the first of five seven-track albums being produced by Kanye West this summer. The second one is Kanye's own album "Ye," that will be talked about next week. The final three are albums from Kid Cudi, Nas and Teyana Taylor. I'm not sure how much mainstream appeal those last three artists have, but if they all chart, I suppose we'll cover them when they show up. For now we deal with Pusha T. After listening to songs from Drake, A$AP and 6ix9ine, hearing Pusha's style of rap felt like a slightly decent breath of fresh air. It's a lot more tolerable than those other three, though that's not saying very much. Throughout the song, there's echos of "Infared, yeah, you know what I mean?" No, actually I don't. Please elaborate. And he certainly does elaborate, but I'm not sure I can detect a specific theme here as this is just one long verse with a whole bunch of stuff crammed in and if I have to follow all the rappers' individual beefs in order to understand, then I'm going to be lost because I don't care. I will say here, the individual segments of the song are interesting, but instead of honing in on one thing and elaborating, Pusha seems to want to talk briefly about everything, so even though his style of rap is more tolerable, I still have a hard time connecting with this specific song.
66- "Big Bank" - YG featuring 2 Chainz, Big Sean & Nicki Minaj -- Before we get to two more Pusha T songs, we have to stop and talk about a collaboration between YG, 2 Chainz, Big Sean and Nicki Minaj, which just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. And if you look at these credited artists and see that the song is titled "Big Bank," you might immediately think that this is going to be a generic rap song about all of them bragging about how rich they are. And you're exactly right. It seems like I say multiple times each week that I hate songs where all the creativity a rapper can come up with is talking about how rich he or she is. It's the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the genre, yet all four of these people bask in the laziness of the song as they obviously care more about how much money they're all going to make by collaborating together than coming up with a song that's worth anything. Because for some reason, no one who listens to rap ever pays attention to what they're listening to. YG is mumbling all the way through. 2 Chainz and Nicki Minaj are as annoying as they always are. Big Sean is the best of the bunch when it comes to his rap style, but his content is still as dumb and lazy as the rest of them. I don't know why people love this genre.
73- "If You Know You Know" - Pusha T -- With this song, Pusha admits that he's speaking in cryptic code, directly aimed as his core fan base who he feels will connect with his music on a personal level and will still be able to find hidden gems throughout the song the more they listen. He doesn't feel the need to dumb it down so that the common person who doesn't follow him super closely will be able to understand. Because, you know, if you know you know. That's all fine and dandy, but I don't speak Pusha's cryptic language, so this song is just confusing to me. If it blows your mind, then great. But it goes right over my head, so I can't sing its praises. All I can say is that it has confusing lyrics that don't seem to connect and Pusha is dragging to the extreme while rapping them, so his flow is just off for me. I don't really understand everything "Infrared" is getting at either, but at least that song had a better flow to it whereas this song feels like Pusha needed to double the tempo.
75- "What Would Meek Do?" - Pusha T featuring Kanye West -- Since Kanye is the one producing this song, it makes sense that he'd get one song where he's featured. The title of this song asks, "What would Meek do?" Well, guess what? I don't care what Meek would do. All I really know about Meek Mill recently is that he was in prison for a while, but when he got released, it was a huge breaking news story on SportsCenter that was he was being released and was flying directly to a Sixers playoff game. Meanwhile, I was sitting there wondering who the fetch cares about Meek Mill going to a playoff game? Anyways, now that I got that out of my system and you know that I don't give a crap about Meek Mill, on to the song. Where in context of Meek, Pusha has an angel on one shoulder, but Meek as the devil on his other shoulder, so I guess that's what we're going for here. Kanye asks Pusha how he responds to all the crap and Pusha responds with self-bragging about how awesome he is and how he wants to follow Meek's crazy lifestyle. Or something like that. Then Pusha asks Kanye how he responds. And, well, Kanye is this country's biggest troll right now. It seems like he purposely causes all this controversy and then laughs as he watches everyone go crazy. He acknowledges this in his verse, but when it seems like he's about to respond to it, he doesn't really respond to it. So because of Kanye's stupidity and Pusha's arrogance, this is currently the worst of the Pusha songs this week.
80- "Dinero" - Jennifer Lopez featuring Cardi B & DJ Khaled -- I was about to get super excited at seeing Jennifer Lopez on the charts this week, especially after slogging through an extra dose of awful rap. But then I saw she invited Cardi B and DJ Khaled to join her, so my spirits sunk. Though I was wondering if this song was going to show up since she performed at the BBMAs. It took an extra week, but it's here. After finally listening to this song, I was extremely disappointed. This might not be the worst song of the week, but it's the one that made me the most frustrated because Jennifer Lopez has talent and a whole lot of potential. A Jennifer Lopez song on the charts should at least be passable, but this whole song is just J-Lo talking about all the money she's earned and how it's only money she wants. It's disgusting seeing her dip to this level, like a beauty queen skipping a beauty pageant to go wrestle in the mud with pigs. She got DJ Khaled to yell a few echoes, because heaven forbid he actually sing a full verse on a song. Cardi B is the third verse rap feature, who does Cardi B stuff by also rapping about money. I was hoping for this song to at least give me a mildly pleasant break from the rest of the trash this week, but it's just as trashy as the rest of this crap.
82- "Taste" - Tyga featuring Offset -- I feel like a broken record right now. A rap song where the rapper brags about all the money he has. Do I need to repeat how awful and lazy this is? Oh, but this one is different. At least according to Tyga. All those other rappers are not being genuine because they're not actually when they're rapping about money and jewelry. Tyga actually is rich and can back it up by naming all the brand names. This actually made me laugh because I have no idea who Tyga is talking to. They're all rich. If you chart a song on the Hot 100, you get rewarded with money after the brainless zombies listening to this crap all stream your garbage. Plus, everyone else listed a lot more brand names than Tyga does in this song, so that doesn't help his case. When I speak of laziness, this is a prime example and the topping on the cake to prove my point is that Tyga sounds bored on this song as he gets out-rapped by a phoned-in Offset verse on his own song. Maybe I've just lost my mind this week, but this song made me laugh for all the wrong reasons.
89- "Lovely" - Billie Eilish & Khalid -- I really don't know who Billie Eilish is. But this is her first song on the Hot 100, so I don't feel too bad. I learned that she released her debut EP last August that I guess did decent enough. Good enough for her to get invited to join Khalid on a track for a song from the "13 Reasons Why" season 2 soundtrack. Again, I don't know when this song showed up during the show because I wasn't paying too much attention to the music. There were a few moments during the season where the music was excellent and the emotion at the moment was quite powerful and I'm wondering if this was one of the songs playing during said scenes because this is excellent. It does feel weird to me that a girl born in 2001 is charting on the Hot 100, but then I remember that 2001 was 17 years ago, which feels even stranger. So her age is appropriate and her voice is amazing. This is a somber song about depression grabbing hold of someone and Billie has opened up about her experiences with depression, so there's genuine emotion embedded in. Khalid has been hit or miss for me because he seems to collaborate with everyone and not everyone he collaborates with fits his style, but in this case him and Billie are excellent together. Their voices blend well together to create the perfectly somber track that probably fits perfectly in with a scene in a show where the character is feeling sad and depressed. The lyrics are fairly simple, but they're effective. In a week where everything has been a bunch of crap, this was quite refreshing and makes me want to hear more from this girl.
93- "I was Jack (You were Diane)" - Jake Owen -- Well, if you're going to reference "Jack and Diane" so strongly, there's a lot of pressure to live up to that instead of coming off as a cheap wannabe that lazily uses song references to try and be more relevant. So I was nervous going in, but I found myself being decently entertained by this listening experience. Part of this is that Jake Owen uses a lot of the melody of that song with his own country spin on it. I'm not sure if it's a full interpolation, but it's at least close. And we have a little bit of song Inception here as this is a song about the song instead of just referencing the lyrics. Jake tells us his experiences of when him and his girl were younger and "Jack and Diane" was their song because he was Jack and she was Diane. After telling that experience, he then asks the girl if she has nostalgic memories every time the song comes on, almost in a bit of a longing sort of way. He doesn't explicitly state if they are still together, but it almost makes me think that they aren't, but listening to the song brings back good memories for him of their former relationship and he's hoping that she feels the same way. So yeah, I was skeptic going in, but I think this works out fairly decently.
94- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B -- Is Cardi B just going to join up on everything she can? There's a thing called overexposure that can hurt an artist if he or she is everywhere because it can sometimes lead to them releasing a new song no longer being special. On the flip-side, we have Maroon 5, who thankfully have started to wear off their welcome. I mean, I stepped off the train years ago, but it still rode a long ways after that, which frustrated me because all they knew how to do were generic songs that meant nothing. So now I figure they called up Cardi B to try to help them be relevant. "Girls Like You" was a track from their "Red Pill Blues" album last year, but the album version is without Cardi B. So if I'm reading the tea leaves right, they're planning on this being their next single, so they remixed it with Cardi B. Without Cardi it's decent enough, I suppose. A more mellow song where Adam Levine gives the band nothing to do with a simple strumming in the background as he sings repeated that "I need a girl like you." He doesn't spend a whole lot of time explaining why he needs a girl this girl, just that he does, making this song feel more like empty album filler, which is kinda like what the whole album is based on the singles they've released from it thus far. But still. While it's inoffensive, it's also not super memorable. This remixed version with Cardi does not fit together well, though. The type of girl that Adam seems to be talking about is not the type of girl that Cardi is. And having Cardi come in fiery and aggressive on a fairly relaxing song is rather jarring and just screams desperation on both parties. Thus maybe I'd be slightly forgiving of the original album cut was released, but this remixed version clashes, so I'm not buying into it.
98- "High Hopes" - Panic! At the Disco -- Here's the next single from Panic! At the Disco, leading up to their new album "Pray for the Wicked." And sorry to be dumb, but when I looked at the lineup this week, I certainly had high hopes that this would be the song to win me over this week because the rest looked bad. It was nice that I ended up getting two other good songs with "Lovely" and "I was Jack (You were Diane)," thus finishing this week off with three good songs ended up being pleasant, because yeah this song is rocking awesome. To me it feels like a perfect stadium song for any various sports team and if this song catches on with the general public, I can see this becoming a popular sports anthem. And I thought that before learning that the Las Vegas Golden Knights used this song as their introductory anthem for as they entered for the Stanley Cup Finals. The song is about having high hopes for your future and living up to them as you live out your dream and it starts out with a bang as it features a trumpet/saxophone anthem and never lets up as the song moves forward. It's the type of song that should be great at giving you boost if you need a burst of energy for whatever you're doing.
100- "The Games We Play" - Pusha T -- The final song from Pusha T this week is not as annoying as his song with Kanye, but I also find it worse than the first two as all I can really gather from this song are Pusha's tales of rising to the top of the rap game as well as the drug-dealing game. I'm not sure bragging about being a drug dealing is the best thing to do on a song. It's certainly not a subject that's ever going to connect with me personally, so you shouldn't be surprised to see me hating on this song. I don't like songs about rappers flexing with their money, jewelry, etc., and I certainly don't like songs about drugs. Pusha's rap is fine. Better than most rappers I cover each week. But there's no worthwhile content to go along with it, so I refuse to give it a pass.
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