Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "In My Feelings" - Drake (=) -- Here's some curious news. Drake finally released a music video for this song after the song soared to the top of the charts without him having done anything to get it there as the internet challenge behind this is the reason why it's so high. Said music video impacted the charts this week, which I thought was going to mean the streaming for the song, which was already insanely high, was going to take another huge spike. Yet despite the video, the streaming actually declined when compared to the previous week. Granted, said streaming number is still at 92.7 million U.S. streams, but to me this shows that the streaming number is probably going to start to crash from here on out. And the sales are already starting to plummet, falling 20 percent from last week, down to 58,000 sales. Now that doesn't mean the song is going to get replaced anytime soon since nothing in the top 10 is even close to it, but it does show a distant light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to Drake's complete takeover of the Billboard charts this year.
2- "Girls Like You" - Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B (+2) -- I've been nothing but negative towards this "In My Feelings" challenge that shot Drake to No. 1. But here's something positive. Had that challenge not existed, Maroon 5 would currently be No. 1 and that just gives me nightmares thinking about it. So I'm glad that is still strong enough that it'll be able to prevent "Girls Like You" from ever hitting No. 1. I once liked Adam Levine. Now I want him to disappear into obscurity because he has shown time and time again that he completely lost the ability to write good music.
3- "I Like It" - Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin (-1) -- I'm not sure how much Cardi's slight tumble this week is indicative of her song failing. I see it as more of a surge on the side of Maroon 5. Thus I think this song is still safely planted in the top five for the unforseeable future. Although I'm not sure how good that actually is.
4- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott (new) -- This week belongs to Travis Scott as his whole album "ASTROWORLD" has charted on the Hot 100. Because of this, I started with the new arrivals section when typing up this post this week so I could give you a brief summary here. The summary is that the album isn't any good. But the album does have a few brief highlights and Travis Scott himself is a lot less annoying than his peers in terms of his voice and musical abilities. But this song isn't one of said highlights. It's him and Drake droning on about how much better they are then everyone else. I think. Neither artist have much of a sense of focus and thus they both sound like they're phoning it in. But I'm grateful that Travis for some reason decided not to include his features, because that means he denied another top five hit for Drake. We've had plenty of those and this is one of Drake's more lazy efforts, so him being denied here makes me happy. Although his inclusion is probably the only reason this song is so high, so Travis Scott better be thanking Drake that he got this high.
5- "FeFe" - 6ix9ine featuring Nicki Minaj & Murda Beatz (-2) -- After jumping up to No. 3 last week following its first full week of tracking, it's very pleasing to see this song drop two spots. Although said drop isn't sharp enough. I want it to drop further and faster, but sadly Nicki's album will be impacting the charts next week, so that might give this song a boost, even though it's not technically a part of the album.
6- "Better Now" - Post Malone (=) -- This song is mostly boring and forgettable, but it's not as awful as "rockstar" and "Psycho," so I'd be totally fine with this flip-flopping with "FeFe" if it means getting 6ix9ine and Nicki out of that top five. Right now I want all of the songs out of the top five that are in there right now, but perhaps we can focus on one song at a time and accept the lesser of the two bad songs into the region.
7- "Lucid Dreams" - Juice WRLD (=) -- I'd also be fine if Juice WRLD found his way back into the top five, but he's kinda struggled comparatively ever since the new streaming rules were implemented, so I don't expect him to get back. But this song is picking up a bit of radio, which is why I think it's able to maintain some momentum despite the fact that its streaming is starting to collapse.
8- "STARGAZING" - Travis Scott (new) -- Out of the two new Travis Scott songs in the top five this week, "STARGAZING" is easily the better of the two songs. In fact, it's almost one of the best songs on the whole album, but the second section of the song completely crashes and burns, throwing the song into mediocrity overall. But it had some interesting ideas to start things off. Even though I'm happy that most of Travis Scott's album will disappear next week, which is the case for every album bomb, this is one song that I'd be fine with sticking around.
9- "Taste" - Tyga featuring Offset (=) -- The fact that two new Travis Scott songs debuted ahead of this song, yet it still managed to stay put at No. 9, means that this song annoyingly has a lot of momentum at the moment. When Travis Scott falls out next week, I'm expecting to see this song at least up at No. 7, which has me crying inside because I have no idea why we let this piece of trash into the top 10, but blocked Taylor Swift from getting in with "Delicate."
10- "Boo'd Up" - Ella Mai (-2) -- I wouldn't be surprised if this song managed another week after Travis Scott falls out next week. But I also wouldn't be surprised if this is the final week for the song. If it is, I have no qualms with it exiting. I think it's a decent song, but it probably got elevated a bit higher than it deserved as it's not a great song.
Rising on the Hot 100:
16- "Big Bank" - YG featuring 2 Chainz, Big Sean & Nicki Minaj (+9) -- Only one song in the rising songs section and I'm really sad that it happens to be "Big Bank." Although the funny story regarding this is that the NFL included the song in their new Madden game, but censored out Colin Kaepernick's name, which received all sorts of backlash. This is not the moment to talk about Colin Kaepernick, even though I've never been on his side, but if the NFL didn't want his name included in a song on a Madden game, why not just pick a different song altogether? This song is pure trash and doesn't belong in a Madden game to begin with, so it's not like they'd be losing anything. If trashy rap songs are all that these new Madden or NBA 2K games will let on, there's plenty of trash to pick from. A dream of mine is that this song gets blocked from hitting top 10, but a realistic prediction is that it shows up next week since all the songs ahead of it between No. 11 and No. 15 are either stalled out or falling.
New Arrivals:
4- "SICKO MODE" - Travis Scott -- All 17 tracks from Travis Scott's third studio album "ASTROWORLD" showed up on the charts this week. One of those 17 songs includes "BUTTERFLY EFFECT," which debuted last year and is a re-entry this week, meaning there's 16 new songs to talk about this week. "ASTROWORLD" is named after the Houston theme park AstroWorld, which was built in 1968, sold to Six Flags in 1975 and permanently closed in 2005. It was demolished in late 2005 and early 2006. The land that was once AstroWorld is now still grassland and is used for overflow parking during the Rodeo. And yeah, as you may have guessed, Travis Scott is from Houston.
We begin this journey into Travis' album with "SICKO MODE," which has Drake and Travis talking about them being in Sicko Mode, which is essentially rap slang for being on top of their game or being better than the competition. First off I'd like to thank Travis for not listing his featured credits on these songs because that means Drake doesn't get credited with another top five hit, even though over half of this song is Drake. But that's about as much praise as I'll give this song. I don't find it awful or offensive, I just find it slow and boring. It's over five minutes and his three sections, with the tempo and beat shifting a bit in each part. But there's not much to this. The first part is an intro from Drake where he reminds us that when it's freezing cold it means winter is here. The second part is all Travis Scott while the third part is mostly Drake again. And I don't even follow much of what they're saying here. They're both just kinda talking over a slow-moving beat about random things that don't seem super connected. Swae Lee also gets to say a few lines while we have samples from the likes of Notorious B.I.G. and Uncle Luke, but there's just not much of anything to this.
8- "STARGAZING" - Travis Scott -- Next up we have a slightly more interesting song with our other top 10 entry. This song is only Travis, which it probably benefits from as it doesn't have someone like Drake droning on about nothing. The chorus from Travis is also super catchy as he says "Rollin', rollin', rollin' got me stargazin'." That's followed by an extremely high-pitched, auto-tuned falsetto that combines for a bit of a mysterious, ambiguous vibe as Travis talks about his mind going crazy because of something he took or drank. Again, this song is divided into two parts, which in this instance means the song stops for a bit, then completely shifts to Travis mentioning that he's now been up for several days, which to me almost insinuated the pause was like a passage of time after he initially went crazy and I thought this was going somewhere. But the second part is complete trash as he drones on about a bunch of rap cliches, thus derailing the whole song. But the first half of the song was interesting enough.
24- "CAROUSEL" - Travis Scott -- The album is named after a theme park and we have included a song called "CAROUSEL." I was curious to know if this was going to be some sort of clever theme park themed song, but no it's not. Instead it's just Travis collaborating with Frank Ocean and the two of them go on about the drugs they're experimenting with. So apparently it's a different type of carousel they're going on. A song about doing drugs didn't interest me, although in terms of vocals, Frank Ocean was a better choice of someone to collaborate with as his vocals were pretty good and blended well with Travis Scott. I just wish the content was more interesting.
25- "YOSEMITE" - Travis Scott -- Well, we're travelling from the AstroWorld theme park to Yosemite National Park. And if I'm being honest, I have no idea why this is named after Yosemite because most of this is from a dude named Gunna who starts the song off with a chorus wherein he mumbles incoherently about all the jewelry and riches he has. The only benefit of having him on the song is that he makes Travis sound really good in comparison because you can actually hear what Travis is saying and he has a sense of groove and flow with his rap. But Travis isn't talking about much of anything, either. Just something about a girl he's with. But before you know if, we're back to repeating that same long chorus from Gunna before quickly handing off to NAV for a quick outro where he takes a few lines to talk about the drugs he's doing. That's our song.
26- "R.I.P. SCREW" - Travis Scott -- After a few tracks of mostly talking about drugs, Travis decides to slow it down on this track and pay tribute to DJ Screw, an apparent hip hop legend, who was also from Houston, that died of a drug overdose back in 2000. I have never heard of DJ Screw until listening to the song, but I found it nice that Travis decided to pay tribute to him since Travis sees him as one of his influences for his music. Although I just wish that, outside repeating the line "Rest in peace Screw, tonight we take it slowly," there was more substance to this. Swae Lee actually takes the first section of the song and doesn't seem to be singing about anything related to DJ Screw and when Travis takes over later, he also doesn't seem to be singing about anything related to DJ Screw after repeating said line. And maybe if he really wanted to pay tribute to DJ Screw, he wouldn't spend his other songs singing about drugs since it was a drug overdose that killed DJ Screw. Just a thought. But Travis does say they're going to take it slow, and even though his lyrics have no sense of focus, the song is slow and a bit relaxing, so I'm fine with this.
27- "STOP TRYING TO BE GOD" - Travis Scott -- For the first time on this album, Travis finally has something to say and he puts together a complete song that gets his message across. I'm not sure exactly who this is directed to, but Travis is telling said person, or perhaps most people, to get rid of their God complex, which a lot of rapper seem to have. For some reason every rapper things he or she is the greatest rapper in existence and spends most of their time flexing about how awesome and great they are. Truth be told, Travis could probably take a lesson from his own lyrics as he's just as guilty as any other rapper out there, meaning I don't know how much credit I give him here as this can come off as a bit hollow since he doesn't practice what he preaches. And if this is directed at Kendrick Lamar for some reason, well Kendrick and heads and shoulders above Travis, so that also falls flat. Also truth be told, the reason this song works is not Travis' two verses. It's everything else around it. I suppose Travis is fine in his verses, but the chorus is a combination of Kid Cudi and Phillip Bailey who put together strong chorus with a lot of subtle power and a melody that gets stuck in your head. Secondly, James Blake comes in towards the end with a bridge that is fire. It's an excellent pop section of the song with great vocals from Blake and lyrics that mean more than the rest of the song's lyrics do. Finally, topping it all off we have Stevie Wonder playing the harmonica. After hearing that Stevie Wonder was on this track, I was hoping that he would have a part in the actual lyrics. And it's disappointing that Travis got Stevie Wonder, but didn't give him anything to say, but his harmonica part is excellent. The frosting on the cake for a surprisingly good song.
30- "WAKE UP" - Travis Scott -- After a solid effort in our previous song, it's another lazy effort from Travis. This time he brings on The Weeknd with him, whose vocal performance in the song is quite excellent. The two of them have great balance, but just like the song "CAROUSEL" with Frank Ocean, a decent collaboration of singers doesn't do you very good when the lyrical content is all pure garbage. This time they're just talking about being in bed with a woman and not wanting to wake up because she's so wonderful. And that's my edited PG version of their lyrics.
31- "NO BYSTANDERS" - Travis Scott -- On the album itself, this song is the actual follow-up to "STOP TRYING TO BE GOD." But this isn't any better than "WAKE UP." In fact, it's probably worse. So regardless of how you look at it, we're following a good song with a trash song. This song has Travis bring on Juice WRLD and Sheck Wes, who spend most of the time trading off with the chorus and the bridge, neither of which are any interesting. In fact, the Sheck Wes part, which is most likely an interpolation of another song that I won't repeat the name of, does nothing but poison the song with a stream of f-bombs. Thus Travis ends up being the best part of this song, in part because his first rap verse speeds up his rapping tempo in impressive fashion. But that's the only compliment I have here. Regardless of who has the mic in this, no one has anything to say that's interesting. It's just an empty club banger anthem that I got bored with.
36- "5% TINT" - Travis Scott -- No friends with Travis on this song. Just him by himself on the song. And while that worked well for "STARGAZING," it ends up being as boring as tar on this song. The beat for the song is stripped down to a fault. The tempo of the song is too slow. And Travis himself sounds really bored as he lazily prods through this song. It feels like album filler to me, created for the sole purpose of boosting Travis' track total rather than having a real reason to exist.
38- "CAN'T SAY" - Travis Scott -- At this point I'm thinking that any good or passable song on this album already charted higher because this is yet another song that is nothing but trash. At least with this song Travis tried to be a bit more interesting by bringing a few more people on board, but when Don Toliver takes control of the song, it sounds like he came to the studio with no idea of what he was going to say, so he simply talks about drinking, smoking and sleeping with girls. And his voice is really annoying. It made me want the song to get back to Travis, which is sad because Travis' part is also pretty empty in regards to his content, also talking mostly about drugs.
41- "NC-17" - Travis Scott -- I think I may have found the worst song on the album. But stay tuned, I suppose, to the rest of the entries to see if I find something worse. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say this song is called "NC-17" because if the lyrics were acted out on film, that's the MPAA rating it would get. And the NC-17 rating is typically reserved for movies with very strong sexual content. And now you can connect the dots in your brain about this. To make things worse, though, Travis' guest feature is 21 Savage, who I thought we were over with. And he brings nothing but his lazy mumbles to the song, again making me glad that Travis left the featured credits off of his tracks, because we don't need to be giving 21 Savage any more Hot 100 hits.
43- "WHO? WHAT!" - Travis Scott -- Intros to rap songs I often find hilariously dumb. This song's intro bit by Travis is "Know what I'm saying?" repeated three times. No, I don't in fact know what you're saying since you haven't said anything yet on this track. Unfortunately for Travis, I didn't stick around long on this song to figure out what he was saying because we brought on two of the the three from the Migos trio, Quavo and Takeoff and they littered the song with their trademark echoes that caused me to end the song rather quickly. They both get a verse at the end. History tells me that they never have anything meaningful to say, so I don't feel one bit of sorrow that I'll never be subjected to those verses in this song. Instead of titling this song "WHO? WHAT!," I would've liked this to be titled "WHY?" As in, why in the fetch did this song chart? I'm glad that most songs from album bombs are always gone in a week or two, anyways, because this song is a useless piece of trash.
47- "SKELETONS" - Travis Scott -- In looking at the track listing before starting this, "SKELETONS" is one of the songs that I thought maybe could go somewhere. There's a lot of potential themes you could bring up with a song about that. But maybe it's called "SKELETONS" because the song is a skeleton of a song. It clocks in at 2:25, one of the shortest from the album, and that's with the song featuring Pharrell, The Weeknd and apparently a highly anticipated collaboration with Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker. All three of these features get a few lines on their own with some echoes thrown in, while Travis hogs most of the song's space with a giant verse about having sex with a girl at Coachella and what guys should be expecting when they take a girl out, which is the exact opposite of what a guy should REALLY be expecting, in my personal opinion. Unless all you care about from a night out is lustful interactions and a one-night stand.
48- "ASTROTHUNDER" - Travis Scott -- Here's another song with a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. The song was written and composed by John Mayer, Frank Dukes, Thundercat and Travis Scott. It sees John Mayer on guitar and Thundercat on Bass. But of those four, Travis Scott is the only one that provides vocals in the song and he manages to interpolate his own song "Nightcrawler." This all adds up to a song that is even shorter than "SKELETONS" at just 2:23. I'm not sure how that many people involved in a song's writing can come up with a song so short and so simple. There's no complexity or depth to this at all. Just a short verse with a chorus on both sides wherein Travis is essentially talking about the life he needs is quite distant and he's not happy with where he's at. Compared to most of the previous songs, this song is totally fine, which was quite the relief. All the songs between this and "STOP TRYING TO BE GOD" are completely useless. But that said, this song is a bit too simple. It could've used more depth and length to it. Perhaps a verse or two from John Mayer, instead of just relegating him to the guitar. I don't. Just a suggestion. I'm not a songwriter myself. I just know as a listener of music, I wanted more from this.
53- "HOUSTONFORNICATION" - Travis Scott -- This is the song that made me facepalm the hardest when I looked at the track listing. Serious, Travis? For the record, the song "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers works great as a song title because California and fornication are two words that begin and end the same, so combining them actually makes sense. And that's just a brief analysis of the title of the song. Houston and fornication are two words that don't fit together naturally. In fact, it's quite the mouthful shoving that into one word. About the song itself, Travis stated that this song is for his hometown Houston. A tribute of sorts. But all that's included here are all the drugs and other dumb stuff he's done in his life while living in Houston, so it has nothing to do with the city itself and is thus a pretty lame tribute. "Californication" was a song that at least was all about California and the self-worship that a lot of Americans have with Hollywood as if Hollywood was the center of the universe where all the famous people are trying to get to before deeming their life successful. "HOUSTONFORNICATION" has nothing to do with Houston and thus showcases Travis Scott's inability to write music that is thought-provoking and makes sense. At least when it comes to this album, that is.
60- "Beautiful" - Bazzi featuring Camila Cabello -- We briefly pause the Travis Scott show in the new arrivals section this week to talk about the new Bazzi song. Now I tried to give Bazzi's song "Mine" several chances in case I was too harsh on it when it debuted, but each time I tried I was instead reminded of why I thought the song was so bad. Thus I wasn't excited for this at all when I saw it and was confused as to why Camila was jumping on this song of all things. Now when compared to "Mine," "Beautiful" feels like an actual song as opposed to a meme stretched out to two minutes. In fact, "Beautiful" is a whole three minutes long. And it could've served as a simple romantic song where Bazzi sings about how beautiful this girl is and I may have liked it, but instead he has to throw out the lines that she is beautiful with Gucci on and even more beautiful when she's naked, thus knocking the song down from sweet and romantic to empty and superficial, which is disappointing. The original recording is with Bazzi only and I will say that adding Camila gives the song a bit more life compared to that, but not enough life for me to care about it. It's not as bad as "Mine," but not good enough for me to feel that Bazzi is worth elevating to star status. He didn't deserve a first hit and he doesn't deserve a second hit. We should just let him disappear.
68- "COFFEE BEAN" - Travis Scott -- Let it be know that there has now been a song called "COFFEE BEAN" that has charted on the Hot 100. I have no idea if this has happened in the past, but it has now. And in case you cared to know, Travis Scott is currently in a relationship with Kylie Jenner and is thus a part of the whole Kardashian/Jenner fiasco. This song is not really about coffee, but is about his relationship with Kylie and all the controversy that has surrounded that, because, for some reason, the internet and the world still really cares about this family for some strange reason. That said, lyrically that makes this Travis' most personal song on this album as he seems to get super honest and blunt about things. It's the type of lyrics that I wish existed on the rest of the album because this album as a whole lacks a lot of depth and personality. That said, while the lyrics in this song feel very personal, the music itself is pretty boring and Travis sounds really bored as he describes his story. So if I was just casually stumbling upon this song without paying too much attention to the lyrics, it's probably a song that I'd skip over because of how boring it is, thus I'm not giving it a complete pass.
Since this is the final track from the album, my thoughts on the album as a whole are mostly negative. However, Travis Scott himself is tolerable when it comes to his style and there are some good songs to be found on the album and several other songs that are tolerable. But all of that is buried deep in a bunch of trash. I think sometimes rappers feel the needs to throw in as many tracks as possible and the result of that almost always is a whole bunch of album filler where no effort was put into said songs at all. Travis had a few decent songs that he come up with, but most of the album is this nonsensical album filler that made this hard to get through.
76- "Could've Been" - H.E.R. featuring Bryson Tiller -- I've enjoyed seeing H.E.R. on the charts this year. I thought her song "Focus" from earlier in the year was really good and her collaboration with Daniel Caesar, "Better Part," was also pretty good. However, I was really annoyed to see her teaming up with Bryson Tiller because that seemed like a mess waiting to happen. The good part of that is that Bryson Tiller is only used as the third verse rap feature rather than having a bigger role in the song. The bad part of that is, in a twisted turn of events, Bryson Tiller might be the best part of the song. He seems to have more energy with his verse than H.E.R. does for the rest of the song. Granted, the song is aiming for a more somber feel to it as the two of the reminisce about what could've been in this relationship, so upbeat and excited would've been the wrong tone, but I found this song to be more boring than sad. Instead of feeling for them and seeing their pain, it just seemed like a couple of overly depressed people who need to wake up and move on with life. I don't know what needed to be added this song to give it life, but something needed to be done here because this song has no life at all.
79- "Trip" - Ella Mai -- Hey look, Ella Mai is back in the Hot 100! This will be a follow-up to her debut hit "Boo'd Up," which is currently about to drop out of the top 10. My personal biggest question here is can she conjure up a second hit and make a name for herself or will slip away once "Boo'd Up" disappears? That question can't be asked here, but I can tell you about this song. Which I also don't think is that good, sadly. Granted, I wasn't madly in love with "Boo'd Up" in the first place, but that song had more life in than this does. Whereas our previous song on this list was intentionally dreary, "Trip" should be an upbeat song because it's about Ella being excited and happy about all the love she's been getting from this relationship. Yet. The. Chorus. Feels. Very. Blocky. And unfortunately the chorus is most of what we get here. We have two quick verses and the rest of the song is over-repetition of said chorus, which I feel is fairly grating and annoying. And there's not a lot of depth or substance here. Just her being overjoyed about this relationship, but not doing enough musically or lyrically to show that joy.
87- "Lean Wit Me" - Juice WRLD -- We end this long week with Juice WRLD, who did show up earlier on Travis Scott's "NO BYSTANDERS," even though Travis chose not to give any feature credits to anyone on this album. "Lean Wit Me" is the fourth song from Juice WRLD's album "Goodbye & Good Riddance," which I have become less and less interested in the more songs that show up on the charts from it. I say that because this is another uninteresting song from the album. The running theme through each of the four songs is that he's mad at this girl and is having a hard time with this breakup. What we get here is another song about drugs and how his mental anguish is leading him to a downward spiral of drug use. At least in this song he acknowledges how bad the drugs are for him, which is something that most rappers don't do. Glorification of drugs is a theme that's way too common in rap music. However, Juice WRLD seems to not care about how bad the drugs are for him because he's too broken and depressed to think about and kinda insinuates that his drug use is all this girl's fault for breaking up with him, which makes me want to slap him upside the face. That said, I still prefer this guy's style over most of his colleagues. He enunciates his words. He speaks clearly. He has rhythm. And it's sad that I have to point that out as a positive because it means that most of this viral club rappers don't have those traits and it's sad that we've dipped so low that I have to point out when I rapper does and use it as a compliment. But even so, content is still important to me and the content here is pretty trashy, as I've explained.
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