I think the best way to describe this week would be a deflation of expectations - yeah, I knew this week wouldn't quite have the same impact as what happened with album releases, but I was open to the possibility of larger hits from acts like ScHoolboy Q or P!nk or even AJR. Now thankfully for a change we mostly missed this and seemed to walk away with about as good of a result as we could hope for, although with still more quiet weeks ahead it begs the question where the hell the Hot 100 could even go in the next week or two.
So yeah, this took a bit longer this evening than I was anticipating (I had RL work stuff along with a spur-of-the-moment choice to do my taxes), but it's here regardless. Kind of underwhelming, but what can you do. Next up... well, it might take a day or two, depending on when the data I need comes in, but I think we're going to stay in hip-hop - stay tuned!
So this week surprised me - a lot. I was gearing up for a Juice WRLD album bomb that would make my life miserable, and to my amazement that didn't happen. In fact, we got a pretty average week on Billboard BREAKDOWN, where Juice WRLD did make an impact but nowhere close to what I was predicting, and that leads me to questions about his label and management I didn't expect I'd have. Hell, I knew the kid had a short shelf-life, but I didn't expect Interscope mismanagement to be the biggest contributing factor, I thought the album just being crap would have done enough!
So this is a point we typically hit around this time of the year: the charts start to slow down for the holiday season, we get a few extraneous songs from The Voice - just one thus far - and a sense that barring a major disruption, we're going to have some stability. Granted, said stability could be disrupted by that Eminem record dropping in just over a week, but that'll remain to be seen.