billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 19, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, looks like things are back on path... busy episode too.

Next up, though - got some BABYMETAL coming, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 19, 2019

I did not expect this week to be that tumultuous. Granted, a major part of this comes from the minor album bomb courtesy of Summer Walker - which is just under the cutoff which means I'll be covering every entry in detail, which I don't mind given my curiosity into all the hype there - but there was a surprising amount of movement on the Hot 100, which makes for the sort of busy week that I'm actually intrigued to cover... so yeah, strap in, there's a lot here!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 3, 2019 (VIDEO)

Honestly, it was a tumultuous last evening, but I'm happy to be highlighting it all the same.

Next up... still not sure what I'm covering, but we'll have to see. Enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - august 3, 2019

...am I the only one feeling a bit of anticlimax this week? Yeah, we'll be getting to the biggest story in a second - and make no mistake, it's huge, and the sort of story that only serves to make my predictions look questionable - but it wasn't a desperate race to the end or something where the record was broken by the skin of someone's teeth. At least to me it became clear that nothing was going to seriously defeat the margin our contender racked up, and once that happened... well, it was just a matter of momentum.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 23, 2019 (VIDEO)

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!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 23, 2019

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!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 16, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, a little late, but here we go - think this turned out rather well, still trying to fiddle with the lights (not sure I quite got the blue the way I waned on camera, but trial and error).

Anyway, the Little Simz album might require a bit more time to properly digest, so I've got something in the mean time - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 16, 2019

So look, it's hard for me to get that enthused for whatever's here this week, I'll be straight with you. Even despite how hard I panned the album, I'd put money that Juice WRLD is coming for an album bomb next week with streaming alone, and that means I can't guarantee what in this week will actually hold traction. And given that outside of new arrivals this week seems fairly steady, that question feels more wide open than ever.

video review: 'death race for love' by juice WRLD

So this was a lot of fun to put together... a terrible album, but hey.

But onto something much better...

album review: 'death race for love' by juice WRLD

So some of you might be a little confused why I'm reviewing this. If you've been following my series Billboard BREAKDOWN you might remember Juice WRLD as a perennial frustration for me, and that the reviews of this solo sophomore project haven't been good to start with even from the critics inclined to give him a pass - and I'm not one of those people. So why do this to myself? Why listen to a project that is comfortably over a hour long in a blatant stream trolling maneuver by Interscope who is well-aware this guy might not last too long?

Well, part of this is a matter of deeper investigation, because in the wake of the deaths of XXXTENTACION and Lil Peep, two of the biggest personalities within the new breed of emo rap left considerable voids, and Juice WRLD could well fill them - he's certainly more accessible than both acts thanks to his ability to construct a hook, and there's absolutely a market for what he delivers. So yeah, part of this comes from me keeping my ear to the ground especially if this kid might stick around - and while thanks to his terrible singles choices he seems committed to burning out fast, I do think he has some talent on a technical level. Yeah, his autotuned caterwauling is annoying, but he can structure bars and construct a hook. And if I'm going to be humiliatingly honest, I do get Juice WRLD's appeal to a specific demographic... mostly because fifteen years ago I was in that demo, and there's a way to make music that appeals to that group and not suck. I didn't expect it would happen with Juice WRLD, but I figured I'd give him a chance... so what did we find on Death Race For Love?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 2, 2019 (VIDEO)

And here we go - bad week, let's just get this over with...

Next up... well, folks want me to talk indie, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 2, 2019

...so okay, I was wrong. I made the assumption that given its heavy reliance on streaming I expected Ariana Grande to suffer some major losses... and while nearly every song lost by a considerable margin, she didn't actually have any dropouts this week. And yet beyond that, this week did seem to go through a pretty standard rotation, and given what they turned out to be, it implies that Ariana didn't exactly see huge competition this week and may be in more dicey territory when we get impact from Lil Pump, Gunna, and especially Offset next week - again, we'll see.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 12, 2019 (VIDEO)

Man alive, this took so damn long to finish... oh well, let's see what I can do next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 12, 2019

So this is one of those weeks on Billboard BREAKDOWN that can be draining to talk about, mostly because it's easy but time-consuming to explain at length. To put it simply, if you look at the Hot 100 a full half of it advanced ten positions or more, we have a ton of returning entries, and a full slate of fourteen new arrivals - and no, there wasn't an album bomb. No, as I said, I can explain this fairly easily: along with the album bomb from 21 Savage drying up, all the Christmas music exited the chart and a lot of older music this week picked up radio spins thanks to year-end countdowns, and given that there was no big releases to plug in the gap, the flood of music to replace it is all over the damn place and really shows no indication of what could last long term.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 29, 2018 (VIDEO)

...knew I was forgetting something in my stream of updates - sorry this is out of order, folks, it's been nuts the past few weeks...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 29, 2018

So look, I didn't expect this week to be that busy. We're in the middle of the holiday season, most people are settling and relaxing, and I didn't expect much activity within the Hot 100. Hell, I didn't even expect it to drop yesterday on Tuesday because normally they skip over holidays, but not only did it come out, but it was actually a pretty busy week... in a manner of speaking, because while some of this I predicted, any changes felt kind of blocky and misshapen all over, as if they weren't really supposed to happen... but did anyway.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2018 (VIDEO)

Well, the lists start off strong - the Premiere really was fun to hang with y'all, might have to do that again soon...

Also, just addressing this here because some people are bitching about me interjecting some relevant social commentary: 

a.) if you're angry about me calling Juice WRLD a misogynist and are instead throwing out the 'he's a confused kid just expressing how he feels', otherwise known as the 'boys will be boys defense, the problem is you;

b.) Lil Dicky is not funny, and I can make the credible argument he's never been funny. And frankly, I don't care that it's been years since what Chris Brown did - I have a long memory and I don't have to forgive him or like his artistic output, and considering he references his own life in the song, I'm well within my rights to bring it in;

c.) If you think Kavanaugh's confirmation wasn't anything but a gross abuse of procedure, bastardized political flailing, a compromised investigation, and the continued enablement of the lack of accountability for rich, spoiled frat boys, maybe consider the fact that he's now on the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford can't still return home. I'll insult that beer-soaked abuse of privilege for all its worth, especially because the same dismissive defenses of him come from the exact folks who think Lil Dicky is worth defending.

Next up, the list of the best hits of 2018 - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2018

So I'm not going to mince words or waste your time here: 2018 was not a good year for the Hot 100. Perhaps not as bad as 2016 given how many songs were outright atrocious that year, but 2018 was not only an eventful and exhausting year, but it was one where the Hot 100 as a singles chart didn't even seem to matter. And yes, success on a manipulated ranking scale like the Hot 100 is always a bit of a shell game that most discerning artists recognize, but on some level we convince ourselves that it matters - you know, like the Grammys.

But here's the funny thing: as much as I've characterized 2018 as the year of the album bomb, where thanks to playlist payola - no jokes anymore, let's call it what it is - an entire album will overrun the Hot 100, the songs rarely last, which means when it comes to making the year-end list you run into a weird split: the streaming hits that cling to relevance just long enough, usually hip-hop and trap, and the pop- and pop-adjacent songs that receive regular radio and sales promotion that hold up long enough to weather the storm. And of course there is some overlap, but I was actually a little surprised how despite streaming hits getting so much media attention, there's still a traditional pop structure that'll get hits on the year-end list. We'll get into the unfortunate side effects of this in the next year-end list, but it is absolutely a shifting ecosystem, and there weren't many who could navigate that storm.

But make no mistake, the ability to have charting success has never been proportional to the talent of the artist, and with trap being an oversaturated mess and most radio hits defaulting to the safest possible options for relevancy in a year where Cumulus and iHeartRadio were on the cusp of bankruptcy, it was a rough year. And while I was more faintly embarrassed about the junk from 2017, 2018's bad stuff is in a different league - and keep in mind this is just the stuff that debuted on the 2018 year-end Hot 100. So let's take out the trash, starting in no particular order with our Dishonourable Mentions...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 15, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we go - man, I look exhausted filming this, but thank god I got some sleep coming through.

Next up... ugh, this'll be frustrating to handle, so just stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 15, 2018

...you know, I'd call it funny if I was anyone else. See, I predicted last week that Meek Mill would have have something of an album bomb - he's had two already just in the course of me covering the charts, and I expected given the hype there'd be another one here, especially given some of his critical acclaim... but the Spotify numbers didn't seem that huge and it's not like he'd get sales or much radio. So imagine my extreme exasperation when not only did we get fourteen new Meek Mill songs, we also got a mini album bomb from Lil Baby - an artist I thought we could leave behind, preferably by the side of an abandoned road - and a sizable set of new arrivals, bringing our round total up to twenty-seven new songs for this week. All right before the holidays while I still work fulltime in the middle of trying to wrap up multiple year-end lists with a tighter schedule than any other year prior because of real life constraints. So yeah, screw it, album bomb rules are in effect, albeit revised from their original outing from Tha Carter V given that I'm not reviewing Meek Mill's new album formally - as if there'll be much to say - but with the suggestion taken from you all that the only songs I cover are his breakthroughs in the top 40 and any that would wind up as the Best/Worst of the week. That still comfortably gives me over a dozen new entries, and if anyone wants to complain about that, especially given Meek Mill is under Atlantic which is under Warner and that means this video will likely wind up copyright claimed and I won't get a dime from it, you go produce 200+ episodes of a twenty minute weekly series with a day's turnaround time on your own for over four years, and then get back to me.