And this week blew. No way around it, it sucked, and it leads me with a sour taste in my mouth if I'm stuck with Future and Juice WRLD next week. Anyway, next up... a much bigger matter at hand. Stay tuned!
So am I the only one feeling underwhelmed? Like, I know the new Quavo album is already fading from memory - hell, you could make the argument that was happening the day it dropped - but beyond that and our... let's call them 'enterprising' new top ten entries, it just seems like the Hot 100 hit a lull this week, and while I do expect Future and Juice WRLD to rack up the streams for next week... well, the critical reception hasn't been much better there, so I'm just not sure if the album bomb is guaranteed.
Okay, I think I'm pleased with how I landed things here with regards to album bombs going forward, and the episode turned alright along the way. Enjoy!
Well, I was half right with this. I knew there'd be some form of album bomb with Lil Wayne - the sales and streaming numbers made it practically undeniable - but what I didn't expect that it kept Logic from charting anything with the entire album dominating the Hot 100 with a full twenty-two debuts from that album alone. And since I already reviewed the album... well, you'll see in a bit, but suffice to say that considering album bombs are now the norm in the streaming era and have been throughout 2018, I'm going to be putting in some new rules on how to properly handle them in a way that's reasonable to the health of this show, so stay tuned for that.
Okay, a Travis Scott episode... but honestly, not a terrible one to put together, it just went a little long to put together. Next up... ugh, let's deal with Nicki Minaj, stay tuned!
...look, it's the week of Travis Scott. Yes, there were other debuts and we'll be giving them a little bit more time, but this is the week Astroworld rolled over the Hot 100 thanks to much of the same sort of juicy Spotify payola - I mean I promotion that Drake got. But while this means that all seventeen songs from the album charted - pray for my soul - it's at least a better record than Scorpion was, arguably one of the better album bombs this year, and at the very least I don't expect it to last, especially given that next week Nicki Minaj will likely net some sort of chart success right behind him, and then Ariana Grande behind them!
Well, this was underwhelming, but thanks for sticking with me for a thousand video reviews! :D hope you enjoy the challenge, it's a bit of a nightmare - good luck! Next up... well, I've got my own endurance trial ahead, so stay tuned!
I've got conflicted feelings about Travis Scott. I liked him as a producer for his ability to deliver some forward-thinking, massive production, but then Rodeo happened and while many celebrated it for the wide range of collaborators and his uncanny ability to deliver terrific hooks, many of the tones and heft I liked about his production had evaporated, especially around Travis Scott as an MC who could assemble a decent flow but was far from lyrical or all that interesting. Then Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight happened... and contrary to pretty much everyone, I actually liked that more than Rodeo - I don't know what to tell you, the production and hooks clicked more strongly, the collaborations were more consistent, and while the content was borderline nonsensical, it at least felt more cohesive. Less experimental or challenging, sure - and that Huncho Jack collab project with Quavo didn't help matters - but for the first time the appeal started to click. And then I saw Travis Scott live, opening for Kendrick Lamar, and what might have clicked before really connected there, but left me with more questions. Travis Scott could be such a force of personality on stage, a consummate hype man and real personality, so why he's tried to dampen it with so many slurred-over layers and effects or muffle it with overloaded lists of guest stars is utterly beyond me. And when I started seeing the critical acclaim piled onto Astroworld... look, I wasn't sure what to expect at this point, but I did see he got Pharrell, The Weeknd, and Tame Impala all on the same song, so the spectacle might be worth the price of admission. So what the hell, how is Astroworld?
This was a weird week. A pretty busy one, to be sure, and some things did turn out as I had predicted, but overall... it's not often you can say that our new arrivals span between k-pop, Lil Baby, Kevin Gates, and the Backstreet Boys - yeah, we'll be getting to that one, I did not see that coming at all! And that's very telling of the Hot 100 right now: there doesn't seem to be any one musical movement that's driving the pop culture conversation with any sustainability, and we're ripe to see everything blow apart.
So I've said a number of times that the most interesting weeks on the Hot 100 are not those of the album bombs, but the week right after, when things seem to reset to some form of equilibrium and the charts regain some sort of stability, for better or worse. And in the week following two album bombs in a row, you'd expect the recovery to be more pronounced... and then Childish Gambino unleashed 'This Is America'. And unsurprisingly, that's the much bigger story to discuss later on this show, but make no mistake, we will be talking about it, albeit with more of a focus on the song than the video.
I'm going to pose a question that's been on my mind ever since we started getting stream-trolling album bombs on the Hot 100 and one that became glaring with KOD by J. Cole: is anybody thinking about the long-term impacts of any of this? Sure, it's an indictment on streaming platforms who take label payola to dump entire records on their playlists, and an even more scathing indictment on the public who won't bother to build their own damn playlist or find new things, but really, who does this benefit long-term? Do you even remember anything from Logic's middling album bomb a few months back, or do you remember a single that's been properly promoted and managed, where precision growth can lead to even greater success. We'll get to more of this in our top ten, but if you want the most prescient example of how the album bomb might hurt an album's public lifespan long-term, look at Drake and More Life last year, and compare it to his current singles rollout in 2018.
Hmm, so this turned out all right... filmed it the same day as the Ought review dropping tonight, so stay tuned for that, but overall it was a pretty decent week. Okay, so next up, Ought and Courtney Patton, then probably something from my backlog, then Resonators - stay tuned!
This is one of the weeks where everything seemed muted - I made predictions about what was coming, and while most of those predictions came to pass, the impact was less than expected. Sure, I was planning for the Black Panther soundtrack to make an impact, but it wasn't much of an album bomb, and there were larger debuts that disrupted the top 10 and Hot 100 more. Not precisely bad, sure, but in a year where I have felt oddly disconnected with a lot of the songs that have shown up, it leaves me with a very weird feeling.
Alright, this went up late... and really, this one was painful to put out, so much fucking Migos... But now onto something a little more local - stay tuned!
...well, we all knew this was coming. There were two pretty disruptive events on the Hot 100 this week and we all had a rough idea of the ramifications: the Grammys would trigger some shifts, and more importantly, Migos would unleash the album bomb of Culture II. Friendly warning, since I already covered that release my recaps of individual songs are going to be pretty short, and given we have seventeen new arrivals and there really isn't much to say about individual tracks from that record, I'm sure you'll understand.
There are only three names that matter on today's Hot 100. Sure, you could talk about how a bunch of old 2017 hits got their final wind, or how Christmas music seemed to linger a week longer than I personally expected, but the real story to open this week - with the date slightly revised because Billboard is bringing things closer in sync with their tracking week - belong to three people: Travis Scott and Quavo under their duo name 'Huncho Jack', and Cardi B, who seems to be pushing hard to extend her success into 2018.
