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Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. 

This week: Kehlani sees bumps both for her own song and a song named after her, while Central Cee and Lil Baby have a trans-continental hit on her hands and a devastating ’80s synth-pop classic goes viral for surprisingly blithe reasons.

Kehlani’s Name Spurs Streaming Wins for Herself & Belfast Singer-Songwriter Jordan Adetunji 

In just a few weeks (June 27), Kehlani will unleash Crash, her third studio album. “After Hours,” the set’s lead single, is already pulling ample streaming traction, but so is a breakout hit named after her from Belfast singer-songwriter Jordan Adetunji. 

Released on May 19, Adetunji’s “Kehlani” collected over 115,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in its first three days of release (May 19-21), according to Luminate. Four days before the track hit DSPs, Adetunji posted a snippet of the song to his official TikTok account, writing, “Bro wrote a whole song about Kehlani, but why it kinda go hard,” alongside a bevy of popular hashtags, including “#cashcobain,” “#melodicdrill,” “#slizzymusic” and, of course, “#kehlani.” On May 18, Kehlani herself left a singular flame emoji under his post. 

Over the same period the following week (May 26-28), “Kehlani” jumped 434% in streaming activity to 615,000 streams. In addition to the song naturally gaining traction on socials — “Kehlani” plays in the three pinned TikToks on Adetunji’s page, all of which have garnered at least 870,000 views each – a more explicit co-sign from Kehlani helped get the ball rolling. 

On May 23, Kehlani posted a pair of TikToks featuring her vibing and lip-syncing to the track. The more recent video of the two has since earned over five million views and over one million likes on the platform, directing plenty of new listeners to Adetunji’s track. The official “Kehlani” TikTok sound currently boasts over 12,5000 posts. 

Of course, Kehlani’s magic doesn’t stop there. With the release of a “Cater 2 U Mix” for “After Hours” and increased visibility due to her passionate social media pleas in support of the Free Palestine movement, the Crash lead single has enjoyed a significant streaming bump. During the period of May 17-21, “After Hours” pulled in 2.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams. By the period of May 24-28, that number jumped 55% to 3.3 million streams. – KYLE DENIS

Central Cee & Lil Baby Rack Up a New Hit With ‘BAND4BAND’ 

After dominating the UK. alongside Dave with “Sprinter” last summer and earning his first Billboard Hot 100 with his Drake-assisted “On the Radar Freestyle” (No. 80), Central Cee is gearing up for another hit on both sides of the pond – and this time Lil Baby is along for the ride. 

This U.K.-Atlanta drill-based link-up earned 1.93 million official on-demand U.S. streams on its first day of release (May 24). Streams for “BAND4BAND” remained stable throughout the week, eventually hitting 2.04 million streams on May 27. By the following day (May 28), that number rose 29% to 2.64 million streams, marking the strongest streaming day out of the track’s first five days of release. With a total of 10.2 million streams in its first five days of the week, “BAND4BAND” is already off to a very promising start. 

The new track has also already exploded on TikTok, with the official “BAND4BAND” sound garnering over 97,000 posts in just one week. Most users are using Cench and Baby’s back-and-forth hook to show-off their hilarious “U.S.” and “U.K.” sides. Over on YouTube, the official “BAND4BAND” music video has pulled in over 14 million views in under a week. 

Should “BAND4BAND” hold steady, Cench and Baby could be looking at the next global rap smash. – KD

Heartbreaking Bronski Beat Classic Revived for Light-Hearted TikTok Trend

Bronski Beat’s 1985 hit “Small Town Boy” was never a huge chart smash in the U.S. — it peaked at just No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, though it reached No. 3 on the U.K.’s Official Charts. But the song remains well-remembered for its passionately delivered lyrics and evocative music video, a tearjerking tale of a young gay man’s rejection and alienation from mainstream society. However, the song is making the rounds again in 2024 for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with its content, and everything to do with its propulsive synth hook and danceable post-disco beat.

TikTok has really gotten swept up in the #80sDanceChallenge, in which users take videos of their parents dancing to a lightly sped-up version of the pulsing intro to “Small Town Boy” — supposedly with the moves they would’ve used if boogieing to the song back in the ’80s. No less an early-MTV-era authority than Cyndi Lauper has gotten in on the fun, posting a CapCut edit of some old performance footage of her full-bodied dancing set to “Boy,” with the caption, “Oh #80s #dancechallenge you say?”

The clips, several of which have already racked up millions of likes, have helped the song find new life on streaming: “Boy” racked up over 1.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending May 23, according to Luminate — a 114% gain from the 705,000 streams the song notched four weeks earlier, before the trend really took off. Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville also shared a TikTok celebrating the song’s recent 40th anniversary, singing along to the song’s now-viral intro and sharing his joy at how the song has been revived.

“Everything is just kind of going so crazy in the world,” he said. “But here, on TikTok, there’s all these people just finding a moment to just have a bit of fun … It’s just been brilliant.” – ANDREW UNTERBERGER

The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. Next week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated June 8), a cult favorite act looks to get in the way of Billie Eilish’s latest and Taylor Swift’s unsinkable blockbuster. 

Twenty One Pilots, Clancy (Fueled by Ramen): For a couple years in the mid-‘10s, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun made the jump from regional Columbus, Ohio sensations to national hitmakers to legitimate A-listers, scoring a trio of Hot 100 top five hits and accepting Grammys in their underwear. Those days of massive crossover success are likely behind Twenty One Pilots at this point – their lone Billboard Hot 100 top 40 hit of the 2020s came at the beginning of the decade, with the COVID-themed “Level of Concern” – but the massive following the group accrued over those years has largely hung around, and should make them a contender for the top of the Billboard 200 this week for their latest LP Clancy.  

The new album (released two Fridays ago, May 17) follows 2021’s Scaled and Icy, which debuted at No. 3 with 75,000 equivalent album units. Clancy has the advantage of arriving as the much-hyped final installment in their conceptual series dating back to 2015’s breakthrough set Blurryface, loosely telling the story of the titular Clancy in the dystopian city of Dema. The set should have modest streaming success – helped by the visual album aspect of the release, with videos filmed for each of its 14 tracks – but will likely do most of its damage in physical sales. To that end, the duo has released Clancy in 11 different-colored vinyl variants, as well as in signed and unsigned zine/CD journal packages and digipak CDs, and a couple deluxe CD box sets with branded merch included inside. On May 29, the group also released a limited-time Clancy – Digital Remains deluxe edition – only available until midnight on May 30 — which features four recently recorded live bonus tracks, as well as a lengthy exclusive digital booklet offering behind-the-scenes photos.  

Even with impressive sales and solid streams, Clancy will still be fighting an uphill battle trying to get to No. 1 next week, with the two sets that sparred for No. 1 last week – Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft – still posting massive numbers on streaming. With both of those artists essentially emptying the bench last week of their remaining deluxe editions and CD variants on sale for their respective new albums, however, Clancy could have a real advantage in sales. But the album will have to post a much better first-week units figure than Scaled and Icy’s 75,000 – likely at least in the low six figures – to really have a chance of passing either.  

IN THE MIX 

RM, Right Place, Wrong Person (Big Hit/Geffen): The BTS alum’s follow-up to 2022’s No. 3-peaking Billboard 200 hit debut album Indigo is even looser, more expansive and more sonically diverse than that impressive first effort. That means that RM still hasn’t scored a solo hit single or global streaming mega-smash like his bandmates Jimin and Jung Kook – who both topped the Hot 100 in 2023 – but it means he’s cultivating an albums audience, which will have the option of purchasing Right Place, Wrong Person in 13 different CD variants, all containing branded paper merch and other collectibles.  

Wallows, Model (Atlantic): Like Twenty One Pilots, Wallows are no longer at the peak of their crossover moment – which was much more modest than that duo’s to begin with – but retain an extremely loyal following, one which should help their third album Model become one of the week’s top debuts. The set is available in a dozen different-colored vinyl variants – with three signed editions available on their website, one signed by each member – as well as a couple cassette and CD editions, while the group spent this week doing in-store promotional appearances at indie retailers.  

Sexyy Red, In Sexyy We Trust (Rebel/gamma.): Sexyy Red was one of 2023’s biggest breakout stars, with her acclaimed Hood Hottest Princess mixtape and breakout hits “Pound Town” and “SkeeYee,” which she’s already one-upped this year with the No. 20-peaking Hot 100 hit “Get It Sexyy.” That song can be found on her new mixtape In Sexyy We Trust, as well as a new teamup with her “Rich Baby Daddy” collaborator Drake, “U My Everything,” which samples the “BBL Drizzy” beat that producer Metro Boomin had been using to mock Drake as part of the latter’s ongoing feud with Kendrick Lamar. That song has gotten off to a slower-than-expected start on some DSPs – perhaps as exhaustion with the larger feud finally starts to set in – but the set should still fare well on streaming, with the album currently only available digitally.