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“I’m like a dirty s–thead raver. I come from throwing illegal parties — and not that long ago.”
So says The Blessed Madonna over Zoom one evening from her home in London — roughly 4,000 miles from the Chicago club scene where she made her name, and just as far from her native Kentucky, where she grew up “poor as hell” and first immersed herself in the scene. “Then when you’re talking to people who work in offices about what they think about your music, and suddenly there’s actual money involved,” she continues, “that just seems crazy.”
Weeks away from the release of her debut album, Godspeed, the 46-year-old artist born Marea Stamper is in the midst of such madness. After years of releasing remixes and singles on independent labels, including her own We Still Believe imprint, The Blessed Madonna signed with Major Recordings/Warner Records during the pandemic. The move placed an artist with subversive tendencies — sharing political opinions on social media, still frequenting illegal parties — squarely within the industry.
“Somebody has to get inside,” she says. “And if I’m to be put inside this system that has all these levers of power, my job is to be a little shard of glass in somebody’s foot.”
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Out Oct. 11, Godspeed — 24 tracks long, culled down from more than 100 hours of music — started during the pandemic. During this time, The Blessed Madonna would diagram songs she considered perfect, breaking down Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” to their essential elements to better understand their power.
This self-taught music theory continued during what the producer calls “super-lockdown,” when she was confined to her London home due to her virally triggered asthma. During that time, she had been tasked with transforming Dua Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia, into the Club Future Nostalgia “megamix” — a project in which she welcomed everyone from dance legend Moodymann to Madonna herself.
Unable to work with a studio engineer, The Blessed Madonna handled all of the technical aspects of the megamix herself, poring over YouTube tutorials and getting instructions from friends over the phone. Then, sadly in the midst of it all, her father died of COVID-19. She had to ID his body over email. “It was f–king awful,” she recalls. The ordeal not only elevated her ability to “get the thing out of my head that I wanted to say,” but reinforced her goal of making a dance record that wasn’t just excellent, but personal.
On Godspeed, The Blessed Madonna and a gaggle of collaborators she calls “the God squad” deliver fresh, soulful, often joyous and occasionally challenging takes on club music. Kylie Minogue sings about being “six deep in the bathroom stall” on the piano-laced party anthem “Edge of Saturday Night.” (RAYE was originally set to feature but had to drop out as her own career blew up.) Chicago house royalty Jamie Principle purrs about nights in the city’s mythical Warehouse on “We Still Believe.” And her late dad expresses how her success “fills my heart up with joy” in a voice message sampled on “Somebody’s Daughter.” In interludes, she and her collaborators giggle through unscripted silliness caught on hot mics.
“I feel like most dance records have nothing of the maker in them,” The Blessed Madonna says. “They’re kind of, like, engineered in a lab … But somebody has to make a decision.”
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So she decided to make the antithesis to what she often hears while moving through the world as a heavily touring DJ. “There are songs I only hear in the Uber and I can’t tell them apart, and I don’t know who any of the girls are, and they’re all Auto-Tuned into the f–king grave,” she says. “That is bad for art, and bad art is bad for culture and for thinking.”
Writing sessions happened across London, Chicago, Los Angeles and at Imogen Heap’s home in Essex, England. There, The Blessed Madonna and her husband, along with a group that included electronic duo Joy (Anonymous), gathered over the 2021 holidays. The pair appears on “Carry Me Higher.”
She is also friends with Fred again.., with whom she collaborated in 2021 on “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing),” a hit that reached No. 33 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and soundtracked the final scene in 2022’s Academy Award-nominated Triangle of Sadness. The Blessed Madonna says witnessing “the Beatlemania that exploded around Fred” (whom she calls “so smart, so good at what he does and also so nice that it sort of makes you want to kill him, because it’s all real”) made her question her own goals. “I thought, ‘Am I supposed to want that?’ And I had a little breakdown,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Is this record going where I want it to go? Am I reinforcing the status quo in dance music or am I pushing back against it?’
“We’re all just supposed to get rich and go to Ibiza and stop caring about politics and saying things that will upset people,” she continues. But for a self-described “s–thead raver,” that fate is unlikely.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
I’m not getting too stressed about bridge lyrics,” says Benjmn, 29. “Because there’s like a 100% chance it’s going to get translated.”
The Los Angeles-based topliner is closing in on his ninth straight hour of songwriting today. And like the 10 other lyricists and producers Universal Music Publishing Group has assembled at Arcade Studios in New York, he won’t stop until he’s achieved perfection. Benjmn, who has written for acts like ENHYPEN and Le Sserafim before, and his cohorts here are all proven K-pop hit-makers, so they’re well aware that much of today’s work will be rewritten in Korean. Still, he and his collaborators on this particular track — 31-year-old SAAY from South Korea and 34-year-old Sandra Wikstrom from Sweden — will continue fine-tuning their already pristine bridge for at least 15 more minutes before moving on. Are there enough syllables? Is it dragging? Can the melody be more expansive?
They know that the punchier the lyrics, the likelier it is that major K-pop labels like HYBE, JYP Entertainment and SM Entertainment will pick up their demos for artists to record. Their current target is a boy band on the rise that UMPG knows is looking for its next hit, although the track — a swaggering dance tune tentatively titled “GLUE” — may very well go to another of the ever-proliferating K-pop groups. (Because of the unpredictable nature of where songs end up and the prejudices a label may have if it sees a song title publicly attached to other acts, UMPG declines to comment on the precise artists for whom the musicians have gathered.)
The three rainy days these writers and producers will spend here mark just the second-ever international K-pop camp UMPG has held in the United States as it pushes to capitalize on the opportunities the genre offers its roster of talent, rounding up its most experienced creatives from all over the world and charging them with completing three songs a day in small groups. After the camp concludes, UMPG Korea senior creative A&R executive Yena Kim will pitch the nine finished tracks to the big three labels, which constantly send her hyperspecific briefs outlining what they’re looking for and for whom; for now, she walks from room to room ensuring everyone understands their assignments.
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“Ultimately, we want releases,” explains UMPG’s head of its global creative group, David Gray. “We can sign K-pop writers and say, ‘Go get us K-pop cuts.’ But we can also be proactive and creative. Let’s put our best K-pop writers together, bring them briefs from Korea and keep it small, focused and strategic so we have the best chance of getting results.”
Benjmn (left) records vocals for an R&B-inspired demo produced by Sam Klempner.
Nina Westervelt
Jeppe London (left) and Lauritz Emil work on a song with guitars.
Nina Westervelt
On day one of camp, delirium is already setting in. “We should do a song called ‘Jet Lag,’ ” Benjmn jokes before he, SAAY and Wikstrom start spitting out catchy rap bars seemingly effortlessly, despite their lack of sleep. “Jet lag, jet lag, gotta go get bags/All around the world, I’m getting whiplash,” they sing, taking turns adding lines.
Down the hall, 28-year-old BLVSH from Germany and London-based Josh McClelland, 27, are writing for the same boy band, penning a punk-rock heartbreak anthem called “Close the Door.” Producer duo Jeppe London, 28, and Lauritz Emil, 26, both from Denmark, speak in rapid-fire Danish while recording electric guitar passes to find a sweet spot between Demi Lovato and Linkin Park, both of whom label SM sent as references. The room’s shared credits include tracks for BTS, ENHYPEN, NCT and TWICE, and an expertise in the subtleties of writing for K-pop artists shows.
“You’re looking for fun keywords instead of poetic structure,” explains BLVSH, who earned a No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 last year for her work on Jimin’s “Like Crazy.” “It’s more [about] attention-grabbing visuals and hooky words.”
They also labor over how pleasing each syllable sounds, the cadence and differentiation of each line, whether the melodies will sit in the band members’ varying vocal ranges and how easily choreographers will be able to pair the lyrics with snappy dance moves — all elements they say they don’t necessarily think about when writing for other genres, as many of them started out writing outside K-pop. Phonetics are key, even if most lyrics do end up getting reworked by translators, who generally earn a 12.5% split in royalties when the song is finished; BLVSH and McClelland say Korean labels are more likely to bite when they can imagine from the get-go how a song will sound once translated, which is why the writers make sure to infuse their demos with sharp consonants to mimic the Korean language. (For example: Saying a love interest looks “picturesque” grabs their ears far more than a simple “pretty” or “good.”)
SAAY (left) listens to a demo while BLVSH tinkers on piano.
Nina Westervelt
Max Thulin produces a track in Logic Pro.
Nina Westervelt
It’s also why the writers focus less on storytelling and more on a certain vibe or attitude in their songs, which they strive to convey even when recording their demos. By nature, many of them are far less extroverted than the acts they write for, so it’s entertaining to watch Benjmn cringe as he listens to a take of himself singing with Justin Bieber-esque sultriness, or to see 31-year-old Feli Ferraro of Los Angeles intuitively flip her hair and pop her hips while recording sexy-confident raps for a song called “8” that’ll be sent off to a brand-new girl group SM is developing (the campers know nothing of its top-secret lineup).
The songwriters aren’t fazed when translators alter the meaning of their lyrics; they understand it’s an often necessary part of ensuring they still rhyme and flow well in Korean. Still, it’s always ideal artistically when their work stays as close to the original as possible — and there are ways of increasing the chances that it does: As McClelland puts it, “Let’s make sure this lyric is fire.”
Toward the end of the day, everyone takes a short break to mingle and eat dinner; last year, UMPG learned that the ever-diligent writers prefer bringing in meals to avoid taking time away from their songs, and tonight’s comes from Joe’s Home of Soup Dumplings. SAAY and Wikstrom excitedly make plans to visit the Times Square Disney store while they’re in town. But there’s minimal time for this kind of pleasant catchup. A mountain of empty plastic containers in their wake, everyone instinctively filters back into their respective rooms.
Most end up staying until 10 p.m. There’s more work to be done.
From a publisher’s perspective, everything changed for global K-pop in 2020. That’s when BTS earned its first Hot 100 No. 1 with “Dynamite” — and the genre “exploded, that’s for sure,” quips Daniella Rasho, international A&R executive at UMPG U.S., who oversees the camp alongside Yena Kim.
“People have seen what BTS has done,” she continues. “Now every K-pop label is like, ‘I’m going to have the next BTS. I’m going to have the next one that goes global or is on U.S. radio.’ ”
“[Korean] labels are aiming for hits on the Billboard charts,” Kim adds. “The artists, most of them now all speak English, as well as local A&Rs. The whole thing is changing. It wasn’t like this five to six years ago.”
As K-pop’s global reach has expanded, so too has foreign songwriters’ interest in the genre, which rapidly transformed from one of the least popular international markets for songwriters to one of the most competitive. It’s an appealing space: Western pop stars are often inclined to stick with the same close circle of collaborators, but K-pop labels are quite open to taking songs from outsiders. Thanks to K-pop fans’ propensity for buying multiple physical variants of singles and albums, the royalty checks for songwriters and producers tend to be higher, too.
Western stars like Taylor Swift have also prioritized writing their own music, while K-pop fans value the glossy, high-production performances their idols have spent years training to execute more than the names on a song’s billing, allowing more space for career songwriters to notch credits. Rasho has a theory as to why: “American audiences want to relate to pop stars. For K-pop, people want to be them.”
Front row, from left: Jeppe London, Celine Svanback, Feli Ferraro, Benjmn and Max Thulin. Middle row, from left: Sandra Wikstrom, SAAY, Sam Klempner and BLVSH. Back row: Josh McClelland (left) and Lauritz Emil.
Nina Westervelt
SAAY (left) with Sandra Wikstrom who reads lyrics off her phone.
Nina Westervelt
Plus, the campers say that K-pop labels are in some ways more forgiving than their Western counterparts. They’re used to receiving detailed feedback on their demos and getting ample opportunity to rewrite or add parts to a song, and Ferraro explains that some will “Frankenstein” pieces of different submissions together to achieve the desired result. “They’ll find a home for it,” says the Connecticut native, who co-wrote “Run BTS” and Le Sserafim’s “Unforgiven.” “It doesn’t feel like you’re wasting your time at all.”
Seeing the many opportunities K-pop presents for its roster, UMPG has sprung into action over the past few years organizing writing sessions all over the world. Kim handpicked each creative at this year’s camp based not just on skill, but also on who would be most suited to the song briefs at hand — “Specific labels like some writing styles more than others,” Rasho explains — and who would get along best as collaborators.
Figuring out the latter is an art in itself. At last year’s camp, Gray recalls that “there were tears” during a creative dispute over a song that would turn out to be TWICE soloist NAYEON’s “Something.” It ended up being one of the most high-profile releases the inaugural camp created, with the EP it was on, NA, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart in June.
Next, Kim tailored small groups around who could best match the demands of the individual briefs, which reflect just how tuned in to global trends K-pop labels are. JYP requested a solo song akin to Tate McRae’s “Greedy” for a member of one of its girl groups, while others cited Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” Chappell Roan, Caroline Polachek and Charli xcx’s brat as references.
K-pop’s sonic evolution is a big reason why UMPG’s approach, gathering writers from all over the world, works so well. Swedish and British producers like Max Thulin, 30, and Sam Klempner, respectively, “bring their experimental, cool sounds,” while Germans are masters of “fun, electronic pop,” Rasho says.
“The U.S. writers come and do their rap thing — they have that swagger,” she continues. “They bring out something new and different in each other. They bring the best of their territories, too.”
Celine Svanback records vocals for a girl-group demo.
Nina Westervelt
Celine Svanback and Josh McClelland records vocals.
Nina Westervelt
Only at the end of camp, when all of their songs are finished, do the writers let UMPG treat them to dinner offsite — Cecconi’s on Broadway. Over drinks, McClelland jokes that Universal saved money on hotels by having two couples present. Benjmn and Ferraro are married, and Emil is engaged to fellow Dane Celine Svanback, 28; both couples met in past writing sessions. But aside from a few others from the same close-knit territories who’ve worked together before, like McClelland and Klempner, it’s the first time many of the campers have met — although, in the course of conversation, Benjmn and Thulin realize they share credits on a previous song created remotely, Le Sserafim’s “Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard’s Wife.”
Most of them, it seems, fell into the K-pop world unintentionally, whether they were headhunted by labels or indoctrinated at the nudging of UMPG. It wasn’t the first choice for many but now, it’s become perhaps their best avenue to flex their creative muscles, writing pop, hip-hop, rock and R&B all under the ever-expanding K-pop umbrella.
“It’s not just one sound,” says Wikstrom, who never did come up for air long enough to visit the Disney store. “That’s what I really love — you’re not tied to anything. I used to think, ‘No, I don’t want to do K-pop. I don’t even know what K-pop is.’
“Then, I realized,” she continues, her eyes widening. “K-pop is everything.”
This story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Spring of 2022 brought out the superstars: Over the course of three consecutive weeks, Future released I Never Liked You, Bad Bunny put out Un Verano Sin Ti, and Kendrick Lamar returned from a five-year break with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Future and Lamar launched four songs apiece in the Billboard Hot 100‘s top 10 during their albums’ debut weeks, while Bad Bunny scored three.
But few of these tracks endured. Nine of them fell out of the top 10 in their second week on the chart. A month later, Future’s “Wait for U,” a melancholy hip-hop ballad with Drake and Tems, served as the only lasting reminder of this blockbuster spurt in the top 10.
That July, Steve Lacy carved out a notably different path on the Hot 100. He is not nearly as well-known as Future, Bad Bunny, or Lamar; as a result, his breezy new wave single “Bad Habit” debuted on the Hot 100 in the lowest possible position. It climbed the chart for five weeks before reaching the top 10. It then remained there for 18 weeks, ultimately peaking at No. 1.
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Songs like “Bad Habit” are becoming hard to find — 75% of 2024’s top 10 hits debuted in that lofty environment as of the third week of July. Ironically, though, the tracks that launch on the upper reaches of the Hot 100, like Future’s “Puffin On Zootiez” and Lamar’s “N95,” tend to be easy come, easy go. They don’t remain as long as the hits which take time to get into that exclusive atmosphere.
Since 2000, the average single that debuts in the top 10 hangs there for roughly six weeks. In contrast, tracks that take two to eight weeks to ascend to that position linger for more than 11 weeks.
This dynamic has become more extreme in the heart of the streaming era. Since 2015, singles that start out in the top 10 last 6.3 weeks on average, while tracks that take two to four weeks to reach the top 10 last more than twice as long — 12.7 weeks. And songs that take five to eight weeks to ascend to the top 10 do even better, lasting for an average of 13-plus weeks.
Singles that erupt high on the chart and then sink immediately are maybe thought of as viral one-offs — tracks plucked out of obscurity, usually by the masses on TikTok, incorporated into millions of videos, streamed by curious listeners, and then discarded. In truth, most of these short-lived top 10 hits are album cuts from superstars like Taylor Swift and Drake.
When artists with large followings release new full-lengths, it’s now common for many of the tracks on the album to debut immediately on the Hot 100 — as devoted fans engage with it for the first time and play it all the way through, sometimes more than once. Listeners have always been eager to devour new releases from their favorite acts, but this activity wasn’t trackable on a song level before the adoption of streaming, other than via sales or occasional radio play courtesy of individual DJs who happened to like a particular album cut.
The initial burst of post-release-week enthusiasm — the thrill of the new — is very difficult to sustain, however, and many of these songs depart the upper reaches of the Hot 100 rapidly. From 2000 to 2015, around 13% of top 10s fell out of the top 10 after one week; that number has rocketed upward, topping 40% in each of the last four years.
Gaining listeners’ interest is hard enough at a time when there is unprecedented competition for attention. Holding on to that attention for extended periods, or building it over time, may be even harder.
Songs that manage this tend to look a lot like singles from the pre-streaming era, in that they have sustained promotion campaigns behind them. The influence of radio on their trajectory is often especially noticeable.
While streams and sales of sought-after projects typically bunch up near a release date and then diminish, airplay tends to rise over time, as more stations see a song working and start to play it, and then play it more often, in tandem with label promotion. A similar progression happens with radio formats, which will often plunder successful tracks from each other, further amplifying their impact on the chart.
“A lot of times, the pop format will just look at other formats and see what’s bubbling up — like a Hozier or a Noah Kahan — and then say, ‘You know what, that feels like a pop record, let’s give it a shot,'” explains Tom Poleman, chief programming officer at iHeartMedia. “Then you can make something a super mass record.”
Many young executives believe airplay has little to no impact on streaming levels, but radio’s slow-burn timeline helps songs climb the Hot 100 — and sustain their position near the top. In fact, from a label’s point of view, this is one of airplay’s primary remaining benefits, as radio continues to face increased competition from streaming services and short-form video platforms. (Some executives also believe airplay can help artists sell tickets and earn brand deals.)
Take Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy):” When it skipped from No. 2 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 dated July 27, streams and sales were down — 6% and 24%, respectively, according to Luminate — but radio listening was up 11%. Shaboozey’s hit drew 77.2 million in airplay audience, as compared to 39 million official streams and 16,000 sales.
For the next two weeks, streaming and sales kept slipping, while airplay audience kept growing, albeit at a declining rate — up 10% in week three, and 6% in week four — and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” stayed at No. 1. “Radio can still very much move the needle,” says J Grand, an A&R veteran. “Certainly not as much as a decade ago, but I don’t think the fall off is as precipitous as people are making it out to be.”
Promoting songs to radio is costly, however, and radio generally plays fewer current tracks than it used to. It’s good for commercially minded artists, then, that airplay is not the only way to extend a song’s life high on the charts. While the influence of music videos has lessened considerably in the age of TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, a well-placed clip can still ignite a single. (Though videos can be expensive too.)
Lamar’s “Not Like Us” sprang back to No. 1 nine weeks after it initially came out thanks to its music video, which was widely anticipated due to the avalanche of attention around his nasty public feud with Drake. Streams of “Not Like Us” jumped 20% and sales climbed 16% at a time when they would typically be falling.
And adding a star collaborator to a remix remains a tried-and-true technique for counteracting decaying chart position. Wizkid’s “Essence,” a swaying, flirty collaboration with Tems, grew gradually for months during 2021. “The people connecting first with the song in the States were largely either from Africa or the diaspora,” says John Fleckenstein, COO of RCA Records, which released and marketed the track. “We literally went city by city, focused on targeted radio and digital campaigns to get to those populations.”
But the big boost for “Essence” came when Justin Bieber joined the fight, appearing on a remix that August which bolstered streams, sales, and airplay all at once. Bieber’s presence catapulted the song from No. 44 on the Hot 100 to No. 16. In October, “Essence” glided into the top 10 — again with help from airplay, which kept climbing even as streams and sales decreased.
Engineering the long climb that eventually made “Essence” — or “Bad Habit” — inescapable is increasingly a lost art. But while the majority of top 10 Hot 100 hits now debut on the upper reaches of the chart, the danger of flaring brightly is burning out quickly. As Nick Bobetsky, who manages Chapell Roan, likes to say, “there’s much more meaning in momentum than in a moment.”
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The late, great Phife Dawg famously rapped, “I’ll never let a statue tell me how nice I am,” on “Award Tour” off A Tribe Called Quest’s class Midnight Marauders album. The words still ring true over 30 years later when it comes to the Grammy Awards, which too often have been lacking when it comes to its respect for Hip-Hop culture.
Back in the day, the Grammys wouldn’t even air the Rap category winners during the proper show. To many, the slights still continue, like Jay-Z sitting in the front row only to go 0-8 in Grammy wins in 2018. Every year it’s a guarantee, the Hip-Hop heads will be upset, about something, justifiably so.
Needless to say, the Grammys’ relationship with the culture is still strained at best, with artists like Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino all essentially curving the show after being asked and passing on performing.
Considering the amount of Hip-Hop legends, who have dropped quality material, only to never take home a Grammy Award, you can’t blame them. Like Phife insinuated, a Grammy Award will never make you a great MC, but the acknowledgment would still be cool. And don’t get use started groups like the aforementioned A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul or Public Enemy.
To be clear, we’re not taking anything away from stars whose shelves are littered with Grammys. We just wish the distribution of the accolades were more equitable.
As evidence, check out the eyebrow-raising list of Hip-Hop artists who have never won a Grammy in the gallery. It wouldn’t really be the Grammys if someone wasn’t getting snubbed, right?
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Photo Getty
1. Yasiin Bey
Source:WENN
Yasiin Bey f/k/a as the Mighty Mos Def is already one of the greatest MC’s of all time. Not so much in Grammy land.
2. KRS-One
Source:Getty
Blastmaster KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions are legends. For shame.
3. Wale
Source:Warner Records
Wale has only one nomination to his name for Best Rap Song back in 2013 for “Lotus Flower Bomb.”
4. Rakim
Source:Getty
The R has been nominated a grand total of two times.
5. A Tribe Called Quest
Source:WENN.com
A Tribe Called Quest has come up blank after only four nominations. Two nominations in 1997, one nomination in 1999, and one in 2012. Q-Tip has a Grammy, but that’s thanks to a performance on “Galvanize” by the Chemical Brothers.
6. Scarface
Source:Getty
Brad Jordan is still a GOAT.
7. Snoop Dogg
Source:WENN.com
Despite 16 nominations, Snoop Dogg has always come up empty. He holds the record for third most Grammy nominations ever without a win across all genres.
8. Ice Cube
Source:WENN.com
O’Shea Jackson has been nominated just one time. Think about that.
9. Wu-Tang Clan
Source:Hip-Hop Wired
Despite being for the children, the Wu-Tang Clan has managed to snag only one Grammy nomination.
10. DMX
Source:WENN.com
DMX once dropped two critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums in one year. Nevertheless, he’s 0-3 in Grammy Awards.
11. Busta Rhymes
Source:Getty
The Dungeon Dragon has a dozen nominations to his name.
12. Redman
Source:Getty
Redman will go down in history as a GOAT, but he only has two Grammy nomination to his name. His buddy Method Man has one Grammy, though.
13. Mobb Deep
Source:Getty
The speakers of the Dunn Language. Rest in power Prodigy.
14. Tupac Shakur
Source:Getty
The legendary life of Tupac Shakur was cut short, but a posthumous award is way past due.
15. Public Enemy
Source:WENN.com
This is just disrespectful.
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Maurice Williams, who died on Aug. 5 at age 86, by looking at his lone No. 1, the doo-wop classic “Stay,” which he recorded as the frontman of Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs.
Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs meet the most common definition of one-hit wonders, as they had just one top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 – but, boy, what a hit. Their doo-wop classic “Stay” reached No. 1 in November 1960, sandwiched between two other top-tier classics, Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” and Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome To-night?.”
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Over backing chants of “Stay!” by his fellow group members, Williams carries much of the song and its plea to a girl to stay out longer than she is supposed to. Her Daddy and Mommy won’t mind, Williams argues, not entirely convincingly. Midway, he steps back and hands the lead to Henry Gaston for one of pop music’s most unforgettable falsetto shouts — “Oh, won’t you stay, just a little bit longer!”
Williams wrote the song in 1953 when he was just 15. The song was inspired by his crush on one Mary Shropshire. “[Mary] was the one I was trying to get to stay a little longer,” Williams told the North Carolina publication Our State in 2012. “Of course, she couldn’t.” (The more restrictive mores of the 1940s and 1950s inspired such other great pop songs as the Oscar-winning “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and The Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie.”)
“It took me about 30 minutes to write ‘Stay,’ then I threw it away,” Williams told ClassicsBands.com. “We were looking for songs to record as Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs. I was over at my girlfriend’s house playing the tape of songs I had written, when her little sister said, ‘Please do the song with the high voice in it.’ I knew she meant ‘Stay.’ She was about 12 years old and I said to myself, ‘She’s the age of record buying,’ and the rest is history. I thank God for her.”
The Zodiacs’ producer, Phil Gernhard, took the demo, along with some others, to New York City and played them for all the label reps that he knew. Al Silver of Herald Records was interested, but insisted that the song be re-recorded as the recording levels were too low. He also said that one line, “Let’s have another smoke,” would have to be removed for the song to be played on commercial radio.
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The track runs just 1:38. It is the shortest of the 1,174 singles that have reached No. 1 on the Hot 100. You could play the song in its entirety six times in the time it would take to play the longest-running No. 1 hit, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” (which runs 10:13, per the dominant version the week the song topped the Hot 100 in 2021) just once. But despite its historic brevity, the record never feels that short. It’s simply exactly as long as it needed to be to tell its story. It’s to the group’s and Gernhard’s credit that they didn’t pad it just to make it longer.
The song entered the Hot 100 at No. 86 on Oct. 3, 1960 – though in a gaffe, Williams was credited as a solo artist. The billing was changed to Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs in Week 2, when the record vaulted to No. 40. The record hit the top 10 on Nov. 7 (when another great R&B record, The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” was No. 1). Two weeks later, it reached No. 1.
“Stay” was only the third No. 1 in Hot 100 history (which commenced in August 1958) that was both written and recorded by a Black artist. It followed Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee” (which he co-wrote with Harold Logan) and Dave “Baby” Cortez’s instrumental smash “The Happy Organ” (which he co-wrote with Ken Wood).
Williams and the Zodiacs’ recording of “Stay” was the first major hit for producer Gernhard, who returned to the top five on the Hot 100 in the ’60s and ’70s as the producer of The Royal Guardmen’s novelty hit “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” Dion’s poignant “Abraham, Martin and John,” Lobo’s “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” and “I’d Love You to Want Me,” Jim Stafford’s “Spiders and Snakes” and The Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow,” the latter, Gernhard’s second No. 1 on the Hot 100.
The Billboard Hot 100 Chart for the week ending on November 27, 1960.
Williams and the Zodiacs had two more Hot 100 hits in 1961, but both were minor – “I Remember” (No. 86) and “Come Along” (No. 83). The group had broken through near the tail-end of doo-wop’s peak. Few doo-wop artists outside of the 4 Seasons, which had doo-wop roots, had extensive pop careers as Motown and, starting in 1964, the British invasion took over. A 1965 Williams song, “May I,” seemed promising, but the group’s label, Vee-Jay, went bankrupt just as the song was coming out. “May I” would become a top 40 hit in March 1969 for a white pop group, Bill Deal & the Rhondels.
Williams had had that same frustrating experience, on a much bigger scale, in 1957, when his group The Gladiolas released the original version of “Little Darlin’” (which Williams also wrote). The Gladiolas’ version reached No. 11 on R&B Best-Sellers in Stores and No. 41 on the Billboard Top 100, a forerunner to the Hot 100. But as was common in that era, a cover version by a white group, The Diamonds, became the bigger hit. The Diamonds’ version logged eight weeks at No. 2 on Best Sellers in Stores, and appeared in the 1973 film American Graffiti – a nostalgic film which was perfectly timed as the Watergate scandal broke wide open. American Graffiti received an Oscar nod for best picture and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1995. The double-disk soundtrack album, a first-rate oldies collection, reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 in February 1974.
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“Stay” was memorably featured in two films – American Hot Wax, a 1978 film about legendary DJ Alan Freed, and the 1987 blockbuster Dirty Dancing, another nostalgic film that provided relief from the woes of that era, including Iran/Contra and AIDS. “Stay” was featured on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, which topped the Billboard 200 for 18 nonconsecutive weeks.
Many artists have recorded successful cover versions of “Stay.” In November 1963, the song was released by The Hollies, whose bright, effervescent version shifted the focus from doo-wop to rock’n’roll. Their version reached No. 8 on the Official UK Singles Chart, becoming their first of 18 top 10 hits in their home country.
Two cover versions have reached the top 20 on the Hot 100 – one by the 4 Seasons in April 1964 (with Frankie Valli taking on Gaston’s falsetto part) and another by Jackson Browne in August 1978 (with David Lindley handling the falsetto vocals). Browne cleverly recast the song from a romantic plea to a performers’ plea to the audience to let them play a little longer. Instead of saying Mommy and Daddy won’t mind, he argues that the promoter, union and roadies won’t mind (again, not entirely convincingly!). Browne’s version directly followed his own song “The Load-Out” on his hit album Running on Empty, a No. 3 album on the Billboard 200 and a Grammy nominee for album of the year. That two-song coupling, which also featured vocalist Rosemary Butler, was recorded live at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.
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There have been many other notable cover versions of the song. The Dave Clark Five recorded the song for their studio album Glad All Over, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in May 1964. Andrew Gold recorded a version of “Stay” for his 1976 album What’s Wrong with This Picture?, which also spawned his only top 10 hit on the Hot 100, “Lonely Boy.” Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band teamed with Browne, Butler and Tom Petty to record the song at the No Nukes concert at Madison Square Garden in September 1979. The recording appeared on a triple-disc album which made the top 20 on the Billboard 200 in January 1980.
Maurice Williams didn’t have enough hits to receive major honors. He’s not in the Songwriters Hall of Fame (despite writing two colossal hits). He and the Zodiacs haven’t even been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But the placement of “Little Darlin’” and “Stay” in such iconic films as American Graffiti and Dirty Dancing helps ensure that those songs will live on forever.
And Williams’ place in the Hot 100 record books seems secure: Even with hit songs getting shorter and shorter in the TikTok era, no one has yet passed Williams for his 98 seconds of pop perfection.
When we think about the first Woodstock Music and Art Fair we think about the hippies. The mud. The brown acid. The helicopters. The chaos that became a utopia and a definitive statement for the ideals of the 60s counterculture.
And, oh yeah, the music.
The artists — three days of ’em — were, of course, the primary draw to the festival, and Woodstock boasted a lineup of formidable names, some of which were already historic, others that were on their way there and some who would use the festival to launch their careers. “We wanted the biggest and the best, and we worked hard to get them,” the late Woodstock producer Michael Lang told us in 2009, while preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary. He acknowledged that it took a minute for the festival to be viewed seriously by booking agents and managers, but once Creedence Clearwater Revival signed on, interest was stoked and the gets became easier.
Thirty-three bands played in total, and there was even an impressive list of could’ve-beens: Lang made a run at the Beatles, for instance, but could only get John Lennon to offer a basically non-existent Plastic Ono Band, which wound up making its debut a month later at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. Bob Dylan was invited but never showed. The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors, The Moody Blues, The Guess Who, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Love were among acts that turned down offers. The Jeff Beck Group canceled its slated performance after breaking up shortly before it. Iron Butterfly attempted to change the day it would perform at the last minute and never made it to the site.
But nobody at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. was complaining about what they did get to hear.
“I guess by Saturday, when everybody had arrived or everybody who was gonna get there arrived, we knew that this was gonna be a historic moment,” Lang said. “Nobody ever thought about or how it would resonate, but we knew that this was extraordinary. I knew that we were all freaks and there were many of us out there and we were disbursed around the country and around the world really, so it was like a gathering of the tribes if you will.”
Through the Academy Award-winning 1970 documentary and an array of music releases — both individual titles and multi-disc compilations, including the Woodstock Back to the Garden — 50th Anniversary Experience in 2019 — we’ve come to know their sets well, which has kept a little whiff of The Garden fresh during the ensuing decades. They demonstrate that even amidst turbulent conditions, there were amazing — and also, again, historic — performances all the way through the extra, unplanned Monday morning.
With Woodstock turning 55 on Aug. 15, these are our picks for the 20 most iconic sets on that fateful weekend…
John Sebastian
Just under a week after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance – and one day before Independence Day – a “fancam” compiling Vice President Kamala Harris’ most memeable moments to Charli XCX’s brash electropop banger “Von Dutch.” Created by X user @ryanlong03, the clip combines clips of Harris proclaiming her love for Venn diagrams, quoting her mother’s idioms and dancing and laughing while Charli’s neon-green Brat filter flashes across the screen. “It’s so obvious I’m your number one,” Charli bellows across Easyfun’s blaring synths.
Unwittingly, the clip kicked off one of the most drastic shifts in public perception of a politician in recent memory. It also cemented a clear restructuring of the contemporary pop music hierarchy.
While Harris may not have always been people’s “number one” choice for the top of the Democratic ticket, pop music-driven memes have helped her ascend to that position in the minds of left-leaning online communities as she prepares to officially become the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, IL (Aug. 19-22). Along the road to the convention, the Harris campaign has tapped Megan Thee Stallion and Bon Iver for rally performances, used Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s “Freedom” as their official campaign song, and adopted the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s Brat album – which prompted a hilarious explainer segment on CNN. Pop music has never been more ingrained in U.S. politics – and it’s giving real weight to the voices of America’s youngest and newest voters.
Amid several ongoing global catastrophes, the climate crisis and the fight to codify a woman’s right to choose, the country has been understandably shrouded in a dark cloud of tension and anxiety going into November. Add an assassination attempt on former President Trump on a Sunday afternoon and President Biden shockingly ending his re-election bid on the one that followed, and you’re left with an electorate that exists in the context of reality’s best attempt at recreating Shonda Rhimes’ most ridiculous Scandal storylines.
According to an October 2023 study from Tuft’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Gen Z (ages 18-27 in 2024) boasts 41 million eligible voters, including 8.3 million newly eligible voters who have aged into the electorate since the 2022 midterm election. Those are election-shifting numbers, especially in a race as close as this year’s seems headed for. The youth vote is vital – it’s an area where Biden was significantly lagging – and those young voters have completely shifted the election landscape by processing their fears, anxiety and general amusement at the sheer absurdity of the times through this summer’s most culturally resonant pop releases.
How’d they do it? In part because, if music is the universal language, memes – especially music-driven memes – are the Gen Z language.
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As much as Brat revels in cheeky self-aggrandizement and party-girl reflections, Charli’s latest LP also grapples with some intensely personal ponderings. While her ruminations on potential motherhood, her position in the music industry and her personal grief aren’t necessarily the things causing the American electorate anxiety, her songs provide younger listeners a way to work through their own emotional anguish as it relates to their futures. Chappell Roan’s breakout album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess has allowed for similar impact on its young fans. Roan’s debut album explores myriad moods, but the emotional turmoil of growing up as a lesbian in a small Midwestern town looms over the entire record – perhaps a much more real analog to the way Gen Z feels heading into November, as they chart paths for themselves in a country that feels increasingly detached from their concerns, from abortion rights to gun control.
Not only are Brat and Midwest Princess driven by anxiety, but they’re also arguably pop culture’s two defining albums of the summer of 2024. With constantly recirculated lyrics like “Bumpin that” and “Should we do a little line/ Should we do a little key,” Brat finds Charli XCX at the peak of her cultural pull. The album cover’s funky shade of green has become the unofficial hue of the year, Pantone be damned. In the same week Brat became the highest-peaking album of Charli’s career, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Chappell’s record reached the chart’s top 10 for the first time, eight months after its October 2023 release. Assisted by a coveted opening slot on Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour and a stage show that effortlessly converted fans at every festival she appeared at, Chappell launched six Billboard Hot 100 hits off Midwest Princess – nearly half of the album! — from “My Kink Is Karma” (No. 91) to “Hot to Go!” (No. 17). In July, Roan also earned her first career top ten hit with the standalone single “Good Luck, Babe!” (which has since climbed to No. 6).
To varying degrees, pop music has always reflected the general mood of the population. Through the cultural and commercial success of Brat and Midwest Princess, Gen Z has helped significant pockets of the left-leaning Internet channel their political anxiety into a somewhat ironic, but still largely genuine, embrace of a new candidate suddenly offering an escape from the absolutely miserable election cycle that the Biden-Trump rematch seemed to promise – and the Harris campaign has taken notice.
In its first post since turning the official Biden campaign TikTok account into “@kamalahq,” the Harris campaign used Roan’s “Femininomenon” to highlight her as a fresh, new alternative to Trump. The day after Harris officially announced her election bid, the X account for campaign headquarters rebranded to fit the Brat aesthetic. In the words of Charli herself, “Kamala IS brat.” In an age where politicians are who we paint them to be, Gen Z has used this summer’s biggest albums to fashion Harris into a candidate that they can truly throw their support behind – whether it’s solely because of the draw of the memes or because anything seems preferable to the looming threat of a second Trump presidency.
Instead of trying to create an image for Harris, her campaign has let Gen Z create an image for her, simultaneously reasserting itself as a key voting bloc and reshaping the relationship between pop music and politics. In this way, Charli and Chappell have helped cement a new standard for era-defining pop stardom. Neither of them has seen a single from their most recent albums reach the Hot 100’s top 10, and their songs aren’t exactly pulling multi-week reigns at No. 1 across different radio formats, either. Rather, they’ve captivated the zeitgeist through fresh idiosyncratic aesthetics and outward rejection of traditional pop fame. After all, part of Chappell’s appeal is her explicit disdain for her ever-rising notoriety, and Charli preceded Brat with an album that cheekily satirized what the ultra-commercialized version of herself would look and sound like.
As the electorate continues to welcome large swaths of new, younger voters, a shuffling has begun to occur in the pop music hierarchy. While artists like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar continue to enrapture younger listeners – both scored culture-shifting Hot 100 chart-toppers this year with “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Not Like Us,” respectively – they also now appeal to a broader range of voters (age-wise) than they have in past presidential election cycles. Lamar, of course, made appearances on former President Barack Obama’s oft-memed summer and year-end playlists, and visited him in the Oval Office back in 2015 — but the years since the Obama administration have cast the rapper in a slightly different role. No longer an exclusively “hip” pick to attract young voters, Lamar, by virtue of his age and material, can reach scores of voters across age demographics.
The same goes for Queen Bey, who was riding high on the success of her Hot 100-topping “Single Ladies” when she performed at Obama’s first Inaugural Ball in 2009. In the years since, she’s performed the National Anthem at Obama’s second Inauguration (2013), played “Formation” at a rally for then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (2016) and took to her Instagram page to back President Biden (2020). At this point in her career, Beyoncé isn’t directly competing with flashy, younger stars like Roan — she’s something of an elder stateswoman at the intersection of pop culture, music and electoral politics. She’s still admired by the country’s youngest eligible voters, but she also commands the respect of Millennials, Gen Xers, and even some Boomers.
In this way, “Freedom,” her and Lamar’s 2016 Grammy-nominated anthem, was a natural pick for Harris’ official campaign song. The song has roots in the mid-2010s Black Lives Matter era, boasts a pair of artists whose blending of politics and music have been lauded (and critiqued for years) and gives the Harris campaign a way to temper the hyper-contemporary feel of their other musical choices. And, for what it’s worth, Bey and Kendrick – two respected Black music titans — are valuable and logical musical picks for a Black candidate whose campaign (at least at the very beginning) was largely defined by the white pop stars of the moment.
Then, there’s the Taylor Swift question. Under a special microscope this cycle because of her silence during past elections (she’s since expressed her regret for remaining mum in 2016 and endorsed the Democrats during the 2018 midterms), Ms. Americana has all eyes on her as November draws nearer. The historic success of her globe-conquering Eras Tour has packed out stadiums across the country. But will she remind her fans to vote? Will she tell them who to vote for? It shouldn’t really matter what Swift’s voting stance is, but it does – especially as political fandom becomes more and more insidious.
The Internet drives pop stardom and political fandom in the same way; choices are made on the basis of how invested a person is in a pop star’s or politician’s brand. In the same way that Swifties buy the umpteenth version of The Tortured Poets Department because they want to be as immersed in her brand as possible, Biden’s most steadfast supporters – who often cited their respect for his 50-year political career and him being an “honorable man” — refused to waver, despite polls showing that his appearance on the ticket could very well cost the Democrats the election. From pop stars to politicians, brand loyalty is the crux of how people engage with most things in America right now, and the 2024 election cycle is already solidifying that. Yes, there are millions of voters that are fully aware of the issues they are most passionate about – namely, gun control, abortion rights, the Gaza conflict and inflation – but the voices of voters who struggle with interacting with politicians solely as public servants who owe them (and not the other way around) are often just as loud, if not louder. The support the Harris-Walz ticket has been able to accrue is undoubtedly impressive, especially because, at press time, the ticket doesn’t even have a platform readily available on their official website.
In the days leading up to Harris officially taking over the top of the ticket, memes overlaying her trademark cackle over pop songs with laughing intros/outros (think: Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” or Kesha’s “Blow”) took over TikTok and Twitter. On TikTok, an AI-generated Beyoncé song that turns Harris’ “coconut” anecdote into an original track plays in over 1,000 videos. Inspired by the “Win With Black Women” Zoom calls that have helped raise millions of dollars for the Harris campaign – and spawned similar calls amongst other identity groups – Swifties launched an @Swifties4Kamala X account that touts over 53,000 followers. Some Swifties have even (jokingly) inquired if they can use a VPN to vote in the election from outside of the U.S. Harris’ recently announced running mate – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – has already been branded as the “Midwestern prince” (Chappell) to Harris’ “brat” (Charli). In the days since Walz joined the ticket, a camo cap with a design nodding to a similar product from Chappell’s online store appeared on the official Harris-Walz campaign website. Call it the Stan Twitterfication of U.S. politics, a reimagining of the cult of personality.
Naturally, part of Stan Twitterfication is projecting entire identities onto people; hours after the announcement of Walz as Harris’ running mate, American activist David Hogg took to X to write, “Tim Walz 100000% stands at his doorstep when it’s raining and says ‘we needed this.’” The day prior, another X user wrote: “Walz strikes me as the type of VP candidate who runs on a platform of making sure everyone knows how to safely change their own spare tire, and I love him for that.”
Whether or not these sentiments are rooted in the reality of Walz’s character is irrelevant. What’s interesting – maybe even damning – is that the kneejerk reaction is to romanticize Walz as a sympathetic and easily understood character rather than assessing his record as a public servant. It’s not that far removed from conversations around pop musicians centering their likability and relatability over their musical, vocal and instrumental prowess. But that’s the name of the game now – and the Harris campaign is smartly leaning into it. From the concept of a politician being “someone you can knock back a few beers with” to the proliferation of online political memes post-2016, this has long been the case in politics. In this election, the scale has increased and feels uniquely defined by and catered to Gen Z for the very first time.
As the Harris-Walz ticket gears up for the home stretch of the 2024 election cycle, they’ll likely continue their pop music-informed strategy. It’s not a bad choice, but it’s one they should exercise with caution – especially because they’ve already selected songs that could have invited a bit more controversy than they have so far. Everyone wants a piece of Brat, but it’s objectively mind-boggling to watch the presidential campaign for a major American political party adopt the aesthetic of a British artist’s coke-positive album. Chappell Roan is the year’s breakout pop star, but using her music for the campaign’s TikTok was a bold choice considering Roan declined an invitation to perform at the White House’s Pride celebration this year, citing her disapproval of the administration’s stance on the conflict in Gaza and transgender rights.
In that vein, “Freedom” is a pitch-perfect anthem on paper, but in the context of both Beyoncé’s and Lamar’s respective silence on global Black liberation, as it relates to Gaza, it rings a bit hollow. There’s also the matter of Lamar’s unavoidably massive “Not Like Us” — which Harris spoofed during a BET Awards commercial preceding her candidacy (June 30) — a Drake diss that has thrust conversations around regionality, race, ethnicity and cultural preservation into the spotlight, as Harris’ own race has become the subject of asinine questioning by her opponents.
If they intend to continue down this path, the Harris-Walz team needs to have their finger on the cultural pulse, but they can’t make it too obvious that they do – that’s when the pandering becomes unbearable. However the Democratic ticket proceeds with this race, their moves for the next few months are sure to further solidify the fact that politics is the new pop music. Ultimately, they’ll likely have to maneuver this campaign like a pop album rollout to secure the “Femininomenon” that they’re promising.
In April, rising pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan released “Good Luck, Babe!”, a sleek, synthy single with nonchalant verses and an emphatically dismissive chorus. Her album Midwest Princess had failed to crack the Billboard 200 when it came out the year before, but “Good Luck, Babe!” immediately showed signs of commercial promise, handily out-streaming previous tracks. It chugged onto the Billboard Hot 100, starting at No. 77, and eleven weeks later, with some coaxing, made it all the way to the top 10.
A version of this path used to be commonplace: It took time, usually months, to propel a single into the top 10. Today, however, it’s hard to find a trajectory like Chappell Roan’s; as of the third week of July, 75% of this year’s top 10 hits have debuted in the top 10. Launching a single has become more like launching a new album, or even a new movie — focus on pre-release marketing, live and die by first-week results.
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This has its advantages. Because so much of pre-release marketing involves teasing songs on social media, artists and labels often know how the public feels about a track before it comes out, so they can spend promotional dollars more efficiently. And unlike movies, songs are relatively cheap to make, so if teasing one fails to arouse interest, an artist can cut bait quickly, or even trash a track and not bother to put it out.
“The industry used to front-load any strategy before they had the confidence that it’s working,” says Nick Bobetsky, who manages Chappell Roan. “You don’t have to do that now.”
But there’s a potential downside, too. Executives say that many artists and labels are often unwilling, or unable, to execute the sort of monthslong campaigns that create hits over time — think Latto’s “Big Energy,” Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” or Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season,” which all took more than 20 weeks to climb the chart and peak in the top 10.
“If you don’t have a song react immediately, if it doesn’t stream an extraordinary amount right away, everyone’s like, ‘It’s not working,’” says J Grand, a former major label A&R who owns the label 88 Classic. “In the same way we need to be patient building artists, we’ve got to be patient with songs we really believe in.”
Twenty-five years ago, it was nearly impossible for a song to explode off the starting line and debut in the Hot 100’s top 10. Chart position was determined by airplay, which usually grew as radio stations took time to gauge the success of a song in their market, and single sales, which often rose in conjunction with airplay and TV appearances and the release of a music video.
Back in 2000, an average top 10 hit took 11.6 weeks — nearly three months — to reach its peak. “Both the flow of information was slow and purchasing was slow,” says Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify employee and the author of You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song: How Streaming Changes Music. “It took a while for anybody to know that a thing was happening, and then it’d be a while before they worked up the enthusiasm to actually go to a record store and buy whatever it was.”
Now, of course, social media ensures that news travels instantly, and the widespread adoption of streaming means that new music is just a click or two away. But an eight- or nine-week climb up the chart was routine until around 2018.
Planning, funding and executing that climb was the chief function of the record labels. “Back then, it was really governed by whether you went to radio, whether you were on TV, whether you had a big press story, or even whether your release was available at a store for people to buy,” says John Fleckenstein, COO at RCA Records.
Labels still have these tools at their disposal — RCA took Latto’s “Big Energy” to radio earlier than expected, according to Fleckenstein, after seeing listeners “were skewing a little older than they had on Latto’s previous releases.” “We don’t feel that growing records is a lost art,” he adds. Radio tends to play a crucial role in this process because stations typically add songs, and then play them more frequently, as they see them build, rather than immediately throwing a single into heavy rotation.
But radio doesn’t drive as much music discovery as it used to, especially for young people, and TV viewership is way down; on top of that, driving listeners to a song is considerably harder in a climate where they have seemingly infinite choice.
So the marketing process starts earlier, usually weeks before a track is released, and sometimes before the track is even finished. “You try to get people’s anticipation up for that song to come out,” Fleckenstein says. Otherwise, it’s just another track adrift in “a sea of content.”
The biggest stars seem to generate anticipation simply by existing. And since multimetric charts incorporate streams, acts like Taylor Swift or Drake routinely enjoy multiple top 10 debuts on the Hot 100 whenever they release a new full-length; Swift has single-handedly occupied the whole top 10. (Before streaming, there was no way of measuring on-demand listening after the purchase of an album, constraining the amount of songs likely to appear on the Hot 100, particularly simultaneously.)
Lesser known acts typically build excitement by previewing a track on short-form video platforms and encouraging fans to pre-save it, so they’ll listen the instant it arrives. The Swedish singer Benjamin Ingrosso shared snippets of “Look Who’s Laughing Now” 32 times across TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts over five weeks before releasing the track in June. “The entire intention was to collect pre-saves,” says Tim Collins, the singer’s manager. “The whole f–king country knew the song before it came out,” the single’s release date was moved up because fans were clamoring for it on TikTok, and it debuted at No. 1 on the Sweden Songs chart.
In the old regime, labels would pick singles ahead of time and spend lavishly to support those tracks, but they were flying blind, with no indication of how listeners felt about the song. Now that’s unnecessary. “If you throw up a brick, you’re probably not going to get the marketing that you want for your project,” Grand says.
“Every song has to prove itself,” Bobetsky adds. “And with every new phase, the artist, in a lot of ways, has to re-prove themselves.” This can be mentally taxing — an artist’s position is never safe — and cruelly Darwinian.
This landscape may also foster a fickle approach to promotion. “Artists who have had a viral moment and leaned into it can be afraid to work other songs that don’t instantly go viral,” says Ethan Curtis, founder and CEO of PushPlay, a management company and marketing agency.
“They think, ‘It didn’t have the sauce, it’s not that good,'” he explains. But “you might hit a nerve [on TikTok] because there’s a certain topic that’s trending that day, and if you posted that video yesterday, it wouldn’t have gone.”
Persistence paid off for one of Curtis’ management clients, the singer JVKE, whose song “Golden Hour” took 22 weeks to peak in the top 10 early in 2023. “A handful” of initial posts with the track sank like a stone, according to Curtis. Some teams might have moved on.
But then JVKE generated excitement on TikTok with a clip where he played the song for his childhood piano teacher. After a few more videos in this vein, interest on the app started flagging, so JVKE’s team encouraged other pianists to post their own clips playing the song “to showcase their chops.”
They made more than two dozen remixes of the single as well – picking collaborators that would expand the song’s geographical reach – then booked JVKE an appearance on The Tonight Show, and paid to push the track to radio. Later, they created their own TikTok fan pages to “repurpose and repost all the content we and others had made,” Curtis says, which “extend[ed] the momentum just long enough to break into the top 10.”
Would other singles benefit from the same sort of patient, sustained, multi-prong push over several months? “I don’t think you should ever give up on a song,” Bobetsky says. Still, he allows, “If you do justice to the song’s promotion and exposure, and it’s not sticky, then trying to keep amplifying it is pretending that we know better than the public.”
On a 95-degree day in late July, Channel Tres shows up on Zoom from his place is Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood wearing a tank top and intermittently drinking from a large water bottle.
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It’s been a few weeks since the artist released his debut album, Head Rush, 17 tracks that package myriad elements of Tres’ psyche — “my love life, dealing with loss, dealing with the transition when my dreams become reality” — into a sophisticated, swaggy amalgamation of hip-hop, R&B and electronic music that tracks his rise from his native Compton to big tours and big festival stages.
“Now I’m somebody people will recognize sometimes,” he says. “I’m not just a bedroom musician anymore. I’m doing things. It was like, ‘I have all these things going on, and I only have this one brain to process it. That was the meaning of the title, Head Rush. It was something that could be euphoric, but it’s also something that can be a headache.”
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This characteristic depth is balanced by a lot of output that’s just purely danceable. This fall, Tres will go on a 15-date tour with Kaytanada for shows he predicts will be “the biggest dance parties of the year.” He’s also currently working on dance music that he’s testing out at DJ sets and afterhours. And the reach is real: When he recently went back to Compton to hang out on the set of Kenrick Lamar’s “Not LIke Us” video, he says “a lot of people came up to me like, ‘Yo man, we love what you’re doing. We’ve gotten into house music.’ I would never think going back home that I’d hear this from people. Stuff like that inspires me.”
Ahead of his performance at HARD Summer in Los Angeles this weekend, Tres talks about what he’s done, what he still wants to achieve and the times he’s just been able to enjoy the moment.
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It’s been a month since your album came out. What has this time been like for you?
The first two weeks were like hell, because I was reading everything. I would search my name on Twitter and read everything; I was reading Reddit, just engulfing myself in the positive and negative feedback. It was a lot for me, but I felt like it was important to get both sides of criticism, just because I want to teach myself how to take whatever it is and be okay with it.
That sounds intense.
I didn’t want to feed into all the positive feedback and fill my head up with all positive things, thinking I’m the shit when I still have things to work on. Then I wanted to also look at the negatives so I could build strength to have thicker skin so it won’t affect me as much. Because the more you get into this, you realize it’s just going to be all types of comments coming at you. I always safeguarded myself from that, but this time, I was like, “No, I’m going to engage.”
Then after that two weeks, I stopped. I was like, “Okay, cool. I’m going to go back to therapy, and instead of bi-weekly make it once a week.” [Laughs.] Then I just got really excited about the future. I was like, “Wow, I really put a chapter of my life into 17 songs and released it, and it feels so good.” I’m excited to take what I learned from this process to inform the next body of work.
Were able to shake off the best and worst things you read about yourself?
Yeah. I learned how to be like, “This is how I feel. I know what I was saying right here. I know how I freaked the production right here and what that means to me as a producer.” After it was all said and done, I was like, “Oh, I’m only in competition with me.” I get to do something I’m passionate about, and it serves me, and it serves my creative juices and the the child in me, but it also pays the bills. So wow, look at the life that I get to live.
You mentioned being recognized and having your profile rise. The last time you spoke with Billboard, in 2023, you said were “ready for big s–t… ready for the big stage type of energy.” Do you feel like you’ve achieved that with this album?
No, I don’t feel like I’ve achieved that. But I feel like I achieved what this album was supposed to achieve for me. I didn’t get to where I want to go with this album, but I’m thankful I did it, because there’s more stories to be told, and I want to leave a trail of [output.] Whenever that moment comes, cool. I feel successful already, but I know there’s places I want to go.
What places are those?
I still want to play Glastonbury. I still want to headline Coachella. There are certain things that I want automatic, like I want to get Tonight Show automatically. I want more excitement behind things I’m doing, but I’m not in a rush for that. I know those things come with the more work I put in.
Have there been moments when you’ve felt like you were getting exactly what you wanted or dreamed of?
I had an album release party for my project and Thundercat showed up, Ty Dolla $ign showed up, Kaytranada showed up, Estelle, Ravyn Lenae. I was wondering if they’re all going to show up. I was like, “Let me just go for the fans and give this body of work the appreciation it needs.” Then everybody showed up. We all listened to the album, then afterwards, everybody I mentioned came on stage, and I was able to play my favorite songs with them and vibe with the crowd. I was so full of love. I was like, “This is what it is. It’s about community.”
These are people I’ve looked up to since like, 2010, and now some of them I can call friends and collaborators. And my mom was there, my aunt, my grandma came. Everything clicked. At that point, nothing mattered — like the successes I want, or my personal ambitions. For my cousins or other people from L.A. that knew me before to see where I’ve gotten to now, that brought a lot of gratitude.
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Maybe this is an unfair question since you just released your album, but are you working on music right now?
I’ve already been working on new music. I’ve been finding new sounds. With Head Rush, I needed to rap more and incorporate some of my hip-hop roots and R&B roots. It’s an electronic album, but it’s not the dance album I wanted to make. It’s more of a album of self -expression, but I put some dance songs in there that are going to be good to perform. But I still have a really crazy electronic dance project I want to make.
Ooh. Tell me more.
I’ve been making dance music again. I mean, I never stopped, but I have a re-love for it again. I’ve been practicing DJing again, and I’ve been finding sounds and new BPMs. I’ve been doing more after parties and underground club parties and testing out records in my DJ sets. I’m getting hungry again about how I relate to dance music. I feel like how I felt when I first fell in love with it again, but in a new way, because I have more skills.
What are the best business decisions that you’ve made so far in your career?
I would say firing the team I started off with. I was very loyal in that situation, and I wasn’t necessarily getting the best work. When I came into the music, I’m thinking I’m working for my team, when in reality, I’m Channel Tres. I created Channel Tres. I’m in the studio creating the songs; I’m putting my life on the line going on these tours. So the people around me need to be held to a standard, and we need to be working together. Nobody’s working for anybody. Being able to let a situation go based on business and not being so loyal because you have emotional connections has been a really great thing for me. Because, yes, I’m very loyal. But sometimes that doesn’t mean that that person is doing the best work for you.
How have things shifted for you since you made that decision?
I feel like I have business partners now. We can look at Channel Tres objectively and make the best decisions for what we’re trying to get to. Because I am a musician and a creative, but I’m also well invested into the business of Channel and how we can further that. I know that I’m gonna show up, and I’m going to put the work in, and when I have somebody that’s working with me, and they have the same energy, I can sleep at night with that.
You’re going on tour with Kaytranada this summer. What’s that show going to look like?
When the Kaytranada tour offer came it was just like, “Wow, this is exactly what I need right now.” I was excited to go on tour by myself, but then I was like, “Nah, Kaytranada and I together on a tour is just going to be the biggest dance party of the year.”
[My team and I] are so locked in to capitalize on the things I’ve already done. My routine is better. Me and creative partner, we’ve gotten better. I’m open to learning, but I’m also coming with fire. I’ve been rehearsing, and I’m honing in on things I haven’t before. Even if it’s just a dance move I want to add to my repertoire. I’ve been watching a lot of Broadway shows like The Wiz. Now I’m walking around in the house, but I’m doing it in a Broadway fashion.
There aren’t that many dance artists that incorporate actual dancing into their live show. Why is that a compelling thing for you to do?
I’ve been dancing since I was a kid. In high school I was in ballet. I’m just an art kid. If I wasn’t doing music, I’d probably be doing a play. I have to make things interesting for myself. Also my first tour I ever went on was with Robyn. I got to watch her every night. The way she worked the crowd, you could feel the love and energy. There’s no mistake that the universe put me on that tour. I want to bring people that type of energy.
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Have you always been so able to freely express yourself, or has it taken a long time to get to this place of just following the impulses?
Naturally as a kid I was like that. But then I did a talent show in seventh grade, and I got booed and made fun of for the rest of the year. It shut me down for a while and I was reserved, and like “I’m just gonna be a producer and be in the background.”
What changed?
Something happened when I was in college. I was a drama minor. I started learning how to act and then kind of felt the energy again. I don’t live where I grew up anymore. I’m not the person that all those people knew anymore.
I experienced house music and dance music and was like, “There’s no time to be precious about this. I’m going get a choreographer. I’m going start taking classes. I’m going to practice and start being the person I want to be. Fuck it. There’s just no time to be cool. If it falls through the floor, it falls through the floor, but I’m just going to put myself out there, because you only get one life.” And it worked.
What was the seventh grade talent show performance?
I grew up in church, that’s how I got good at instruments. I grew up with my great grandparents, so I was wearing loafers and slacks. So I just was like, “I’m gonna bring this energy to school, and it’s gonna be good.” Me and my friend wrote a gospel song. I sang it. I was dancing, and it was just a sea of laughter.
That’s tough.
Because it wasn’t cool to be like that. I’m going to school in Compton. Either you play sports, or you’re a gangbanger. That shit wasn’t cool.
Well, if they could see you now.
They do.
Rakim has been your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper since he and Eric B dropped Paid in Full in 1987. Credited with shifting the way rappers rap, he is often recognized as the inventor of “flow,” as those who came before him rapped with a more flat-footed rhyming cadence. Rakim attacked tracks like Usain Bolt, and his flow has been compared to the way Thelonious Monk played the piano or how John Coltrane manipulated the saxophone.
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However, not too many fans are aware that Rakim is also a producer. For G.O.D’s Network (REB7RTH), his first album since 2009’s The Seventh Seal, the God MC crafted every beat for every song. “This is the first time I’m really showcasing myself as a producer,” he says over the phone. “I always produced tracks. I did a lot of the Eric B & Rakim music, but never really let that be known.”
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Having grown up in a musical family (his aunt was legendary actress and singer Ruth Brown), Rakim always dug for samples — and most notably produced “Juice (Know the Ledge)” from the Juice soundtrack. That’s him playing the live drums on there, and it was him who looped the bassline from Nat Adderley’s “Rise, Sally Rise.”
His new seven-track album is packed with features from rappers new and old, alive and gone. There are verses from the late Nipsey Hussle and Fred the Godson. He has Chino XL and Canibus on the same song. Planet Asia and B.G. make appearances. East Coast underground mainstays Hus Kingpin and 38 Spesh contributed a few bars — as did Wu-Tang Killa Bees Masta Killa, Method Man and La the Darkman.
Rakim talked with Billboard about how this all came together, why he wanted to feature his production skills, the current state of the rap game, and much more. Check out our interview below.
This is your first album since 2009. What inspired you to make this album?
I think the time was just right. The stars finally aligned for me, and I took advantage. There were a couple of label situations that I was trying to get done. Just a deal that I felt was worth my worth. Sometimes things don’t happen the way they should, and I’m not the one to settle. I’ve been in the game for a long time, so my deal isn’t gonna be like an up-and-coming new artist’s deal would be. Artists that have been here for a while, we have to understand our worth, otherwise, everybody else’s goes down. Our art reflects who we are. I was actually working on a project before I started the one I’m putting out now. Me and Jazzy Jeff were doing an album, and I had a song on it called “Reborn.”
So, I feel like now it’s a little easier for artists such as yourself to do things independently because you have the legacy and the fanbase already.
It’s a blessing. You don’t have to conform to what’s going on. If you’ve got a fanbase, do what you’re supposed to do, and they’ll support you.
Someone that was a big proponent of that and helped shift things into where we’re at now is Nipsey Hussle. I noticed that you got a verse from him. How did that come together? Is that a verse that the family let you use in the stash? Or was that something that you and him were working on before he passed? You got Fred the Godson on there, too.
Fred, DMX. I’ve got a Prodigy on there as well. It was an honor to be able to salute those brothers and showcase their work again. My man, Matt Markoff (who served as A&R/executive producer) has so much passion for the project. He went around to the right people and let them put their ear to the project, and was able to get some verses from some of these heavyweight legends.
It’s funny, man — he was going out, making moves and would send me the track back with the verse on it and surprise me. The whole project put a lot of things in perspective for me. The love that I was gettin’ from the artists really let me know who I am. I’m a humble person.
Come on, man, come on. I get it, but it’s like, if Rakim wants a verse from you… I can’t imagine anybody giving you a hard time.
[Laughs.] That’s that love, man, word. When they came back with the finished project, not only did they do their thing, but a lot of them saluted me in a verse — which was humblin’ again. I’m so glad that we did it and got it out, and it’s also a chance for me to showcase my production skills and my DJ skills. I’m kind of enjoying this from a different point of view by being able to produce and mold the project together.
I was gonna ask — I noticed on one of the tracks you say, “Hold up, let me see if I get the scratch right.” So, that’s you scratching on the record?
Yeah, I did all the scratching on the whole project… I DJ’d when I started rhyming when I was young. I used to DJ too. I always loved that element as well. So, it was fun to showcase all of that on this project.
Were those the Kid Wizard days?
Yeah [Laughs.]
I know your thing with Dre didn’t really work out, but the song “Now Is the Time” has a West Coast sound to it. Did you pick up any production tips from working with him?
There were so many lessons and different angles to the game that I learned from Dre. I had a front-row seat to watch the process of producing a track. His energy and passion is unmatched. It made me get back on my grind after seeing his process. I was like, ‘”eah, I’m not applying myself the way I should.” Big up to the Doc, though. Yeah, Dre, I ain’t say nothin’, man. Imma holla at you. I ain’t tell ’em about what we’re working on.
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With you and Eric changing everything with Paid in Full, how do you feel about the way rap has evolved?
I remember when I told my mother that I’ve been going to the studio and that they asked me to sign out of school to go on tour — which was bizarre. I’m sitting there explaining this to my moms and she says, “So, you giving up football? How do you know if this rap thing is gonna last?” Football was my dream, but that stuck in my head.
Mom’s word is golden, but I had that passion. It was something that scared me, but it also kept me focused. I come from that era when not only my mom, but a lot of people didn’t think that hip-hop would last. So, to see it come from where it came from and to see where it’s at now is a blessing. Hip-hop is the biggest genre in music right now. Incredible.
People ask you how you came up with your style because you changed how people rap. You incorporated jazz elements into your rhyme pattern. How does Rakim feel listening to Future, listening to a Young Thug, listening to some of these cats where they talk street sh—t, but it’s not in the traditional 16 bars, they’re singing it, almost like using their voices as instruments?
It’s more R&B/hip-hop, than what I’m used to hip-hop being. But we watched it go from being lyrical to it being what they call “a vibe.” As long as it’s a vibe, they rock to it. It’s a tough situation, when the powers that be morphed it into it being the way it is. There’s no reason Future shouldn’t be able to put out the music that he loves doing and there’s no reason underground artists that love making that grimy boom-bap shouldn’t be able to make what they love. We let the powers that be separate hip-hop and made us work against each other.
We gotta break the limitations down. We have to stop letting them separate hip-hop, and we gotta govern ourselves and take control of our genre. We can’t be where we are now and have no kind of structure, or no kind of understanding about what this is — because it’ll fall to the bottom just as quick as it got to the top.
That’s why the Internet is important because all of this can co-exist now. The major label system isn’t as necessary as before. You can put this album on Bandcamp and there’s going to be a market for it.
And that’s what’s beautiful. We can stick to our guns and make the music that we love making. If you have a fanbase, cater to your fanbase, otherwise, you gonna drift off and you won’t be looking for fans that aren’t gonna know who you are, what you are, or what you do because you changed up on them. It’s important that we take advantage of the platform now. There aren’t any parameters that we have to follow or no cookie cutter that we got to use to get radio play to be relevant.
Make what you love. That’ll help the scale — because right now, the majority rules, and the majority seems to be closer to the R&B/hip-hop side. We need more people to stick to their guns to even that scale out.
How closely have you paid attention to the Drake and Kendrick thing? Because Drake is one of those artists that gets a knock for being an R&B dude, even though he’s battle-tested. He represents the mainstream and Kendrick represents the genre in a more traditional sense to most rap fans.
I think that it was important, because these brothers are at the top of the game, and revered hip-hop. You know, a lot of people in that position won’t accept no challenge, because they got too much to lose. So, it was dope that these brothers put the mainstream success down and said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
The battle put a lot of things in perspective — because it showed the difference between real hip-hop and mainstream hip-hop. Younger artists now know that there’s a difference. A lot of them didn’t even understand that. They just listened to the majority, not knowing that a lot of people don’t categorize what they were hearing as real hip-hop. The battle was very needed for the genre. I tip my hat to them brothers. Let’s just hope that it stays to the music.
To the younger artists out there, do a little history, man, just like anything else. You want to learn about your family history, or your nationality’s history? Research it. Researching hip-hop is one of the illest things you can do. If you find out that your family came from great people and did great things, you’re gonna look at life a little differently. And when you look back at hip-hop and see where it came from and what this thing is about, it’ll give you a better understanding of what these brothers did. It’ll also make you feel a little better about what you represent.
A lot of hit rap records toe the line of pop and R&B these days, and fans are more forgiving about ghostwriters when it comes to some of those songs. I wanted to broach that subject with you because ghostwriting was considered a cardinal sin during your era.
It’s funny. Back early in the game around ’87-’88, people started asking me to write. The first person that asked me, I was so offended by that sh—t. That’s almost like being at practice and this kid is crossing you over like f–king crazy, man. You know what I mean? You’re not gonna go over there and be like, “My man, show me how to do that crossover.” I’m not giving him the golden pen. Like really, man? “Nah. I’m not writing this for you. You crazy?” Not the thought of having a ghostwriter but even me ghostwrite for someone else, you kiddin’?
So, to have a ghostwriter — from where I come from — that’s not acceptable. With singing it’s more complicated, it’s a little different. The singer still has to hit them notes and make it theirs, It’s much different for a singer because if you take a dope song from back in the day that was a hit and you give it to somebody else, it may not be a hit, because they can’t sing it right.
But for MCs, we salute them because of what they say. So, if your words aren’t from you, then how am I supposed to know what you wrote and what you didn’t write? And now, am I still supposed to respect you as an emcee knowing that you didn’t write everything? That’s complicated.
But, if the younger generation accepts that, then, you know, that’s on them. Where I come from, we don’t really respect that. I don’t respect that. Everything I ever said that was a verse, I wrote. I might have let somebody write a hook, or somebody might have sent me a song with a hook on it, but I pride myself on what I do and how I did it. I can’t see somebody else writing my rhymes and feeling like I’m that dude. My man helped me be that dude. I can’t even do that; I wouldn’t even feel right. I can’t even say thank you if somebody came up and was like, “Yo, that last song you did? Bananas.” I’ll feel funny as hell standing there. I would have to say, “You know what, bruh? I didn’t write that.” I can’t front.
I peeped that you have Hus Kingpin and 38 Spesh on the album. How did that come about? Were you fans of theirs? I know Hus is from Long Island. I felt like that was ill because it’s like you’re bridging the gap.
That’s what’s so dope about being able to do this project. We got MCs from every part of the United States. I always keep my ear to the street. From Smack URL to the underground scene, that’s what keeps hip-hop alive and well. I feel good when I see emcees spittin’ like that. I salute them young brothers that’s really wantin’ to be lyrical, pushin’ the envelope and refusing to say, ‘Aight, I’m just gonna make a quick radio song, so I can get out there.’ A lot of these brothers could’ve been tried to do that, but that ain’t where their heart is. They know real MCing and real hip-hop exists and anything outside the line is unacceptable.
Yeah, man, and it’s funny because this has kind of been the theme throughout this interview is just how everything has changed. Before, if you made this album, you would more than likely have had to chase radio play. You don’t have to chase the radio anymore.
I think we made a statement with the project. Straight hip-hop orientated and wasn’t looking to make radio-friendly songs or follow any kind of mold. Everybody did what they love. From watching the underground scene to the URL circuit with cats like Charlie Clips, Goodz — we need to break the walls down and merge all this together. It can’t do nothing but make the genre better. It’s gonna make rappers get in they bag and take their craft seriously.
You gotta show them that underbelly. It’s like when you pick up a log in the woods, and there’s like a whole universe under there.
We talkin’ on a hip-hop level. I won’t even say “street.” You gotta go to the trenches to really understand. I laugh when they try to discover things on Earth, there’s just a few places they don’t go. For one, they don’t go deep in the water and two, they don’t go to the swamps; it’s too dirty for them. It’s the same thing with the hood, they don’t wanna go to the hood; it’s too dirty for ’em. But you ain’t gonna know about too many things on the planet and how things work if you don’t go to the swamps, or you don’t go underwater. You’re on the surface thinking you know what’s going on. You go deep underwater, and you see something swim over and it turns into the thing it just landed on. It ain’t regular down there. There’s some different s—t going on down there.
You said that you’re humble, but you’re also aware that you’re on top of everybody’s “Best Rapper” list. What keeps you motivated to make music?
I think that alone. The expectations that I not only give myself, but what the people give me. I use that as fuel. I would rather people expect me to succeed than to expect me to fail. I gotta keep doing it at a higher rate because that’s what they expect from me. I just try to use it to help me rather than stagnate me.
So, we can expect more from you. You’re going to do more self-produced stuff, I’m assuming.
Yes, sir. I’m getting confident with my tracks. I gotta a lot of tracks over here. I just been storing the right time. I’m working on a solo Rakim joint and working on a couple other projects as well. So, I’m just looking forward to just staying in the studio. I took the year off from touring just so I could get studio work done. Hopefully, you hear a lot of new music from Rakim.