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Rich Homie Quan — born Dequantes Lamar — reportedly died Thursday (Sept. 5) at 34 years old. The cause of the Atlanta rapper’s death remains unknown.
TMZ first confirmed the news, citing family and the Fulton County Morgue, and Rolling Stone confirmed with a family member. Billboard has reached out to Quan’s manager and the Fulton County Morgue for confirmation.
Before the news reports, though, an abundance of artists paid tribute to Quan on social media, with Boosie Badazz, Jacquees and more sending their condolences to the “Type of Way” rapper.
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Boosie was one of the first to deliver the news on X. “JUST GOT WORD @RichHomieQuan JUST [DIED]. JUST TALK TO WUAN THE OTHER DAY,” he wrote. “JUST TALKED TO YOU BRA #tipQUAN Never go forget yo smile n the way talked n of course yo music.”
Jacquees, who has been a close collaborator of Rich Homie Quan’s for the last decade, wrote on X: “Rest in peace my brother Rich Homie Quan. I Love you for life. #Richgang,” he shared alongside a photo with Quan.
Fellow ATLien Playboi Carti also posted clips and photos to his Instagram Story on Thursday of Quan and Young Thug.
Quavo added in photos of the Migos with RHQ and Thugger to his IG Story and emotionally wrote in tribute to his late nephew TakeOff and Quan: “May god be with US never saw this as part of our journey.”
Rich Homie Quan emerged alongside Young Thug as part of a tidal wave that cemented Atlanta as the rap capital of the world in the mid-2010s. He made a splash with his debut on the charts in 2013 when his “Type of Way” anthem peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Quan netted a pair of top 20 Hot 100 wins with his assists on platinum records like YG’s “My Hitta” (No. 19) featuring Jeezy and Rich Gang’s ubiquitous “Lifestyle” (No. 16) with Thugger, which has earned 926.8 million on-demand official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
RHQ earned his solo peak on the Hot 100 with “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh).” The smooth Nitti-produced banger hit No. 12 on the chart in July 2015 and has accumulated 608 million on-demand official U.S. streams, per Luminate.
Quan returned to the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart this week thanks to his guest appearance on Travis Scott’s “Mamacita,” which hit No. 26 after being re-released to streaming for the first time in celebration of the 10th anniversary of La Flame’s 2014 Days Before Rodeo mixtape.
Motown Records came calling and inked Rich Homie Quan to a deal in 2017, where he released his Back to the Basics mixtape (No. 84 Billboard 200) and followed up with his Rich As in Spirit debut album (No. 32 Billboard 200) in 2018.
To date, according to Luminate, Quan’s catalog has compiled 3.34 billion on-demand official U.S. streams. More recently, he independently released singles such as “Ah’chi” with 2 Chainz and “Authentic” earlier in 2024. His last project came with Family & Mula – Reloaded in 2022 via Rich Homie Entertainment.
Jack Harlow recruited RHQ to perform at his debut Gazebo Festival, where he took the stage in Louisville back in May.
Find more tributes to Quan below.
JUST TALKED TO YOU BRA 😓 #tipQUAN Never go forget yo smile n the way talked n of course yo music 💯— Boosie BadAzz (@BOOSIEOFFICIAL) September 5, 2024
WE GOT SOME GOOD ASS MEMORIES TOGETHER N THAT GO ALWAYS BRING A SMILE TO MY FACE #restupquan WE WAS COOKING UP SOME SHIT TOO 🤘🏾— Boosie BadAzz (@BOOSIEOFFICIAL) September 5, 2024
Lady Gaga has nothing but applause for her fellow ladies in pop, from Taylor Swift to Kesha, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish. In her Vogue cover story published Thursday (Sept. 5), the 38-year-old superstar got emotional while talking about all five of the aforementioned female singer-songwriters. “I mean, I really love them,” she […]
Drake continues to let streamers premiere and preview new songs to their vast audience, a practice he’s been using since leaking the diss record “Push Ups” through DJ Akademiks. This time around, he let Adin Ross play a new song with Chicago rapper Lil Durk called “Discontinuing Wockhardt,” named after the Indian pharmaceutical company known […]
Peso Pluma is currently on the North American leg of his 2024 Éxodo Tour that will officially wrap up on Oct. 11 in Montville, Calif. after making pit stops in more than 35 cities. Produced by Live Nation, the música Mexicana star kicked off his trek on May 26 at the Sueños Festival in Chicago […]
While Sabrina Carpenter is one of the biggest pop stars of the moment, even she has gotten starstruck. The singer sat down for a recent interview with W Magazine, where she revealed a particularly monumental moment of her pre-teen years. “Oh god—I had a really dangerous Zac Efron phase, when he was in Hairspray,” she told […]
Maria Becerra took to social media on Sept. 5 to share a personal update with her millions of followers. Posting a photo of herself in a hospital setting and holding hands with her partner J Rei, also a recording artist, the Argentine hitmaker wrote, “Yesterday I had to undergo surgery because I was having an […]
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.
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This week: The Marias score a breakout hit with help from a superstar cosign, Bossman Dlow makes approximately his 73rd Trending Up appearance of 2024 and Surf Curse are back with another new hit from the decade prior.
Marias Put Internet on “Notice” With Help From Billie Eilish
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It’s been one of the feel-good stories about one of the feel-bad hits of the year. indie-pop favorites The Marias, who song in both English and Spanish and previously made the Hot 100 in 2022 as guests on the dreamy “Otro Atardecer” from Bad Bunny’s blockbuster Un Verano Sin Ti album, have seen their “No One Noticed” slowly get massive on TikTok over the past few months, with audiences finding the sighing summer-bummer anthem (especially the “Come on, don’t leave me it can’t be that easy, babe/If you believe me I guess I’ll get on a plane” breakdown section) invaluable in soundtracking their seasonal sadness. Among the more high-profile of those fans: alt-pop superstar Billie Eilish, whose July 17 posting on her IG stories of her singing along to the song helped accelerate its viral velocity.
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For the chart week ending July 18, the song scored 1.5 million official on-demand streams, according to Luminate. But following the Eilish share, the song has grown between 10 and 30 percent in streams in each of the six weeks since — reaching 4.7 million for the week ending Aug. 29, a 223% gain in total. The song has since climbed to No. 12 on Billboard‘s Hot Rock Songs chart and even jumps 13-6 on this week’s Bubbling Under Hot 100, getting that much closer to joining the four still-charting hits from Billie’s own Hit Me Hard and Soft on the Hot 100 proper. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Bossman Dlow Adds Another Hit to His Arsenal with Luh Tyler’s “2 Slippery”
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Another week, another hit for Bossman Dlow, one of 2024’s biggest breakout stars. The Florida rapper has previously appeared in the column this year, and he’s back again as the featured artist on “2 Slippery,” a Luh Tyler song that’s picking up steam on streaming.
According to Luminate, “2 Slippery” earned over 4.5 million streams during the week of Aug. 23-29. That marks a whopping 82% increase from a month ago (July 25-Aug. 1), during which the song pulled around 2.48 million streams. Streams for “2 Slippery” have increased ebery week for the past month, with the biggest increase coming last week. That 4.5 million figure was a 42.3% increase from the 3.17 million streams the song pulled the week prior (Aug. 16-22).
TikTok has unsurprisingly been the song’s biggest source of traction. A trend giving recognition to the “big dawgs” among us – more specifically, men whose height starts with a “6” and weight starts with a “2.” Users who fit that description film themselves mouthing these lyrics from Bossman Dlow’s verse: “Tired of fuckin’ with them lames, come fuck with some bosses, baby/ She don’t want no puppy, she want a big dog.” On TikTok, the official “2 Slippery” sound boasts over 38,200 posts, with other popular clips including footage of NBA star Anthony Edwards jamming to Dlow’s music, workout videos, and strolling videos from various Black Greek letter organizations.
“2 Slippery” is the latest single from Luh Tyler’s new Mr. Skii LP, which recently entered the Billboard 200 at No. 197, marking his first appearance on the chart. — KYLE DENIS
A Surf Blessing and a Surf Curse: Band Scores Second Viral Hit With Second Five-Plus-Year-Old Song
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Indie surf rockers Surf Curse first made national noise in 2020, when their song “Freaks” became one of the most popular sounds on TikTok during the early days of the COVID pandemic. By that point, the song was already nearly a decade old — having originally been released on their 2013 album Buds — and despite signing to major label Atlantic in 2021, subsequent 2022 LP Magic Hour failed to produce another streaming hit near the level of “Freaks.” In 2024, however, the band finally has a second hit on its hands — and of course, it’s once again from the pre-pandemic era.
“Disco” is a little newer than “Freaks” was when it took off, at least, having originally dropped in 2019 as lead single to the band’s third album Heaven Surrounds You. But the song has really taken off in the past month, once again thanks to TikTok, where “Disco” has (appropriately) caught on as a dance challenge. No mirrorballs or bell bottoms needed for this one, however: Users instead use the song’s new-wavey chorus to soundtrack clips of them and a partner throwing their arms in different directions in tandem to the refrain’s staccato first half, then doing a kind of twist together as the full groove kicks in, before repeating the steps.
The challenge has helped “Disco” explode on streaming, as the single pulled 2.8 official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending Aug. 29 — up 351% from three weeks earlier. The band can at least take heart now that it’s not too late for one of the cuts from Magic Hour to have a big moment of its own; they may just have to wait for the early 2030s. — AU
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the Billboard Hot 100 dated Sept. 14, we look at a race that’s been dominated by one song for about two months now – and what songs, if any, may be closing the gap in the near future.
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Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (American Dogwood/EMPIRE/Magnolia Music): Well, he narrowly lost out on Billboard’s official Song of the Summer to Post Malone and Morgan Wallen with “I Had Some Help” — another week or two and that race might’ve gotten really interesting – but Shaboozey can content himself that he’s held on at No. 1 for yet another week on the Hot 100. That’s eight weeks total now for “A Bar Song,” marking the longest run of 2024, and the longest for anyone since (again) Morgan Wallen, whose “Last Night” reigned for twice that long in 2023.
And it doesn’t appear to be fading much yet, either. It remains in the top five on Streaming Songs and atop atop both Digital Song Sales (12 weeks) and Radio Songs (five weeks). Its radio dominance also includes six weeks thus far atop the Country Airplay chart – one week away from passing Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” for the longest-reigning country career-establishing No. 1 (defined as an artist’s first Country Airplay entry as a lead artist, or their initial song promoted to country radio) in the chart’s history. As long as its cross-platform dominance holds strong — it’s also been No. 1 the past two weeks on Adult Pop Airplay – it will remain a contender for the top spot; another artist is gonna have to really rise up to take the crown from it.
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Sabrina Carpenter, “Taste,” “Please Please Please” & “Espresso” (Island): Could Sabrina Carpenter be the artist to do that? She certainly has strength in numbers going for her: Carpenter holds the Nos. 2-4 spots on the Hot 100 this week (dated Sept. 7), as her Short n’ Sweet album conquers the Billboard 200 albums chart. Long-running hits “Please Please Please” (No. 1 peak) and “Espresso” (No. 3) shoot back up to Nos. 3 and 4 on the chart, respectively, while just above them, the brand-new “Taste” bows at No. 2, thanks in large part to a spicy new music video with TV and film star Jenna Ortega as its co-lead.
All three should be strong performers for some time. “Taste” remains atop essentially all major streaming charts – including Apple Music’s real-time listing, Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA and YouTube’s Trending Music – over a week after its release, while “Please Please Please” climbs to No. 1 on Pop Airplay and “Espresso” holds at No. 3 on the overall Radio Songs chart. The biggest issue with Carpenter claiming the Hot 100’s No. 1 spot soon might be a kind of vote-splitting effect — particularly on the airwaves, where programmers simply have more songs of hers right now than they know what to do with.
“Taste” has momentum on its side, and is already nearing the 50-position Radio Songs listing. If it can pick up enough airplay before its streaming totals really start to drop, it could close the gap with “A Bar Song” before too long. In the meantime, an extra boost from Carpenter would help – like, say, with a memorable performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she’s scheduled to perform next Wednesday (Sept. 11).
Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile” (Streamline/Interscope/Atlantic/ICLG): Meanwhile, momentum has hardly sagged at all for the new Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars duet – which falls to No. 6 on the Hot 100 this week thanks to the Sabrina surge, but holds in the top three on both Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs, and is already bounding up Radio Songs, jumping 45-36 this week. And despite falling on Streaming Songs post-Short n’ Sweet, it’s actually up in total streams for the week, and even hits No. 1 on both Billboard Global charts.
Will the song be in position to take over the Hot 100’s top spot when the Gaga-starring Joker: Folie a Deux – which “Smile” does not appear to be officially connected to, but which it does have some spiritual kinship with via its title – hits American theaters in October? Will it even have to wait that long?
Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather” (Darkroom/Interscope/ICLG) & Chappell Roan, “Good Luck Babe” (KRA/Amusement/Island/Republic): Both of these now-long-running (if relatively slower-building) hits seem to have fallen behind in the race a bit, as they’ve been passed by the big-debuting “Taste” and “Smile.” But both are still definitely in the mix, with both holding in the top 10 on Streaming Songs, and “Birds” having reached the top 10 on Radio Songs, with “Babe” likely to join it there next week. The VMAs next week may also hold bump potential for both: Eilish is not performing but is a four-time nominee, while Roan is making her debut on the VMAs stage and is also up for four awards.
Ryan Castro and Nike have teamed up for a new collaboration, Billboard can exclusively announce. The Nike by Ryan Castro capsule — available for a limited time at Nike’s flagship stores in Bogotá and Medellín — features customized designs by “El Cantante del Ghetto,” including T-shirts, jackets and shoes with unique laces and tags accessories. […]
Amy Allen’s songwriting first appeared on Billboard’s charts in 2018 (via Selena Gomez’s “Back to You”) and now, six years later, she’s the No. 1 songwriter in the United States for the first time.
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Allen jumps from No. 14 to No. 1 on the latest Hot 100 Songwriters chart (dated Sept. 7), thanks to 13 songwriting credits on the Billboard Hot 100, including all 12 from Sabrina Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet, which opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Here’s a recap of all 13 of Allen’s songwriting credits on the latest Hot 100.
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Rank, Artist Billing, Title (co-songwriters in addition to Allen):
No. 2, Sabrina Carpenter, “Taste” (Sabrina Carpenter, John Ryan, Julia Michaels, Ian Kirkpatrick)
No. 3, Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please” (Carpenter, Jack Antonoff)
No. 4, Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso” (Carpenter, Julian Bunetta, Steph Jones)
No. 14, Sabrina Carpenter, “Bed Chem” (Carpenter, Ryan, Michaels, Kirkpatrick)
No. 15, Sabrina Carpenter, “Good Graces” (Carpenter, Ryan, Michaels, Bunetta)
No. 21, Sabrina Carpenter, “Sharpest Tool” (Carpenter, Antonoff)
No. 22, Sabrina Carpenter, “Juno” (Carpenter, Ryan)
No. 26, Sabrina Carpenter, “Coincidence” (Carpenter, Ryan, Michaels, Kirkpatrick)
No. 27, Sabrina Carpenter, “Slim Pickins” (Carpenter, Antonoff)
No. 32, Sabrina Carpenter, “Dumb & Poetic” (Carpenter, Ryan, Michaels)
No. 35, Sabrina Carpenter, “Don’t Smile” (Carpenter, Ryan, Bunetta, Jones)
No. 41, Sabrina Carpenter, “Lie To Girls” (Carpenter, Antonoff)
No. 51, Koe Wetzel & Jessie Murph, “High Road” (Koe Wetzel, Jessie Murph, Gabe Simon, Carrie Karpinen, Laura Veltz, Josh Serrato)
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Carpenter ranks at No. 2 on Hot 100 Songwriters; Allen claims No. 1 thanks to her additional credit on Koe Wetzel and Jessie Murph’s “High Road,” which ranks at No. 51 in its 12th week on the chart. Allen and Carpenter’s other writing collaborators, Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, place at Nos. 3 and 4 on Hot 100 Songwriters, respectively.
Allen is the sixth woman to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 Songwriters chart in 2024, after Tracy Chapman, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. Other than Allen and Chapman (who topped the chart thanks to Luke Combs’ cover of her song “Fast Car”), the only other woman in the chart’s six-year history to hit No. 1 that wasn’t the billed recording artist on the songs they’d written that sent them to No. 1 is Jessica Agombar, who spent five weeks at No. 1 in 2020, alongside David Stewart, thanks to their work on BTS’ No. 1 hit “Dynamite.”
Allen has co-written 34 Hot 100-charting songs, dating to Gomez’s “Back to You” (No. 18 peak). She followed that up with Halsey’s No. 1 “Without Me” in January 2019. Seven of her 34 hits have reached the top 10: “Without Me”; Harry Styles’ “Adore You” (No. 6) and “Matilda” (No. 9); Tate McRae’s “Greedy” (No. 3); and Carpenter’s “Espresso” (No. 3), “Please Please Please” (No. 1) and “Taste” (No. 2). She has also written songs recorded by Justin Bieber, Fletcher, Olivia Rodrigo and Justin Timberlake, among others.
Six of Allen’s songs have hit No. 1 on the Pop Airplay chart: “Without Me,” “Adore You,” “Greedy” and Carpenter’s “Feather,” “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.”
Allen has also released more than a dozen songs on streaming services as a lead recording artist, including four this year: “Girl With a Problem,” “Darkside,” “Even Forever” and “To Love Me.”
Billboard launched the Hot 100 Songwriters and Hot 100 Producers charts, as well as genre-specific rankings for country, rock & alternative, R&B/hip-hop, R&B, rap, Latin, Christian, gospel and dance/electronic, in June 2019, while alternative and hard rock joined in 2020, along with seasonal holiday rankings in 2022. The charts are based on total points accrued by a songwriter and producer, respectively, for each attributed song that appears on the Hot 100. The genre-based songwriter and producer charts follow the same methodology based on corresponding “Hot”-named genre charts. As with Billboard’s yearly recaps, multiple writers or producers split points for each song equally (and the dividing of points will lead to occasional ties on rankings).
The full Hot 100 Songwriters and Hot 100 Producers charts and full genre rankings can be found on Billboard.com.