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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Say My Name, Say My Name, Part 2
01:06:39
Chris Molanphy's deep dive on when rappers started singing, continued.
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Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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This episode contains explicit language welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode we tried to answer the question of when rapping and singing go blended into a single hip hop era musical genre. Turns out rap was flirting with melody from the beginning and right through the 80s and 90s, a string of emcees and singers were part of the hybridizing from Houdini to Slick Rick, Queen Latifah to PM Dong, Mary J. Blige to Bone Thugs in Harmony to the Fugees. We are now at the turn of the millennium as a new generation of rappers are starting to sing their bar and a rising rapper from Brooklyn and a teenage singer from Houston are about to join forces. Coming into 1999, Destiny's Child were not only going to push past their one hit wonder status, they were going to obliterate the sophomore slump with their second album, the Writings on the Wall. There was no Wyclef Jean backing them up this time, just a fleet of bangers, all infused sass and hip hop attitude. It all led off with the smash Bills Bills Bills, a jam that dressed down a scrub unable to pay his own way. Powered by syncopated 4 part harmonies that sounded like equal parts girl group and rap crew, Bills Bills Bills rose to number one on the Hot 100 in just five weeks, breaking through in the competitive summer of 1999 between hits by Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera. From their inception in the early 90s when the group was known as Girls Time and wrapped their way onto to TV's Star Search. It's time to get bit died yeah be dropped. Destiny's Child had been trying to fuse Beyonce's potent R& B singing to hip hop rhythms. The Writings on the Wall finally made good on this bespoke formula. The album, which would go on to sell 8 million copies in America alone, built on the legacy of prior 90s girl groups from En Vogue to TLC. But pop critics noticed Destiny's subtle sonic advances. New York Times critic John Pereilles admired not only Beyonce's voice but also quote the way Destiny's melodies jump in and out of Double Time above brittle syncopated rhythm tracks. From the percolating Bugaboo, a minor pop hit that managed to crack the R and B top 20 to the top 10 pop and R and B hit Jumpin Jumpin A metronomic club track, Destiny's Child kept serving up potent permutations of a unified sound, even though the group itself was anything but unified. Two members, Latoya Luckett and Latavia Roberson, accused Matthew Knowles of favoring his daughter Beyonce and their family friend Kelly Rowland. Knowles wound up dismissing Luckett and Roberson in the middle of promoting the album and replacing them with two different vocalists who would lip sync the original pair's vocals in Destiny's videos. By the way, only one of those replacements, Michelle Williams, even lasted. The other new singer left after just six months. Like I said, destinies meant drama. Matthew Knowles had the new lineup of Destiny's Child firmly in place in early 2000, just in time for the new members to appear in the video for the album's biggest hit, a multi week number one smash that showcased Beyonce's aerobic vocals. Say My Name is a signal moment in the history of singing and rapping hybridization. Its vocals have the range and melody of R B, but the cadence of rap. From the triplets, Beyonce drops in the verses at the end of each each line to the pre chorus, which amazingly packs even more syllables into each line.
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Megan Thee Stallion
Every other word is a hum.
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Chris Melanfi
Yeah, okay. The flow is dizzying, something that any MC would be proud of, even an old school lyricist. Years later, critic Jody Rosen wrote in the New Yorker quote beyonce is an eccentric, a vocalist with truly weird and original melodic and rhythmic approaches. Listen to the slippery rap style syncopations in say My Name. Those sounds didn't exist in the world before Beyonce. If they sound normal now, it's because Beyonce and her many followers have retrained our ears. Unquote. Say my name spent three weeks on top of both the Hot 100 and the R and B chart, which, speaking of names, Billboard had changed the name of just four months earlier, adding Hip Hop. The chart's new name, Hot R and B Hip Hop singles and tracks a mouthful that was mercifully later shortened to just Hot R and B. Hip Hop songs was in essence the bible of the music industry. Acknowledging reality, R and B and rap were merging into one mega genre. The R and B hip hop name reflected exactly the kind of music Destiny's Child was producing and the way an 18 year old Beyonce Knowles was singing. By 2000, Destiny's Child were in good company as R B and Hip hop blends represented the leading edge of new millennium popular music. The innovations were coming in both directions. Singers flowing like rappers, rappers crooning like singers in the former category singer Aaliyah, who back in 1998 had already teamed with producer Timbaland for her own take on rap style R B flow called Are youe that somebody. Pushed deeper into hip hop territory with the Timbaland helmed Try Again, her first ever Hot 100 number one in June of 2000. Like Lauryn Hill, Aaliyah could well have been the one to help further the development of rap and B In a recording career that lasted just seven years, Aaliyah had done at least as much as both Lauren and Beyonce to reimagine the cadence and flow of modern pop. Tragically, however, just a year after Try Again, Aaliyah was gone, killed in a plane crash. Coming back from the music video shoot for her single Rock the Boat, aaliyah was just 22 years old. As I noted in the first part of this episode, women from Latifa to Lauren, Aliyah to Beyonce were instrumental in the development of melodic rap, mainly due to the breadth of their talents, but also partially due to men abandoning the melodic field in their effort to project hardness. But that was changing at the turn of the millennium, and not just melodic rap troupes like Bone Thugs in harmony, rap soloists were starting to carry a tune too. Saint Louis born Cornell Haynes Jr. Better known as Nelly, was an instant sensation in 2000 with his solo debut Country Grammar. Merely coming from the Midwestern United States made Nelly unusual at the time, and he helped put St. Louis on the hip hop map with his uniquely twangy melodic flow. I've called several artists and tracks in this episode sing songy, but Nelly's hits might be the sing songiest. His album's title track, Country Grammar was like a spicy nursery rhyme set to music based around the age old kids clapping game song Down Down Baby with its memorable refrain shimmy shimmy Coco Pop. If Country Grammar was a playground chant, the album's biggest hit, Ride With Me, was a pure pop confection, so driven by its melody it seemed odd to call it rap at. There's not a lyric in this track that Millie raps straight. Only his guest city spud drops traditional bars on the song's bridge. Both Country Grammar and Ride with me were top 10 pop hits. The former also went top five on Hot R B Hip Hop Songs. Those hits powered Nelly's Country Grammar album to a month atop the album chart and eight times platinum by 2001. A year later, on his sophomore album Nellyville, the singer rapper went deeper into melody on Hot In Here, produced by the Neptunes and Adapted from the 1979 Charles Brown Go Go Classic Bustin loose with Nelly dropping double time melodic rhymes, the song topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks. Meanwhile, Destiny's Child were still doing their part to hybridize genres. On their third album, 2001's Survivor, the group, now a trio of Beyonce, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, scored their biggest hit with a hook that was sampled hip hop style only. That hook came straight from the world of rock, a fierce guitar riff taken from Stevie Nicks's 1982 number 11 pop hit Edge of Seventeen. Destinies took that riff to number one on their body positive hit Bootylicious. Just a few months later, in a kind of sing and rap or maybe sing and sing summit, Kelly Rowland would take a side gig from Destiny's Child and sing on Nelly's interpolation of a 1983 Patti LaBelle hit called Love, need and want you Nelly and Kelly's version was called Dilemma, and while she was clearly singing and his flow was closer to rap, both of them were driving the melody. Of course, male, female, sing and rap duets were Nothing new. In 2002 we delved deep, deeply into this form in our July 2018 hit parade episode about the history of the featured artist that includes rappers who would feature hook singers and singers who dropped in a rapper on the bridge. These hit mashups were commonplace as far back as the late 80s and early 90s, but back then the walls between the tracks singing and rapping were clearly demarcated. What started to become more commonplace by the late 90s, however, were hits where the two forms were on nearly equal footing and the melody infused everything about the track, even as the rapper sought to maintain his street cred. A key example from 1995 was a 3 pop, 1 R&B hit that's widely considered seminal to the birth of the form. Method man and Mary J. Blige's Marvin Gaye interpolation I'll be there for you, you're all I need to get by. The genders also didn't need to be opposites. Big Punisher's biggest rap to pop crossover came from when he teamed up with the singer Joseph Thomas, AKA Joe. Their deeply melodic Still Not a player was a number 24 pop number 6 R&B hit in 1998. By the turn of the millennium, these pairings became known in the industry with more than a little bit of shade as Thug Love Songs and the avatar of Thug Love was Ja Rule. Despite his growly voice, the do rag rocking Geoffrey Atkins would sing a few bars on virtually all of his hits, whether he was in the lead role as in his Thug Love duet with Ashanti, always On time number one in 2002, Or in a supporting role as on what's Love by Fat Joe. The main hook on this 2002 number two hit was also voiced by Ashanti, the premier hook singer of the Murder Inc. Label, but Ja Rule managed to croon a few bars of the song as well.
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Megan Thee Stallion
Got to do, Got to do it.
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Chris Melanfi
Late that same year, the Thug Love duet reached a kind of apotheosis, a meeting of rapper and singer so well crafted and in retrospect, pivotal it seems reductive to lump it into the Thug Love trend. It was when Jay met be on a hit song. Even beyond what it meant for their personal lives, Jay Z and Beyonce's 03 Bonnie and Clyde was important to both of their careers, an interpolation of a 1996 track called Me and My Girlfriend from the late Tupac Shakur. JB's reboot was his biggest pop hit to date, reaching number four in late 2002, and it served as a semi official debut for Beyonce as a soloist away from Destiny's Child, albeit on a duet. By the way, it was also a showcase for its up and coming producer Kanye West. We'll get to him in a bit. The track was a vocal showcase for both artists, with Jay trying on some Latin flavored syncopation over a mariachi style guitar, and Beyonce even dropped in a few lines from Prince's 1987 classic if I was your girlfriend on the bridge. Given that even in real life Shawn Carter and Beyonce Knowles were actually dating, the song was a rather sweet pop artifact, the sound of two people falling in love on wax. I mean, Jay must have been falling for her because for one of the few times in his career, he didn't outsource his chorus to a hook singer like Pharrell Williams. Jay actually sang it himself. And what about Beyonce? Was she also in love? Well, reportedly yes. If03 Bonnie and Clyde was the beta test for solo Beyonce, Crazy in Love was the official product launch. And everything about that launch was massive. It had a big sound, a full troupe of dancers in the video mirroring Bea's moves, a frenetic chantalong chorus, And to reassert Bey's cred in the hip hop era, it had a sharp rap bridge from her new boyfriend, who was presumably the subject of the song. Jay Z's presence wasn't the only rap inspired thing about Crazy in Love. Most innovative was the track's unusual beat built around an unorthodox sample courtesy of the cutting Edge producer Rich Harrison. Harrison chopped up a horn blast from a 1970 soul classic by the Shylights. And he looped it into a fierce, earth shaking rhythm at the end of the decade. Rolling Stone magazine praised that horn sample when they named Crazy in Love one of the greatest songs of the 2000s. Quote the horns weren't a hook, they were a herald. Pop's new queen had arrived, unquote. This kind of bespoke beat making was Rich Harrison's specialty and he did it throughout the aughts, not on rap records, but primarily on pop friendly R and B. Perhaps his second most famous beat underlay Amerie's stellar 20058 pop number one R B smash One thing. You did Now. Harrison built that explosive beat out of a drum break from another 1970 recording, this time by funk forefathers the Meters. For Beyonce, the cutting edge sample on Crazy in Love affirmed that she was keeping her ear to the ground. BEA's absorption of new styles and current hit makers made her one of the decade's ultimate cool hunters. One trend she was following closely was the evolution of dancehall. Kingston, Jamaica native Sean Paul took the American charts by storm with his rap adjacent dance hall sound in the 2000s, while artists like Chaba Ranks hit a ceiling with American radio listeners in the 90s and Shaggy had to cross hard into mainstream pop to score his hits. Sean Paul managed to scale the Hot 100 with fairly authentic sounding dancehall that hearkened back to Jamaica's history of toasting, but sported a modern sound for the hip hop era. Get busy. Paul's propulsive party record topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in May of 2003 and he was back on top of the chart just four months later. With Beyonce, who grabbed Paul as a guest for Baby Boy. Her own spin on dancehall crossed with rb. Come on. Thanks to these melodic sing and rap breakthroughs by everyone from Sean Paul to Nelly to Ja Rule, it was now fairly normalized for even the most street savvy rappers to drop a melody on their hits. Take 50 Cent for example, who had 2003's top selling album with his gangsta adjacent CD Get Rich or Die Trying. On his number one smash 21 Questions. The man born Curtis Jackson not only wasn't fearful of damaging his cred by recording this ballad suffused with melody. So much for those 80 attacks against LL Cool J. While singer Nate Dogg handled most of the melodic hooks on 21 questions. Fidde himself did try his hand at singing too, however modestly.
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You drive me crazy shorty I need to see you and feel you next to me.
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The fact was, even if a rapper couldn't sing all that well, melody was the surest way way to get him on the radio Radio listeners love a tune you can hum, but by the mid aughts, another rapper came up with an even more ingenious approach. This recording wizard made the tools for non singers part of rap's lingua franca. Fahim Rashid Najm, better known by his rap handle T Pain, was the millennial king of auto tune. By the way, the T in T Pain stands for Tallahassee, Florida, where he was raised. Autotune was pitch correcting audio processing software that was invented to make fixing a vocalist's bum notes virtually undetectable. But T. Pain had other ideas for the technology. On hits like his breakthrough I'm Sprung, a number eight hit in 2005, the robotic sound of Autotune was meant to be heard loud and clear. And of course, T. Pain was singing more than he was rapping, because that was the point. T Pain was hardly the first pop artist to experiment with vocal altering technology. Guitarist Peter Frampton and hair metal crap merchants Bon Jovi both scored hits that made use of a talk box. And in the 80s, at the dawn of the rap era, the vocoder, an early voice synthesizer, was employed in a fashion very similar to T Pains by the electro funk group Zap on hits like More Bounce to the M's. The zap sound of Vakoder became so beloved in hip hop circles that in 1995 Tupac and Dr. Dre invited Zaps Roger Troutman to throw some Vakoder style talk box vocals over their smash California Love. Not since We Roger Troutman had an artist made vocal pitch manipulation as prominent of a calling card as T Pain did in the aughts. He took the sound all the way to number one in 2007 with his romantic hip hop ballad Buy you a drink. But songs under T Pain's own name were just a part of his takeover of the radio. T Pain affirmed his hip hop bonafides by providing guest vocals on a slew of rap hits, including tracks by Bay area Hyphae Kingpin E40. Tomorrow, Miami based hype man and posse cut creator dj khaled. And producer turned rapper turned chart topper Kanye west, to name just a few. But one rapper who did not avail himself of T Pain's services was Jay Z. Still largely A rap lyricist deep into the aughts, Jay was not allergic to melody on his hits. He just preferred to leave the singing to others with more naturally compelling singing voices, most especially producer and Neptune's frontman Pharrell Williams. Pharrell had Jay Guest on his 2003 top five hit Front, And then Pharrell returned the favor to Jay by writing, producing and singing on Jay's Black Album track Change Clothes, a number 10 hit. Later that same year, After the Black Album had run its course, Jay Z quote retired from rap for a time and became an executive at Def Jam Records. During this hiatus, Jay only made occasional guest appearances, including a memorable turn on his friend and producer Kanye West's remix of Diamonds from Sierra Leone, where Jay summarized his life philosophy.
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Not a businessman, I'm a businessman.
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Handle my business dam and Jay left the sing rapping to his girlfriend Beyonce, who was refining her syncopated bounce and teaming with actual rappers like Slim thug on her 2006 number one hit check on It. But one by one, while Jay was on the sidelines, the rap figures he associated with began moving ever deeper into melody. On his 2007 album Graduation, Kanye west brought in not only T Pain but Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to play the piano hook and sing on Ye's wistful single Homecoming.
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Keep making that platinum and gold for me.
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And in 2008, platinum seller Lil Wayne scored his first Hot 100 number one with Lollipop, a hit on which the featured rapper and producer Static Major as well as Wayne himself were both singing the hooks. Yes, even the mixtape king known as Wheezy, the mastermind of the Carter series of blockbuster rap albums, he too was using Autotune. It was around this time that Jay Z, who had finally unretired from rap, decided he'd had enough. He literally called for Autotune to die.
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Opera Bring a blonde, preferably with a fat ass, who could sing a song.
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On the 2009 single D.O.A. death of Autotune, Jay Z declared T Pain's ubiquitous vocal technique officially over. He also said he wasn't a fan of cell phone ringtones either. Jay rapped DOA old school style over a guitar based rock beat that could have come out a decade or more earlier. Jay would ultimately win a Grammy for best Rap Solo for doa. Nothing like decrying the encroachment of technology to win praise from the recording academy. By the end of the aughts, the Autotune fad did finally recede. It would continue cropping up in rap from time to time. But Autotune was no longer an easy ticket to the top 40. Jay Z arguably won that battle, but melody in hip hop, it won the war. And the man who inaugurated the new era, the moment where sing and rap would completely take over, was a member of Jay's own circle of friends. I just want you guys to know, he's not rapping, he's singing. It was phenomenal because it was this whole new thing that Kanye was doing. At the end of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye west premiered a new track he'd been working on, literally up to the day of the show. It sounded like nothing he'd done before. He titled it Love Lockdown. He later called the song his homage to Phil Collins circa In the Air Tonight. Brokenhearted, menacing, and a little spooky. And most surprising, Kanye sang it.
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I'm not loving you Way I wanted to what I had to do had to run from you I'm in love with you but the vibe is wrong.
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Love Lockdown would be the lead single from West's fourth album, 808s and Heartbreak. The title said it all. Kanye had recently lost his mother, Donda, and he released the album one year after her passing. He'd also just split up with his fiance. At a press conference, west said, quote, 808s came from suffering a multitude of losses at the same time. It's like losing an arm and a leg and having to find a way to keep walking through it. The music that resulted from this confluence of personal circumstances was suffused with emotion. Equally important, it was also shot through with melody. Kanye west is, by his own admission, not a very good singer. So he used the same tools as T. Pain, with whom he ye had collaborated on his hit Good Life just the year before, not to start a party with Autotune, but to exercise his pain. You might say this was the last mile in Rapp's long journey toward melody. Not just mourning loss, as Bones Thugs n Harmony had done a dozen years earlier on the Crossroads, but laying bare an emcee's raw feelings and pain. It was also a hit, though 808's and heartbreak did not sell as well as Kanye's first three albums, it did go platinum in its first year, and it spawned two big singles. Singles. Love Lockdown reached number three on the Hot 100, and Heartless peaked at number two. Even beyond the sales and chart figures, the most important legacy of 808s and heartbreak was what it inspired immediately. And years afterward, it is now regarded as a pivot point in the history of hip hop. Looking back years later, Pitchfork critic Jason Green wrote, quote, rap music has since absorbed the importance of this album into its DNA. The 808's template has seeped into the street rap groundwater. Young Thug would not exist as we know him without this album. For Lil Durk, Chief Keef, Soulja Boy and countless others, showing up on a track sounding like you are drowning in the sound of your own voice is now natural.
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How could you be so heartless?
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One other point Jason Green made in his retrospective of 808s and heartbreak the album basically spawned the entire career of rap's ultimate sing and rap. Emo boy former teen actor turned Insta Platinum rapper Drake It May Not Mean.
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Nothing to Y' All.
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Toronto born Aubrey Graham long wanted to rap, but he didn't necessarily want to be a rapper. As I discussed earlier in this episode, Drake bristled at attempts by the music industry and the Grammys to put a label on his music. By the time Drake dropped his breakthrough mixtape so far gone in 2009, the EP that got him signed to Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment and by extension Universal Music Group 808s and Heartbreak had already happened. Kanye west was still called a rapper, but there were few still calling his music purely rap or placing boundaries on it. So if Drake aka Drizzy, aka Champagne Poppy aka Wheelchair Jimmy aka Toronto's 6 God wanted to both rhyme and croon on his tracks, well, who'd say no?
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I know way too many people here right now that I didn't know last year.
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Who the Are y'? All? Drake's vocals, both his rappers rapping and his singing were often delivered in a drone that was, whatever you think of it, distinctive. It branded him on tracks like over, a number 14 hit in 2010. But unlike the amateur singer Kanye, who was one of Drake's mentors and relied on auto tune when he sang, Drake was also capable of a natural, more mellifluous supple singing voice, Which made Drake that much more commercial find you'd love. Another track from his 2010 album, thank Me, later reached number five on the Hot 100. By the time of his blockbuster second album, Take Care, in 2011, Drake had gone full 808s and heartbreak, doing his own version of Kanye's In My Feelings Rap, much of it very melodic and in a variety of tempos. The title track, a number seven hit produced by DJ Jamie XX and with vocals by frequent collaborator Rihanna, was essentially moody house music. It even sampled coupled Gil Scott Heron. The immediate success of Drake out of the Box confirmed that the 2010s would be a decade of boundaryless hip hop with an even greater emphasis on melody than rap had ever dared try before. Kanye West's music on his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy only got more lush, as on the album's best selling single, the number 18 hit all of the Lights. West threw everything at the track, including strings and horns and vocal from Rihanna, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Alicia Keys, and even Elton John. Speaking of Alicia Keys and lush songs, Jay Z was also getting more florid as he entered the 2010s. He finally scored his first ever Hot 100 number one right at the beginning of the decade with Empire State of Mind, an anthem for his hometown. Rap's Frank Sinatra finally produced his own theme from New York, New York, Still something something of a traditionalist. Jay stuck to rapping on the track and he left the singing to the piano playing Alicia Keys. But her involvement on the track got Jay's empire on adult pop and even adult contemporary stations that had never previously played Hova's music. However, these older listener chording radio stations definitely preferred the Keys only version of Empire, which isolated just her vocals and piano. It was a Jay Z hit without Jay Z. This, by the way, wasn't the last time Jay permitted this gambit. In 2013, the title track from his album Magna Carta, Holy Grail, switched off between Jay's rhymes and long stretches of falsetto singing by Justin Timberlake.
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Beyonce
Sipping from your cup till it runs.
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Chris Melanfi
Over Holy Grail, I got tattoos on my body Psycho bitches in my lobby.
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And again, if adult leaning radio stations preferred it, they could have a version of Holy Grail that was all Justin. This was musically and frankly racially questionable, but Jay got paid either way. Interestingly, this same turn of the Tens period found Beyonce moving in a direction essentially opposite her husband's, gradually pulling away from more straightforward melodies over the course of several albums. In late 2008, Beyonce issued her album I Am Sasha Fierce, a musically varied double LP that earned her a Queenly reception, including some top nominations at the Grammys. Her hit single Ladies put a ring on it, even took home Song of the Year. To this day, Queen Bey's only top category win at the Grammys. Single Ladies was Beyonce's last completely solo Hot 100 number one and her last undeniably mass appeal pop smash. Other tracks on the Sasha Fierce album were more experimental, most especially Diva, the closest Beyonce had come to that point to straight up rap to Queen Bey the word diva meant a female version of a hustler and she dropped bars like she meant it.
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Beyonce
Stop the track, let me say facts. I told you give me a minute.
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Megan Thee Stallion
And I'll be right back.
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Chris Melanfi
By the time of her 2011 album 4 Beyonce was starting to pull apart the foundations of her music. Run the World Girls was a Marshall chant, Party was a synthy hip hop track with Kanye west and Andre 3000 and the album's standout track Countdown was a dizzying love song built out of a chopped up Boyz II Men sample, hashtag style lyrics and marching band horns. It was a bulliant pop and be built with some of the tools of rap. Meanwhile, Bey's former bandmate Kelly Rowland was teaming up with the rising rap star Navadius Wilburn, who called himself Future and he did indeed sound like the Future sung lyrics with the cadence of rap and the emotionality of Kanye's 808 sound. When Future duetted with Roland on his 2012 hit Never End, it was hard to find a real difference between the so called rapper and the established singer singer. They were both carrying the same tune. The early tens was when this new generation of melodic emo rap broke wide open, whether from Future or Young Thug, considered by many a master technician of the form. Or rich Homie Qua who on Type of Way managed to evoke dark emotions over an unrelenting trap bounce. But the blockbuster hit of this woozy sung trap style came from New Jersey's Willie Maxwell II, aka Fetty Wap. He delivered the most streamed song of 2015 with Trap Queen, a romantic ode to a kingpin's lover partner in crime, a manic pixie drug girl. Fetty Wap's mush mouthed, quivering delivery was like a hook unto itself, punctuated by non sequiturs, like his immortal line I said hey, what's up? Hello. Trap Queen peaked at number two on the Hot 100, remarkable for what was essentially a viral street level rap record. It was the moment when streaming and Spotify took took over the Hot 100 and it showed that the rules had changed for hit making singing as rapping had fully taken over and virality was coin of the realm, encouraging vocalists to switch up their style to keep up. That included Beyonce. As we discussed in our December episode of Hit Parade about changes in album release strategies in the Soundscan and Digital eras, Queen Bey pioneered the surprise drop strategy when she unleashed her self titled Beyonce album on itunes in the closing weeks of 2013. On its lead single, the number two hit Drunk in Love, be teamed up again with her spouse in a song about keeping the fire alive in their marriage. But she did nearly as much bars dropping as Jay did. She even coined a hashtag worthy term spelled S U R F B O R T. On this self titled album, Beyonce got personal and went for broke, aiming less for radio hits than stretching herself thematically, lyrically and stylistically. The follow up hit Partition, a lascivious ode to sex, was more than half wrapped. On the whole, this was Beyonce's most acclaimed album to date, and so no one was surprised when it wound up in the Grammy race for Album of the year in early 2015. But again, dating back to Lauryn Hill in 1999 and Outkast in 2004, Grammy voters really preferred hip hop albums that didn't sound like rap. Ironically, Beyonce had produced her best work to date by singing less and rapping more, which perhaps explains why the 2015 Album of the year went instead to Gen X icon Beck. His mellow album Morning Phase was miles removed from the hip hop meets folk derived sound he'd pursued in the younger days of Loser and Where It's At. Kanye west was so outraged on Beyonce's behalf, he nearly did to Beck what he'd done to Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards more than five years years earlier. But Beyonce would be back. In fact, less than one year later, she made a surprise appearance at a much bigger television event than the Grammys. The official performer of the 2016 Super Super bowl halftime show was Coldplay, but the British band ceded a large chunk of their time to guests Bruno Mars and, most dazzlingly, Beyonce. She marched onto the field backed by a full drill team just to introduce what was perhaps her most political single ever, the Black Lives Matter Answer some Formation. Formation managed to scrape the top 10 a few weeks after the super bowl, and it set up Yonce's second consecutive surprise album and magnum opus, Lemonade. They don't love you like I love you. Beyonce's most eclectic album, Lemonade, was a meditation on fidelity in the wake of rumors that her husband Jay Z, had been unfaithful. It had fierce lyrics and hip hop attitude ranging across a broad palette of sounds and styles from art pop to shredding rock to country music to electro R and B. Here again was a slow ball over the plate for the recording Academy. Beyonce was exactly the sort of top selling, accessible yet artistically bold artist the Grammys, in theory, love to reward. Once again, Queen Bee made all of the top categories at the 2017 Grammy Awards, this time with both Lemonade as well as its single formation and once again when Album of the Year was given out. Well, I'll let that year's winner, Adele send our regrets, but I can't possibly.
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Beyonce
Accept this award and I'm very humbled and I'm very grateful and gracious, but my artist of my life is Beyonce in this album. For me, the Lemonade album was just so monumental. Beyonce. It was so monumental and so well thought out and so beautiful and soul bearing and we all got to see another side to you that you don't always let us see. And we appreciate that and all us.
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Chris Melanfi
Though a consummate singer and a commanding artist artist, Beyonce had fallen into the same trap that had prevented acclaimed rappers like Eminem, Kanye west and Kendrick Lamar from taking Grammy's top prize. She was, to the generalist Grammy voter, a de facto rapper. By the way, this was the same Grammy ceremony where Drake took those two best rap prizes for his non rap single Hotline Bling. Like Beyonce, Drake was another artist the industry just couldn't pigeonhole. He'd spent the tens veering from tough edged rap like 2013's number six hit started from the Bottom, Started from the.
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Bottom, now we're here Started from the bottom Now My Whole Team to lush.
- [56:36]
Balladry such as the follow up single the number four hit Hold On, We're Going Home. Drake even scored his first Hot 100 number one as a lead artist with 2016's One Dance, a track that evoked the African American, Afrobeat and UK funky music scenes and featured Drake trying on a more yearning singing voice. Was the song hip hop or dancehall or just pop music? Yes, If the first half of the 2010s was the sound of hip hop ignored ignoring the rulebook, the second half shredded it. Atlanta duo Ray Schremmerd went to number one with their spooky viral trap song Black Beatles, which didn't sound anything like the Beatles despite invoking them in the lyrics and was both sung and rapped.
- [57:43]
That girl is a real crowd, please Small world all the friends know.
- [57:50]
So a trap song invoking the biggest ever rock group. What about a white guy raised on rock guitar who decided that he'd have more success singing over trap beats? Was that hip hop too? Sure thing, Post Malone.
- [58:14]
You won't think about me when I'm gone.
- [58:18]
The heavily tattooed man, born Austin Post, virtually never actually rapped. Yet Post Malone was called a rapper even when he topped the charts with a bleary eyed trap song called Rock.
- [58:34]
Star I've been fucking holes and popping pillies, man. I feel just like a rock star.
- [58:41]
Future had laddered up as well, going from underground hip hop hero to chart topper. His fluttery, ghostly hit Mask off went top five in 2018.
- [58:53]
Mask on mask Mask on mask.
- [58:59]
Yes, that was labeled rap too. So was the music of the slurry singer rapper Lil Uzi Vert, who cracked the top 10 with the garbled, oddly catchy XO Tour.
- [59:13]
Life she said Baby I am not afraid to die Push me to the edge all my friends are dead Push me to the edge.
- [59:21]
SoundCloud rapper Juice World went all the way to number two with Lucid Dreams, a song built out of a lush sample of a 90s song song by Sting. The vocal wine of Juice wrld, whose real name was Gerard Higgins, was typical of the SoundCloud rap song, even though it was even further removed from the roots of rap. Before this wave of Gen Z artists, most sing rappers had cadence that approximated hip hop flow. This whiny Soundcloud rap voice lives on into the 2000s. In fact, you can hear it on Lil Nas X's very recent Hot 100 chart topper Montero. Call me by your name. What about the first couple of rap and be how did they navigate the final years of the tens? As Jay Z approached 50 and Beyonce neared 40, they moved past their lemonade drama and finally did a full album together. Everything Is Love was billed to the Carters on the first single, Jay threw some shade at the Grammys and B was still straight up rapping.
- [60:51]
Tell the Grammys that over A shit. Have you ever seen a crowd going ape shit?
- [61:01]
Indeed, straight rapping seems to be de rigueur for the Queen these days, at least when she isn't singing with pop acts like Ed Sheeran or gearing up to record her next solo album. In her guest verses on Megan the Stallion's 2020 number one smash Savage Remix, Beyonce showed how far she'd come as a rhyme slinger, dropping references to Tick Tock and the viral subscription service Only Fans Hips Tick Tock when I dance.
- [61:36]
Megan Thee Stallion
On that demon time she might start.
- [61:37]
Chris Melanfi
Her only fans In February of this year, Savage Remix brought Beyonce back to the Grammys alongside her duet partner Megan Thee Stallion. The song wound up taking Best Rap Song, and that win, in a very subtle way, was evidence that sing and rap styles had come full circle. That night, five songs were up for the Best Rap Song prize. Four of them were by men or teams of men, and all four of those Male songs were sung. Rap songs from Roddy Ricch's viral sensation the Box. To Lil Baby's Black Lives Matter anthem the bigger Picture.
- [62:32]
Megan Thee Stallion
I see blue lights. I get scared to start running. That should be crazy. They post to protect us and arrest us. Why they go home at night.
- [62:39]
Chris Melanfi
Or Drake's breezy ode to pandemic basketball. Laugh now, cry later featuring Lil Durk.
- [62:47]
Where did he be at when they say they doing all this and all that? Tired of beefing you bones. You can't even pay me enough to react.
- [62:54]
And finally, DAbaby's chart topping 2020 song song of the summer, the oddly tender rock star, also with Roddy Ricch. And the fifth nominee was that song by a pair of women. And neither of them was singing. Three decades after Queen Latifah and Nana Cherry and two decades after Lauryn Hill, the pairing of Megan thee Stallion and Beyonce was the only contender that night for best rap song to be fully rapped. And it won.
- [63:35]
Megan Thee Stallion
I definitely want to say thank you to Beyonce. If you know me, you have to know that ever since I was little, I was like, you know what? One day I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna be like the rap Beyonce. That was definitely my goal. And I remember I went to the rodeo for the first time and I saw Destiny's Child perform and I was like, you know what? Yes, I'm about to go hard. I love her work ethic. I love the way she is. I love the way she carry herself. And my mama will always be like, megan, what would Beyonce do? And I'm always like, you know what? What would Beyonce do? But let me make it a little ratchet.
- [64:16]
Chris Melanfi
As Megan gushed and fangirled, her elder stateswoman duet partner beamed with pride and a serene, regal bearing. Megan would then perform her winning song that night live on the Grammy stage. Rather than joining her for the showcase, Beyonce let Megan have her moment. She watched from the audience, her recorded vocals backing up Megan as she hip thrusted and bounced around the stage.
- [64:46]
Megan Thee Stallion
Haters kept my name in they mouth. Now they gagging.
- [64:49]
Chris Melanfi
Ah, bougie. For hip hop fans with long memories, this moment was fierce but also poignant. America's top new rapper, maybe our rappiest rapper, was a woman. And the voice of the queen of rapid beat was shadowing her like a benevolent ghost. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Asha Solud. Asha is also my producer for our monthly hit Parade the Bridge shows available exclusively to Slate plus members. In our latest Bridge episode, I talked to podcaster, DJ and rap scholar Oliver Wong about the crossover between singing and rapping in R B and hip hop. To sign up for Slate plus and hear that show and all of our shows the day they're released, visit slate.com hit parade plus June Thomas is the Senior Managing Producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfe.