← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Feat. Don’t Fail Me Now Edition
01:10:06
The featured-artist credit has gone from a rare anomaly to a staple of the charts. How did guest rappers change the way supporting performers are credited across popular music?
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome 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 today's show. 28 years ago this month, in July of 1990, Billboard's Hot 100 was led by a number one single that would turn out to be quietly historic, the first of a new breed of chart topper, even though it's not the most memorable hit ever. The song was called she Ain't Worth it and it was a one off pairing between two young men who had never met before the recording session and would never work together again. A Hawaiian pop crooner named Glenn Medeiros and dropping in more than halfway through with a rap bridge, former New Edition member and new Jack Swing megastar Bobby Brown. She Ain't worth It holds two distinctions in Hot 100 history. For one thing, it's the first chart topping sing and rap two act pairing in Billboard history. And second, with a couple of caveats, it is the formal debut of the word featuring on a Hot 100 number one hit. The song credit read Glenn Medeiros featuring Bobby Brown. It is difficult to overstate how popular that word has become on the charts over the last quarter century. Just listen to this current hit which is sitting in the Hot 100's top five as I speak. Maroon 5 featuring Cardi B with a number three hit called Girls like youe.
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Don't Want A Girl Like Me.
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The week I put this episode together in early July 2018, the word featuring was on the Hot 100 no less than 25 times. If we throw in 15 more songs on the chart with ampersands which are joining two or more acts who do not normally record together, that makes more than 40% of the chart. Consisting of one off collaborations. There's even a current hit by Latin pop stars Nicky Jam and J. Balvin with a multiplication symbol in the middle of it. The song that started all this was neither exceptionally creative nor unprecedented. Prior to she Ain't Worth It, a handful of sing and rap pairings fell just shy of Billboard's number one spot, But Medeiros hit went the distance because it had genre crossover baked into it. Its very awkwardness was what made it an effective hybrid. Mind you, it's not as if one off pairings of musicians on hit singles didn't exist before 1990, 1990 or even before hip hop. If you go about a quarter century in the other direction, from she Ain't Worth it to the charts of the 1960s, you will find plenty of collaborative hits on the Hot 100. For example, the 1963 number one hit he's a Rebel by the Crystals, a girl group produced by the legendary and infamous Phil Spector, features lead vocals from another Spector protege, Darlene Love. Or how about Elvis Presley's classic 1969 comeback single Suspicious Minds? It features very audible vocals by rising country star Ronnie Millsap and Muscle Shoals vocalist Jeannie Groome.
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We can go on together with Suspicious Mind.
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The difference between then and now is that none of these celebrated 60s musicians were listed as featured artists on these singles. On Suspicious Minds, Millsap and Green were Liner notes Fine print nowhere to be found on the label of the vinyl 45 single and on He's a Rebel, Darlene Love wasn't credited at all on that hit she Was a ghost. In short, in rock's first couple of decades, even when pop acts relied on an army of collaborators, the music industry perpetuated the myth of the single self contained artist as the face of each hit.
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You're so vain.
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I'll pick you Today on Hit Parade, we will talk about the history of the featured credit in pop music, which is older than rock and roll itself. I'll talk about how artists in the rock era went missing in the credits even when their vocals were hard to miss, and how eventually rap changed the paradigm for how artists get credited on songs and especially hit songs. There are even two different models for the hip hop featured artist credit, one where the rapper is the extra spice on the record and one where the hook singer is given a prominent showcase. But the centerpiece of this trend is a new Jack Swing era hit where the featured rapper wasn't even a rapper. And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending July 21, 1990 when she ain't Worth it by Glenn Medeiros featuring Bobby Brown reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100. What? You don't remember that classic lyric? The girl is jazzy but she's nothing but trouble. Since his days in the 80s R&B boy band New Edition, Brown had been one of five singer performers in a group that included only occasional hip hop elements. However, when Brown broke out as a solo megastar in 1988 and 89, after the release of his smash album Don't Be Cruel, his hits began to include more rap elements. In effect, Bobby was acting as his own feature, inserting raps performed by himself into the middle of his hits on his smash from the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack on On Our Own, which peaked at number two in the summer of 1989. Exactly one year before she Ain't Worth It, Bobby did an extended rap on the bridge that was everybody's favorite part of the song.
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Too hot to handle, too cold to hold. They called the Ghostbusters and the in Control had them throwing a party for a bunch of children while all the while the slam under the building so they packed up and killed.
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In his entry on she Ain't Worth it in the Billboard book of number one hits, Fred Bronson reports that Bobby Brown was a last minute addition after Medeiros had already recorded the song. By 1990, Glenn Medeiros was trying to pump up his image with more uptempo material. He had broken through in 1987 with a gentle top 20 ballad called called Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for you. By happenstance, the head of Medeiros record label was friends with funk superstar Rick James. He suggested the genteel Medeiros should try working with Brown, arguably the top artist in pop at the time. Brown's Don't Be Cruel album had been the top seller of 1989. According to Bronson's book, Brown in the studio with Medeiros wrote a quick eight bar bridge right on the spot. Bobby's rap appears very briefly on the single, almost as punctuation, a small snatch appears at the start of the record and in the middle, Bobby's rap lasts all of 20 seconds. But with that addition she Ain't Worth It, Glenn Medeiros bid for pop pinup stardom was complete. Released in May of 1990 and well timed for the summer, she Ain't worth It took 10 weeks to crown the Hot 100, reaching the top by July. When Ain't reached number one in the summer of 1990, in it mostly affirmed that Brown was at the apex of his imperial period. Medeiros, by the way, never returned to Billboard's top 20. He is now the head of a prestigious private school in his native Hawaii. But it also affirmed the commercial potency of both the featured artist credit and its artistic sibling, the rap bridge as the vector of pop crossover. If 20 seconds of Bobby Brown not even an actual rapper dropping eight bars could help non Threatening Boy Medeiros top the charts, the singer and rhymer possibilities were endless. Before we go any further, let's define our terms. Not just any use of the word and or even an ampersand or constitutes a featured performance. For decades many groups and artist pairings with the Word and topped the Billboard charts, but usually the word was reserved for permanent duos like Simon and Garfunkel.
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Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.
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Because or an established combo with a singer and the Blanks name like Freddie and the Dreamers. Or on a more rare occasion, a nose to nose vocal duet between performers of equal stature like, say, Frank and his daughter Nancy sinatra with their 1967 duet Something Stupid.
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The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and o' er the night's so blue.
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And.
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Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.
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None of these are what we're talking about when we discuss the featured credit. Also, technically, as I mentioned at the top of the show, she ain't Worth it. Strictly speaking, wasn't the very first time the word featuring appeared on a chart topping hit, but the prior examples in the number one spot were too anomalous and weird to count for much. That's TSOP, the Sound of Philadelphia, better known to 70s audiences as the theme song to TV's music and dance show Soul Train. TSOP hit number one on the Hot 100 in the spring of 1974 and on the 45 the song was credited to MFSB featuring the 3°. MFSB stands for Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, and it was a Philadelphia studio band and orchestra. The Three Degrees were a female vocal trio separate from mfsb. The trio of ladies provides brief, wordless vocals on the hit recording. However, on both Billboard's charts and on the MFSB album Love Is the Message or only MFSB were listed. Given the brevity of the 3 degrees vocals, the lack of lyrics on this mostly instrumental track, and the lack of chart credit, TSOP doesn't quite qualify for featured artist status on a number one hit, at least as far as Billboard is concerned. And what about this smash? In late 1984, the single Careless Whisper was issued in the United States, Canada and Japan with the credit Wham featuring George Michael. But here's the worst weird part. Michael was a member of WHAM in England and in most other countries around the world. Careless was a George Michael solo single. Columbia Records used the Wham featuring George Michael credit only in countries like America, where Wham was a brand new fledgling act, one that had just broken on the charts. Careless Whisper doesn't really count even either. While the MFSB and WHAM singles are anomalies, there are absolutely examples of hits with prominent featured artists topping the charts decades earlier. Even though they weren't formally credited, these featured vocalists were hard to miss. And that includes Billboard's very first ever number one song. 78 years ago this week in a magazine dated July 27, 1940, Billboard began publishing a national list of best selling retail records. And that very first top 10 list, one of many precursor charts to the Hot 100, was topped by a collaboration of sorts whose lead vocalist went uncredited.
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My Heart, I Know I Will Never Stop.
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Perhaps you've heard of this crooner, one Francis Albert Sinatra, who sang lead on I'll Never Smile Again, a single by big band leader Tommy Dorsey. Actually old, or should I say young blue eyes, Frank Sinatra did receive his propers. On the label of the 78 rpm record it read Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra and in very small print at the bottom, vocal refrain by Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers. But on Billboard's very first pop chart, the song at number one simply read Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra was surely the reason millions were buying that shellac platter in 1940, but to the industry, Dorsey was the frontline artist even though he didn't sing a note. Band leaders were to the pre rock era what star DJs are to today. If Tommy Dorsey was the Calvin Harris of his time, Frank Sinatra was his Rihanna teen beloved. Stars like Sinatra, who don't forget in the Bobby Sox era, was a pinup idol, would do better in the rock era. That's when bandleaders generally took a backseat to pop idols like Elvis Presley. On many of the King of Rock and Roll's 50s hits, the very prominent backing vocals were provided by the Jordanaires, a gospel and country vocal group in their own right. But the Jordanaires, while Elvis insisted on crediting them on his albums and never received above the line credit on Presley's hit singles. On Don't Be Cruel, for example, the Jordanaires vocals are so prominent it is almost a duet with them. But song credits didn't get any less opaque over the next couple of decades. Billboard launched its all encompassing Hot 100 chart in August 1958. By the way, while I'm mentioning that a very happy birthday to the hot 100 which will turn 60 just a couple of weeks after I record this episode. Thank you to Billboard for making pop chart fandom possible for music nerds like me. Anyway, from 1958 when Billboard premiered the Hot 100 through most of the 1960s, no chart topping song listed a featured performer. There was one exception in the 1960s, a sort of proto featured credit on a number one hit. And while it did not include the word featuring, it did involve a group who were the exception to a lot of rules.
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Back to where you once belong.
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The Beatles 1969 single Get Back was a number one hit in May and June of 1969 and the 17th of their record 20 no ones on the Hot 100. And it sports a very unusual credit. The Beatles with Billy Preston. This was, to say the least, a notable achievement for the then barely known Preston. He was still a couple of years away from launching his own career as a frontman in the early seventies. In 1969, Preston joined the Beatles in in the studio for their ill fated Get Back project, a combination album and documentary film later retitled Let It Be. Preston doesn't actually sing on Get Back, but he performs the irresistible keyboard solo that bridges the song's first and second verses. On the single version of Get Back, Preston's solo is barely 15 seconds long. So what inspired the Beatles to give Billy Preston a formal credit on a single where prior guest performers had gone unmentioned? And by the way, these were either very prominent or very famous soloists. In 1967, trumpeter David Mason, a renowned Bach soloist for from the English Chamber Orchestra, performed a sizable piccolo trumpet solo smack in the middle of the number one hit Penny Lane, and that went uncredited. Just one year prior to Get Back. On George Harrison's beat Beatles classic While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the titular weeping guitar is by no less than Eric Clapton. And no credit for him either. So why Billy Preston? It remains something of a mystery, but it was likely because the Beatles were all for friends of Preston's, dating back to the live review circuit of the early 60s. And stories have long circulated that the group briefly considered adding him to the Beatles as a member. But from a music business perspective, what made the Get Back credit prophetic and apartment was that it involved a black R and B performer supporting a white rock group, the very model of genre crossover that would take over the industry in the age of hip hop. When we Come back. Moving into the 70s and 80s, featured artists, including superstars, were still all over the hits, but nowhere on the labels.
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She was a woman, but she was another.
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Even after Billy Preston's turn in the spotlight with the Beatles, featured credits remained scarce throughout the 1970s, which is mind boggling considering some of the team ups hitting the charts at that time. For example, Carly Simon's 1973 number one hit you're so Vain features backing vocals by none other than Mick Jagger. And yet the label of Simon's single makes nary a mention of Jagger. As with so Many Men, the song wasn't really about him. During the mid-70s, former Beatle John Lennon seemed to have a second career as an uncredited backing vocalist on number one hits. Lennon sang backup on chart toppers by two of his buddies, and he doesn't appear on the label of either.45. The first in late 1974 was Elton John's kitschy cover of Lennon's own Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. In case you're curious, that's Lennon singing and playing guitar on the song's quirky reggae break. Near the end of. Less than a year later, Lennon actually co wrote a new hit song, his friend David Bowie's fame, a rock soul hybrid from Bowie's 1975 R&B homage Young Americans. In case you're curious on the refrain, that squeaky voiced guy punctuating Bowie with a high pitched fame, that's John Lennon. Oh, and before we move past Elton John, in our Hit Parade episode on Elton and George Michael, I mentioned Elton's friend Neil Sadaka and his 1975 number one hit Bad Blood. Elton John sang very prominent backups on Bad Blood. And like Lennon on Elton's own number one hit, Elton too kept his name off the label of Sadaka's hit. This practice persisted into the late 70s. If any form of 70s music should have sported prominent featured credits. It's disco, a producer driven medium that showcased black and female vocalists for crossover consumption. And yet the industry's emphasis on lone wolf performers held firm on the charts. In 1978, Australian pop singer Samantha Tsang reached number three in the US with the mid tempo disco ballad Emotion, a song that you could have sworn sounds like a Bee Gees song. There's a good reason for that. None other than Barry Gibb wrote Emotion and he even sang backup. Honestly, on the chorus, Barry is so prominent the song is almost a duet. Gibb basically hijacks the recording from Samantha. The same. But yet again, on this hit bearded Disco Jesus, Barry Gibb disappeared into the fine print. No co credit for Barry at all. The same same went for the many hits Barry Gibb produced and even performed on for his brother Andy Gibb. It wasn't until the emergence of rap by the turn of the 80s that we start to see changes in how featured vocalists were perceived. And even then, credits on records didn't change right away. As we discussed in our Def Jams edition of Hit Parade, hip hop finally began to emerge. As a recorded medium and hit format with the Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight.
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Now what you hear is not.
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A song that probably should have included a prominent featuring chic credit, given how much it borrows from the Nile Rogers Bernard Edwards classic Good Times. Early on, Rapp made some use of the featured credit. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5's classic 1982 single the Message didn't just name check the prominent lead rapper Melly Mel. Even producer Edward Fletcher, AKA Duke Booty, was given credit. The single's label read Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 featuring Melly Mel and Duke Booty.
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Push me cause I'm close to the edge I'm trying not to lose my head.
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Still, for most of rap's first decade, featured acts mostly remained buried, as I noted in our Def Jams episode about Run DMC's 1986 remake of Aerosmith's Walk this Way. Despite the rock Bottom band's prominence in both the song and the video, Aerosmith are not actually credited on the single. Heck, not even classic film actor Vincent Price warranted a citation for his unforgettable rap that closes Michael Jackson's 1984 single Thriller.
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Darkness falls across the land the midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize Yalls neighborhood and whosoever shall.
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Price's rap on Jackson's single didn't read as rap to many listeners. It was a campy novelty. But eventually, eventually featured rappers became too prominent to ignore. Arguably, two hits in the second half of the 1980s set the template for commercial pop and rap crossover before she Ain't Worth it came along. The first did not credit any of the featured performers officially, but it foregrounded a supporting rap. Like no single before, Chaka Khan's number three pop number one R B smash I Feel for you was a pileup of guests, effectively a four minute soul and rap review. The song song was written by Prince, taken from his self titled 1979 album. Even before the melody begins, Khan's name is famously rapped. Chaka Khan Let Me Rock youk, Let Me Rock youk. Chaka Khan. That rap is looped at the record's start by frequent Grandmaster Flash collaborator Melly Mel. And as if all that wasn't enough, when the melody finally kicks in, the harmonica is performed by the legendary Stevie Wonder, Punctuating Stevie's guest spot. On the bridge of the song, Melly Mel and his producers drop in a sample of Wonder from two decades earlier, when he was still known as Little Stevie Wonder. If you listen carefully. Buried under the sound of a roaring crowd, you can hear little Stevie deep in the mix. Sample One of the earliest deployments of a discrete bite from an old record on a major pop hit was taken from Wonder's 1963 One Hit Fingertips Part 2. As per 1984 standards, none of these guest artists is name checked in the credits. Not Wonder, not even the rapping Melly Mel. Were it to be issued today, I Feel for you's credit would likely read Chaka Khan featuring Stevie Wonder and Melly Mel. But regardless of the fine print, I feel 4U set a new 80s standard for showcasing featured performers, and it got the general public comfortable with hip hop hybridity. More than four years later, the other standard setter for pop rap crossover actually did include a Featured credit, the 1989 Top 10 hit Friends by Jody Watley featuring Eric B and Rakim. This solid slice of danceable R and B by the former singer from Shalimar was made immortal by two long rap stretches in the middle by Rakim, who by the late 80s was widely regarded as the standard setter for rap eloquence. The king of hip hop flow.
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Still coming up with Lent so I start my mission Leave my residence thinking how could I get some dead presidents? I need money I used to be.
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A stick up Even more than on Chaka Khan's I Feel for your, the rap segments on Friends are given a clear, prominent showcase. Watley's producer Andre Simone, practically clears space in the mix for Rakim to spit and Eric B to scratch.
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You used to kiss me Tell me you miss me but now you try to glaze me Play me and diss me I'm wide awake, ready to break so we'd argue what happened to the kisses? And Ra, how are you Forgot about the times when I rhyme when I.
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Bathe you this Jody Watley hit, which peaked at number nine on the Hot 100 in late August 1989 and whose label specifically read Jody win with Eric B and Rakim, set a new template. It presaged what countless 90s pop and rap tracks would sound like less than one year later. Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown would do the unprecedented and send their team up to number one. The featured artist was now a regular feature in Billboard. Mind you, it took a while for featured credits to get standardized on the charts. They didn't exactly become commonplace after she Ain't worth it. For example, moralist Boogeyman and 2 Live Crew leader Luther Campbell scored a top 20 hit in 1990 with the Bruce Springsteen sampling banned in the USA, it was issued under the one off nom de rap Luke featuring the 2 Live Crew, which was a strange moniker similar to Wham featuring George Michael. After all, Luke was in the 2 Live crew. Or how about the improbably excellent and somewhat novel DNA feature featuring Suzanne Vega? Neo Folkie Vega was remixed by a British DJ duo calling themselves DNA. They turned her acapella track Tom's Diner into a pop house jam credited to DNA featuring Suzanne Vega. Tom's Diner hit the top five on the pop chart and even top ten on the R B chart by late 1990. But as rap was finally embraced at the center of pop and dance music, these credits became less remarkable. What was remarkable was the artists who were and weren't getting the featured credit treatment When We Comeback featured artists who sang the hooks you remember and weren't getting credited for it. Fight back.
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And before I even argue, he is looking out the window at somebody coming in.
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Now let's consider CNC Music Factory and their late 1990s single gonna make youe Sweat Everybody Dance Now. This hip house jam produced by Robert Klavillas and David Cole, the C and C of the group name topped the Hot 100 in February 1991. The full song credit on the charts read CNC Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams. This was appropriate because rapper Freedom Williams does indeed take the bulk of the song's vocals, rapping all of the verses.
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Here is the gold back with the bass pajamas live in effect and I don't waste time on the mic with a dope rhyme Jump to the rhythm jump Jump to the rhythm jump.
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However, the song's music video also featured a vocal performance by a model and singer named Zelma Davis. To be fair to Davis, she did have vocals on CNC Music Factory's Gonna make youe Sweat album. The follow up single Here We Go credited Zelma Davis and she does vocalize on it. But on Gonna make youe Sweat, all of the melodic hooks on that breakthrough single, including its iconic exhortation Everybody Dance now were not sung by the statuesque Davis. Despite her lip syncing in the video, they were sung by Martha Wash. The big lunged proudly. Plus sized Wash had gotten her start more than a decade before at the turn of the 80s as 1/2 of the Duo 2 tons of fun, which later became the Weather Girls. After the Weather Girls minor but memorable hit It's Raining Men, Martha Wash spent the late 80s getting work as an uncredited vocalist on numerous hits. She sang lead on the breakthrough single by the Freestyle dance troupe Seduction with the number 23 peaking 1989 hit you're my One and Only True Love. One year later, Martha Wash provided even more explosive vocals for Italian house producers Black Box, who reached number eight on the US Chart with Everybody, Everybody.
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Everybody.
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This volatile performance was what Wash recreated for Clavillas and Cole on Gonna make youe Sweat. But Wash was nowhere to be found on the credits to this number one hit. She would later sue CNC Music Factory for fraud, deceptive packaging and commercial misappropriation. However, Wash would effectively be avenged less than a year later by another club banger that set a couple of new standards of its own. Most of us now think of Marky Mark Wahlberg's 1991 pop rap hit Good Vibrations as the thing he did before modeling underwear, acting in Oscar winning movies and producing bro y TV shows like Entourage. But the song has a legacy thanks to its full artist credit. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch featuring Lola Holloway. That's the explosive voice you hear on the song's chorus. It belongs to the gospel trained Holloway in a sample from her 1980 club smash Love Sensation. This song had already been featured in uncredited samples on prior hits including Samantha Fox. And yet again, Black Box. In fact, Black Box's hit hit Ride On Time actually picked up a different part of this exact same Lola Holloway song. Love Sensation provided the Black Box song's title and primary hook. After getting the Martha Wash style brush off on those earlier hits Hot Holloway successfully pressured Marky Mark Wahlberg's label to give her a full above the line featured credit on Good Vibrations. In essence, Martha Wash and Lolita Holloway were setting a new 90s template for the female hook singer. The inverse of the featured rapper model A la Rakim and Bobby Brown. We're Friends and she Ain't Worth it had been primarily sung with a featured rap. On the number one hits Gonna make youe Sweat and Good Vibrations, the song is primarily rapped and the featured artist is a power singer. When Good vibrations topped the Hot 100 in October 1991, Holloway became not only the first act given full artist credit for a sample on a number one hit, she was also the first chart topping hook singer, a crown that would have already gone to Martha Wash if CNC Music Factory had done right by her. Holloway even appeared in Marky Mark's music video singing her hook. So by the end of 1991, even then, the two main models of featured artist crossover on a big radio hit had been set. The featured bridge rapper a la she Ain't Worth it and the featured hook Singer a la Good Vibrations. Each is a recipe for melodic tempo and genre crossover. The former, model takes a fluffy pop song and adds in a frisson of hip hop edge. The latter takes a tart rap joint and cuts it with pop sweetness. You can break down much of the next two decades of Hot 100 hits through this prism. Let's start with the featured rapper model. Some 1990s and 2000s hits that adhere to the featured bridge rapper model include Michael Jackson's 1992 hit Jam featuring Heavy Duty, Blackstreet's 1996 hit no Diggity featuring Dr. Dre and Queen Pen I'll be.
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Sending the call, let's say around 3:30, Queen Pen.
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Janet Jackson's 1997 hit Got Till It's Gone featuring Q Tip.
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Joni mitchell.
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Jennifer Lopez's 2001 hit I'm Real, the chart topping remix featuring Ja Rule, Beyonce's 2003 chart top rapper Crazy in Love featuring her future husband Jay Z. And Rihanna's 2007 Song of Summer Umbrella featuring Jay Z. Again then the boss of her record lab. Switching to the featured hook singer model, a number of chart Conquering 90s and aughts hits temper a rap track with a sweet melodic hook. And while a man often raps and a woman often sings the hook, happily that is not always the case. For example, in 1994 on what a Man, women take both parts with Salt and Pepa in the lead rapper position and girl group En Vogue as the featured singers. Later in 1994, Warren G's regulate was supported by singer Nate Doggy, seen in.
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The clip and one in the Hole. Nate Dog is about to make some bodies turn cold now they dropping and yelling It's a tad bit late.
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Coolio's Billboard 1995 song of the year Gangsta's paradise featured singer LV. Turning back to Ja Rule, who, remember, was the feature rapper on that J Lo hit he takes lead position on 2002's chart topper always on Time featuring Ashanti. And finally, later that same year, Nelly's rapin B ballad Dilemma featured Kelly Rowland, a fellow member of Destiny's Child alongside Bill Beyonce. What has made the 21st century on the Hot 100 so remarkable, however, is how many new permutations of cross genre, lead and featured artists have scored with the public and how expansive the industry has become over over what qualifies for credit. The liberalization of credits started by rappers has even spread across genres. For example, consider Santana in the second Wave career of guitarist Carlos Santana. At the turn of the millennium, he took lead credit on a string of top 10 hits while superstar singers took the featured roles. These very prominent, very famous guests on Smash Santana hits have included Matchbox 20's RO, Rob Thomas, Singer songwriter Michelle Branch. And Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger. All of these singers received the featured credits with Santana in the lead. Or what about this 2004 hit. On his mournful soulbox ballad I Don't Wanna Know? Mario Winans, a member of the extended family of famous gospel clan the Winans, took rightful credit as the lead singer. But the supporting credits on this number two hit were a bit unusual. They included not only Sean Combs, then known as P. Diddy, who did have a bespoke rap on the song. They also included new age superstar Enya. She didn't sing a note or create anything new for this Winans hit, but that brooding tune you hear riding underneath the whole track is a sample of Enya's song Bodicea from her 1980 self titled debut album. Otherwise known as the Celts, Rappers had used this ethereal Enya melody before. In fact, it was the backbone of the 1996 Track Ready or Not by the Fugees, the supergroup rap trio of Wyclef Proz and Lauryn Hill. When Ready or Not was issued as a single back in 1996, the Fugees had sole artist credit with no features at all. Enya considered the suing the Fugees for the sample usage, which was not authorized by the artist herself. She eventually settled out of court on Mario Winans hit. Enya's track is even more prominent, But Winans and Diddy got around the Fugees problem by not only clearing the sample, but giving Enya full above the line featured credit on the single. Enya even appears before Diddy, who recorded Remember a completely new rap for this track. And yet the hit is credited to Mario Winans featuring Enya and P. Diddy, making it technically the multi platinum new age star's highest charting pop hit ever. It was a remarkable continuation, even an inversion of the Loliata Holloway featured sample credit on Marky Mark's Good Vibrations. So it's possible in the 21st century to win a featured credit for a sample you recorded decades earlier. What about if you barely even sing if you're only in the opening seconds of a track and mostly for comic purposes? That's basically the situation with Kanye West's 2005 number one smash Gold Digger, on which actor and singer Jamie Fox received full featured artist credit coming off his then new Oscar winning turn in the movie. Ray Fox leads off the single one with an imitation of Ray Charles that lasts barely 15 seconds.
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She take my money when I'm in.
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Need yeah, she's a trifling friend indeed oh, she's a gold digger.
- [54:26]
A
Here's the thing, that's pretty much the last time we hear Jamie Foxx for the rest of the single. The rest of Kanye West's hit rides atop a sample of the original Ray Charles single I Got a Woman. And yet the credits for gold digger, a 10 week Hot 100 chart topper in 2005, read Kanye west featuring Jamie Foxx. No mention of the just deceased soul legend Ray Charles, whose vocals can be heard for the rest of the song's three minutes. In short, and speaking of the Oscars, the featured artist credit has become a little bit like the best supporting actor or actress Oscar. Sometimes the winner really had something closer to a leading role, and sometimes the part is not much more than a drive by by the 2000 and tens, Kanye west was doling out featured credits like candy on Monster, one of the most acclaimed tracks on West's 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. One of the featured credits is for Bon Iver, the pseudonym of indie folk star Justin Vernon. Bon Iver doesn't do much on this multi rapper posse cut. It opens with his distorted voice singing about shooting the lights out.
- [56:05]
B
Oh, just another lonely night, Are you willing?
- [56:13]
A
But then Vernon never appears again. The full posse cut credit reads Kanye west featuring Jay Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver and Nicki Minaj. Weirdly, female rapper Minaj is listed last, but virtually every critic and rap fan agreed that her 32 bars showing up late in the song were the highlights and a star making performance. More than eight years into the 2010s the charts are awash in featured credits between leads and features. Four artist or even five artist credits are not unheard of on event singles. The king of event singles in the hip hop world is impresario, party starter and toastmaster DJ Khaled on his hits. Khaled speaks loudly but doesn't actually rap much. He is a hype man and even though he takes lead credit on his tracks, he is usually doing not much more than declaiming his name and the superiority of his label and his friends. Sometimes this produces something schlocky, like the 2017 number one hit We Talked about in our charity mega Singles edition of Hit Parade, I'm the one. The Khaled smash featuring Justin Bieber and three other rappers. But in the past, Khaled's multi rapper summits have generated memorable jams such as the 20114 rapper pileup I'm on One, not to be confused with the similarly titled I'm the One, Drake turned in a star making performance. Not that he wasn't already very popular by 2011, but on I'm on One, the then young Drake held his own, rapping alongside an estimable crew of Rick Ross and Lil Wayne. The rise of electronic dance music, or EDM has also inverted the concept of the lead artist. French DJ David Guetta takes lead lead on virtually all of his tracks, despite being supported by very starry singers and rappers. Sia, now a superstar in her own right, got her big breakthrough in 2013 in a featured role on Guetta's soaring, inspirational EDM ballad Titanium. And of course, Guetta's fellow Frenchman Daft Punk took the lead credit on their blockbuster Get Lucky, while their two veteran accompanyists Pharrell Williams and Nile Rogers, took the featured roles, even though their singing and guitar playing is far more prominent than the robot's vocoderized vocal. In late 2015, Justin Bieber, who was coming off the worst two years of his young life, including arrests for drag racing and public nudity, resuscitated his career by accepting a a featured role on Where Are youe Now? An acclaimed single led by superstar DJ duo Skrillex and Diplo, they gave their project the nom de DJ Jack Yu. The most arresting effect in the song is a dolphin like trill that is actually Bieber's voice processed by Skrillex through a sampler.
- [60:29]
B
So where are you now that I need you? Where are you now that I need you?
- [60:41]
A
If there are finally two artists who can not only bring us up to date, but cover the entirety of the 2010s, it is one man who broke through at the start of the decade and one woman who just broke into in the last 12 months. And this year they even teamed up. Bruno Mars has had a remarkable run in the 10s. Prior to 2010, he'd never had so much as a lower charting Hot 100 single, let alone a big hit. But one little remembered fact is that Bruno Mars broke as a featured artist. The lead act on his breakthrough hit was pop rapper B O B, whose career has been relatively quiet. Bob's last album in 2017, peaked at number 179 on the Billboard album chart and spawned no hits, even though he has long since been eclipsed by multi Grammy winner Bruno Mars. In 2010, Bob took the lead on the Hot 100 number one hit Nothin on youn, a tender rappin B boy Ballad that with 2020 hindsight served as a beta test for Bruno's decade long string of hit love songs. Of course, this has not been Mars only pop mode. He is a revivalist, an archaeologist of past pop styles who grafts modern beats onto these old modes and makes them fresh with totally new compositions. His biggest song of the decade was an homage to an old sound and again, while it's easy to forget this, Bruno was the featured artist supporting British R and B and pop producer Mark Ronson. The actual credit for their 2015 mega smash collaboration Uptown Funk, a rebooting of the Sound of early 80s call and response funky R and B, was Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. More recently a Latin rapper rapper from New York City with attitude to burn has gotten a ton of mileage out of the featured collaboration. Cardi B, a rapper born Belcalis Almansar in the Bronx, New York has scored a string of top 40 and even top 10 hits just in the last 12 months, and collaborations have made up more than half of them. Ironically, given our topic, Cardi's big breakthrough was a single she fronted all on her own, late 2017's Bodak Yellow, although it was based on a prior track by male rapper Kodak Black and he later showed up for a feature on a remix of the song. The primary recording that topped the Hot 100 last fall is credited to Cardi B by herself, But Bodak Yellow was the exception for Cardi B. She has had a few solo singles since, but the overwhelming majority of her hits have been savvy collaborations with a range of rap and R and B stars. As I speak, Billboard's current song of the summer is a no. 1 hit from Cardi B that is all collaboration. I Like it is a remake of a 51 year old Nuyorican salsa and boogaloo classic called I Like it like that. Carti has rebooted the track with two major Latin pop stars sharing the stage, Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny and Colombian reggaeton singer J Balvin. The word featuring does not appear in the credit, perhaps for contractual reasons. Their three names are separated only by an ampersand, but the song's music video makes clear that Cardi is the star and Balvin and Bad Bunny are backing her up. Oh he's so handsome.
- [65:23]
B
What's his name?
- [65:44]
A
It is appropriate that 2028 years to the week after the Hot 100 was capped by she Ain't Worth It. The chart is led again by a one off team up of rappers and singers and considering Trends in the 2010s, it is also poetic that earlier this year Cardi B and Bruno Mars, two of the most collaborative artists of the decade, teamed up for a superstar summit of their own. Finesse was an album cut on Mars Grammy winning album of the year, 24 Karat Magic. The track was a reboot of the sound of early 90s new jack swing, taking its cues from no Kidding Bobby Brown. When Mars reached 45 finesse as the album's fourth global single, this king of collaborations brought in a queen of collaborations, Cardi B. The week after the Cardi B remix drop dropped, Bruno Mars Finesse soared from the bottom of the top 40 all the way to a new peak of number three in January of 2018. The song remained in the top 40 all the way until June, and while it didn't reach number one, you could say it was history repeating from 1990. An easygoing pop star with a new jack swing jam teams with a hard partying MC with a kicking flow to send a hit hurtling up the charts. Of course, there are many twists in this tale. Bruno Mars is a much, much bigger pop star than Glenn Medeiros ever was, and Cardi B is both a more consistent and a better rapper than the moonlighting Bobby Brown. But still, if middle aged Glenn Medeiros is still paying any attention to the charts from his job as an educator in Hawaii, I hope he feels he played a small role in the hybridization of 21st century hits. All he would have to do back in January was tune in to this year's Grammy Awards. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Berube and we had help this episode from Danielle Hewitt and Dan Berube. The Managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas, our senior producer is TJ Raphael, and Steve Lichti is the Executive Producer 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 Gabfest 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 ground. I'm Chris Melancholy.
- [69:42]
B
You put your hands up.