Scoreboard: J. Cole Takes Over The Charts

“4 Your Eyez Only” from J. Cole marks 18 different albums at #1 on the Billboard 200 in the last 18 weeks of 2016

Billboard Artist Top 10

For the magazine dated December 31, 2016

See the full chart at http://www.billboard.com/charts/artist-100

As 2016 comes to a close, J. Cole tops the Billboard 200 and the Artist 100 with 4 Your Eyez Only, a surprise release that finishes the fall ’16 season with a different #1 album for each of the last 18 weeks. There has been less change at the top of the Hot 100 – the only #1s over the same time span were “Closer” by The Chainsmokers ft. Halsey (12 weeks) and “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd ft. Gucci Mane (6 weeks).

@brunomars took his 24K Magic to Carpool Karaoke with 2017 Grammy Awards host James Corden

J. Cole’s Victory Lap

Jermaine Cole of Fayetteville, North Carolina, returns to #1 on the Billboard 200 this week, a feat he has achieved with all four of his studio albums. Cole’s path to success has been less-traveled. His contemplative hip-hop exists on the far end of Planet Rap, pretty much as far from 50 Cent as you can get. His previous album 2014 Forest Hills Drive achieved the distinctive feat of being the first hip-hop album without guest appearances to sell a million copies since 1990. A part of its appeal was Cole’s personal storytelling that made “Wet Dreamz” an unlikely rap hit in 2015 and got him a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album (that J. Cole lost to fellow socially-conscious rapper Kendrick Lamar).

4 Your Eyez Only follows suit with no guest appearances and this week all 10 tracks make the Top 40 of the Hot 100, with non-album singles “Everybody Dies” and “False Prophets” also in the top 60. Its album sales make it the #3 debut of the year, only behind Drake and Beyoncé, and confirm Cole as one of the most influential voices in hip-hop today. On “Everybody Dies” Cole takes on “the amateur eight week rappers” and on “False Prophets” he addresses rap stars “fallin’ apart” with Cole shaking his head on the first verse at what happened to his former idol Kanye West. According to Genius’s interpretation of the album’s storyline, 4 Your Eyez Only is based on the life of a friend of Cole’s who was a drug dealer and “tried to turn his life around after becoming a father.” It has its romantic moments on “Deja Vu” and “Foldin Clothes,” but the menace of American racism is never far removed. “Neighbors” is inspired by an incident in suburban North Carolina when neighbors called a SWAT team to raid the house where J. Cole was recording the album. “Some things you can’t escape,” Cole raps, “death, taxes, and a racist society that make every a n***a a candidate for a Trayvon kinda fate.” A devastating finish to a devastating year.

4 Your Eyez Only https://t.co/kDavo02ARh

— J. Cole (@JColeNC) December 9, 2016

@JColeNC is not on Instagram and this was only his second tweet in the last nine months

Zayn And Taylor Swift Make It Fifty Shades Darker

J. Cole is not the only one releasing new music in the middle of the holiday season. This week’s Scoreboard features Taylor Swift‘s return (up to #8 on the Artist 100) due to the release of “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” a duet with Zayn off of the forthcoming soundtrack to Fifty Shades Darker, the second film in the Fifty Shades trilogy. This is Swift’s first release since the wildly successful 1989 album and the duet features too-big-to-fail theatrics that would accompany a Taylor Swift comeback. The premise of living forever requires an epic quality previously demonstrated by Alphaville, Oasis, The Spice Girls, and Queen who finally get an answer to “Who Wants To Live Forever.” @zayn carries the weight of the duet, making his British predecessors proud, while Swift comes in for the second verse. The work as a whole is glossy and will make a bid for #1 in 2017. It follows the formula of “Elastic Heart,” which was first a joint production between Sia, The Weeknd, and Diplo for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack, before Sia’s solo version became a bigger hit. And given the success that Sia and The Weeknd had with their soundtrack tunes, it’s no wonder that Zayn and @taylorswift want a piece of the action.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BN0Rx1bANnk/?taken-by=zayn&hl=en

Save The Date: Fifty Shades Darker comes out Valentine’s Day 2017

Clean Bandit Take The Christmas #1 in Britain

The pre-Christmas week is special on the British charts. Each year artists save their best for December releasing the “Christmas single” and over the last decade many of the Christmas #1s were specially released singles, most from reality shows such as the X Factor. The British even gamble on what will be the Christmas #1 and this year even Mariah Carey was in the running. Her “All I Want For Christmas Is You” landed at #5 on the British Christmas chart (she slipped to #20 in America on the Hot 100 this week) and the X Factor single “When Christmas Comes Around” by Matt Terry thudded at #8. Clean Bandit were the big winners this Christmas not with a special release, but with single “Rockabye” ft. Anne-Marie and Sean Paul that has been around since October and has now notched seven weeks at #1 in Britain. In America, the song has just made the Hot 100, at #90 this week. Check out the music video below and stay tuned in 2017 to see if “Rockabye” give Zayn and Taylor Swift a run for their money for #1 in America.