#82

#82. Sampa the Great - Final Form (#89, 2019)

6th of 2019

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I have to issue a correction. Not for this blog, but one time, which I suspect was in late 2015, I was in the car with some family members with the radio on. A song was playing that someone was very much not into, exclaiming 'who is this?'. I wasn't very confident but I assumed it was that new rap upstart I was hearing about, so I said it was Little Simz. I suspect it was actually "F E M A L E" by Sampa the Great. In hindsight, I would never make that mistake again, but the differences in their flows were not quite as obvious as they are now that we have a decade of further experience to go by. I would also sooner defend both of them because they've proven to be pretty fantastic MCs.

In the case of Sampa the Great, what we've got here is one of the most unexpected breakout moments I've ever witnessed. That is a time accurate observation before, it was in 2015 that Sampa the Great first started getting played on triple j, and over the years she continued within that periphery. triple j plays so much Australian music that it's normal to become acquainted with many artists who you can be pretty certain are going to stay in their lane. Sampa the Great seemed like the most obvious one of these. She had a distinctive voice for sure, but nothing in her music screamed like it was ever primed to break through. There's never been much space for female rappers in Australia, and even less for rap that was so slow and introspective. The song I first cottoned onto was "Black Dignity", which I think is fantastic, but you can't listen to it and say that it's a future hit. Even when her music was more upbeat, it still just didn't really fit in with what the kids were listening to. I sometimes got a Macy Gray vibe except nearly two decades too late for that.

I'm not sure I even clocked any of this when "Final Form" came out. It's a bit of a different turn for her, but at the time I was already on board so I didn't consider the idea that she could convert more people. Even then, for as many people in the music industry who might talk it up, it still doesn't mean it'd convert. It's not like The Drones ever made the Hottest 100 after all. As it turns out, it was a bit of a sneak into the list, but it's rare that you get a song that so triumphantly announces its own arrival. This song's horns roll out its own red carpet and it's marvellous. Both those horns and the post-chorus vocals are sampled from "Stay Away From Me" by The Sylvers. Another song that came out a year earlier than "Final Form", "Late Night" by Space Invadas has a similar use of the sample.

I don't even think anything is compromised for it all in the end. It's certainly more pop friendly than usual for her, but it's still a song that takes nearly two minutes to get to its hook, and before that you get multiple verses of Sampa just owning the microphone. It all just feels like one of those moments when all the people who want to champion a talent like this finally have an easy avenue to win people over. Sampa the Great hasn't really had another hit or anything like this since. I thought her song "Better Days" with Baker Boy had some potential there but maybe not enough people heard it. The only other interesting observation I have to say in the aftermath is that her second album was called "As Above, So Below". That's also the name of Australian rock band Stonefield's second album from 2016. I remember hearing from Birds of Tokyo that they named their 2016 song "Above / Below" as such because they didn't want to copy Stonefield. I'm going to assume I heard that during a live show though because there's no word of it online. Jury is out on whether or not the current #1 album in Australia got the message, though that artist will eventually appear on this list. Maybe Sampa the Great could get a bigger hit in the future. She left some room for tempered expectations when she said she only 'might' final form. While I'm at it, Freeza never actually said 'This isn't even my final form', but in fairness he's had so many final forms at this point that it's hard to feel threatened by it. Well, he would be threatening if he wasn't just a cartoon, what with all the planets he's blown up.

#83

#83. Childish Gambino - Redbone (#5, 2016)

11th of 2016

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For the 2025 Hottest 100, I did something I don't normally do and I made a prediction for the whole top 20. It's common to back this up with data like the kind you could theoretically scrape from social media for sampling, but I didn't do that either. I just went with my gut feelings based on how the year had played out, and how past Hottest 100s seemed to show the state of play. This turned out to be extremely accurate in a way I have to attribute largely to luck, where most of my gut feelings shaped up correctly, and everything I had tipped for the top 20 either landed in it, or very closely outside of it.

The one major mistake I had made with it was failing to account for "Rein Me In". The song had evidently started making in-roads towards the end of the year which probably should have been the big clue (it's Sam Fender's only top 50 hit in Australia to date, and already was in November). In my mind, it was too little, too late and the song would do reasonably well but not figure much higher than #25-#30. As the countdown continued, I watched as it slid past one song after another, eventually landing at #14, so it's also Sam Fender's highest ever entry in that regard too.

I just wasn't ready for what was going to happen next. The song took its stride of momentum from the Hottest 100 and just didn't stop. It was aided by a feel good viral TikTok trend, and that was the last piece of the puzzle. By late February it was a top 10 single, and in early April, a #1 single. We're probably going to look back at that result in years to come and be flabbergasted that it didn't do better. A certain case of a song that was punished by getting popular too late, but still finished high enough that it's not entirely obvious.

This is a peculiar instance that's hard to predict but also isn't unprecedented. I think the Hottest 100 can be a proving ground that signals potential that hasn't been utilised fully yet. Whenever I find myself thinking 'Wow, that's surprisingly high', it's a sign that there's something in it, and it might reveal itself in the future. For further evidence of that, I look at another example, "Redbone" by Childish Gambino.

"Redbone" was the second single from "Awaken, My Love" (the quotation marks are part of the title this time), following the experimental "Me and Your Mama" (#184). My feelings on the two songs were fairly similar, but if pressed for it, I'd concede that "Redbone" was the bigger hit. It just wasn't by a big enough margin to really consider, or so I thought until the Hottest 100 came around and put 83 positions between the two songs. The rest of 2017 was just a matter of seeing that gap come into fruition, as "Redbone" exploded from then to become one of the biggest hits of the year. There it is at #49 for the year in Australia, and #25 for the year in America (the UK couldn't really find a place for it in the moment but it has gone triple Platinum there). I do say explode in the metaphorical sense though, as it was a rather slow burning hit that didn't chart especially high but just hung around all year. How did he achieve this chart hit in the modern era? Why, with a funk rock jam, obviously.

It's not all purely an aesthetic, the song appears to borrow elements from "I'd Rather Be With You", which gives George Clinton & Bootsy Collins a writing credit on it. I'm not sure if the main audience was the rap crowd or the rock crowd but having both on his side couldn't have hurt. The song is also a fairly long one in that sense. Most songs around the five and a half minute mark tend to struggle to hang on the charts (I guess "Rein Me In" is another exception), because you can guarantee the radio isn't really going to try. It probably doesn't help that the song's memorable hook is only 4 words and one of them certainly isn't going to get aired. The word before it probably ruffles some feathers too. I'm reminded of one of my favourite joke tweets, someone giving up on watching The Sopranos because the first word heard on the show is 'woke' (technically true).

The song unintentionally did get a dose of being what some might consider 'woke' because it famously was included on the soundtrack to Jordan Peele's directorial debut "Get Out", a film I would say is very good but I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching it for the first time on a plane like I did. The movie came out only a few months after the song did and completely suits it in one of those perfect coincidental opportunities. Peele's subsequent films "Us" and "Nope" have instead chosen to make nightmares out of "I Got 5 On It" and "Sunglasses At Night", so it makes this usage of a more modern song feel less out of obligation. In general, it's just hard to argue with the success of the song, the whole thing just sounds great, there's a sick guitar solo at the end, and Gambino is consistently pushing his voice in strange and interesting ways.

#84

#84. BROCKHAMPTON - SWEET (#11, 2017)

10th of 2017

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I don't know if anyone would willingly admit it, but the discovery that Geese were significantly boosted by people who were paid to pretend they were organically fans of the band creates a potentially interesting dilemma. How willingly would anyone accept they've been duped into one fandom over another. It feels especially dicey in the world of artists whose identity is in some way built around the way they present an alternative to the boring mainstream. You'll feel more attached and make it part of your personality, probably. The lesson is probably to only take recommendations from people you know, people you couldn't for a moment believe were paid to say it, but then maybe it's not a big deal after all. Inorganic or not, it's still an opportunity to be part of something, and build a sense of community around it. I don't want to have a go at any Geese fans. At the end of the day, they're a band where I feel all the more confident that people do go to bat for what they're hearing because they're too abrasive to just pretend to be into it. I also sometimes wonder if I fell for the same trap years ago with BROCKHAMPTON.

This isn't much to go off of, it's just something I think about often that feels increasingly strange to me. I think that what pushed me to listen to BROCKHAMPTON back in 2017 was actually comments on triple j's Facebook. It's not usually a place you expect to see hype for a new artist, but I just saw so many words of commendation about the group like it was a no-brainer. I can't prove this was all someone's paid-for scheme, but the shoe really fits in this case.

The whole history of BROCKHAMPTON is pretty rooted in that kind of internet notoriety anyway. Kevin Abstract started the group by posting on KanyeToThe, asking if anyone wants to start a band. It's a huge piece of internet history that's still available to see. It's one of those showbiz type operations that you start to associate with all the potential kinds of massive depravity in the way of plugs. The way you look at all the top YouTubers and see the shamelessness in it, because at the end of the day, it works. With just how large BROCKHAMPTON really was, including many members who didn't actually rap, it all feels like part of the strategy as well. However it happened, it's a long gambit. That Kevin Abstract post was made in 2011. BROCKHAMPTON blew up very suddenly in 2017 to deliver one of the craziest Hottest 100 performances in recent history. Sure, there's room to do better, but to see them come out of nowhere and land this high with a song that was neither a gimmick, nor a crossover hit, it doesn't seem to make much sense at all. I do lament contributing to keeping them out of the top 10 because I voted for the song that blocked them, but that's as much as you can do that when I'm also still ranking that song above this one.

"SWEET" does happen to be the song that triple j were playing the most. They weren't short of options, because by the end of 2017, BROCKHAMPTON released a whole trilogy of "SATURATION" albums. They are largely characterised by a pattern of all-caps song titles that started with four letters and went up to five on the last track (which was generally a Bearface song), increasing the letter count and then looping back around by the end of the 3rd one. As far as talking about the music, it's an interesting strategy because nothing feels like it stands out much and it's hard to remember which song is which as there's rarely any clear connection. "GOLD" & "SUMMER" actually do have the title work in their hook, but otherwise you're squinting to say things like 'yeah, "FIGHT" does sound like you could stage an AMV fight sequence over it', or 'It must be called "SWEET" because they mention liquorice'.

The thing I find most interesting about BROCKHAMPTON's eventual crossover success is that it comes about in a counterproductive way. I think for a lot of people, the appeal of the band was how genuinely out there they sounded. If your introduction is through the song "HEAT", you'll hear something intense on all accounts. The first words Joba gets on the record are him screaming 'f**k you!', which you're just not gonna get from more carefully focus tested releases (this will also become relevant again later on the list). That's the kind of thing a lot of people do want to hear, something that sounds like it was made to engage but not be a hit. BROCKHAMPTON had it in spades, a mix of different voices and ideas, with memorable and distinct beats that kept finding new things to do. It was often the thing I kept going back to the most, songs like "QUEER" and "ZIPPER" were just so interesting.

So is "SWEET" some kind of concession? I'm not really sure. It feels like one of their most unassuming songs because it's just a posse cut in its purest form. You get to see everyone's flavour and what they bring to the group. Matt spilling his emotions, Dom pertaining to flow like he's the architect, Merlyn being a complete wild card, Ameer doing his one trick and Joba putting on all his voices. Kevin doesn't actually get a verse here but you know he's always good for a good hook. My favourite moment has to be the start of Merlyn's verse, where he's already starting with an iconic line 'DON'T CALL ME STUPID' and then manages to switch up his flow in real time to the point that it feels like he's passed off the mic. The way Kevin joins up with him in the music video sells the illusion even more. It's one of so many of their songs that individually feels like they're using up everything they've got, and yet they just kept doing that over and over again. You come to BROCKHAMPTON for the boundless possibilities, more than anything.

#85

#85. British India - Summer Forgive Me (#84, 2013)

17th of 2013

I have a strong habit of going rogue with regards to my favourite songs by a lot of artists. Maybe I'm projecting a bit and everyone does it, but the beacon-like nature of popularity has a habit of exemplifying the regular reaction. I think it also gets reinforced over time because the accepted truth just tends to block everything else out as an entry point. The Rapture are the "House of Jealous Lovers" band, Fischerspooner are the "Emerge" band. It's very easy to use these as your accepted entry point and then just not go any further with it. If they had something else worth hearing about, I'd have heard about it, right? This is me going to bat for "Get Myself Into It" and "Never Win", for the likely reason that they're just the ones I heard first. Sometimes, it can feel like you're being pushed out of your nuance because it's just easier to go along with what everyone else says.

For the most part, this isn't really important. The breadth of choices is always there and I can live in my world where "Science of Fear" or "Rabbit Hole" are just as important as the usual suspects in The Temper Trap's discography. One exception to this is in the live music setting. That's one where depending on the artist and the context of the show, you likely have to take concessions to the consensus, and find out how willing you are to go along with it. That super deep cut you love just isn't going to come through but the song that got them famous absolutely will.

This all came to mind because I was recently thinking about a bunch of my favourite songs over the years and which ones I've had the opportunity to hear played live. It's a relatively small fraction, because I don't go to a great deal of shows and even if I did, you can probably imagine how often Western Australia gets left off the itinerary. What stood out to me though, is how often I had these standout picks that had basically no shot at ever coming into fruition, because I'd already seen these bands and they didn't have them in the setlist. Every new album cycle is just potentially more of them to get cycled out of rotation, very rarely will something come back.

With that in mind, one of my favourite British India songs is "Beneath The Satellites". On the whole, it's probably boilerplate British India but I have great affection for the delivery of the title, the way it's elongated but the sung note is shifted with no subtlety. I don't think I've encountered it done in such a way that called out to me like this before or since. The song was released in early 2010, as the second single to the band's 3rd album. I suspect that it was all over the setlist during that album cycle but never again, as the song wasn't really much of a hit. Sure enough, I saw them live in 2016 and it wasn't included, the window was over. My memory of that setlist is a little fuzzy but I feel like they weren't playing much of their very early material if any. Only "I Can Make You Love Me" feels safe from the passage of time because it's their biggest hit. I was in luck however, because I'm pretty sure "Summer Forgive Me" made the cut. That's not really a big hit either, but it does have a strong advantage as the direct follow up to "I Can Make You Love Me". I'd be pretty ready to accept this song being pretty forgotten but that position in their discography gave it the best kind of momentum. Instead of just being another British India song that I like a lot in particular, it split the difference to just make it over the line here and feel like a notable song in the long run.

I think the best thing it has going for it is the general production & mixing. British India are a garage rock band at heart and thrive on that kind of scrappy sound. Here, they switch things up with something that sounds remarkably crisp. I don't think it would work quite as well if it sounded like a 128 bit rate mp3 that was nicked off Limewire. It makes the band feel more primed for the big time, and just in general feels like one of their most instantly clicking songs.

#86

#86. Drake - Passionfruit (#35, 2017)

11th of 2017

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One of the more mundane coincidences I've come across relates to Australian soft drinks. When you think of passionfruit drinks, the two that come to mind are Asahi's Passiona, and Kirk's Pasito. In a very quick space of time in early 2017, we managed to have two notable songs that recalled them to mind. The Smith Street Band's "Passiona" (#366) of course, and who could leave out "Despacito", which is of course French for 'Some Pasito' [citation needed]. Also at the very same time, Drake joined in with "Passionfruit", and these were the only three songs I could ever think of that managed to fit this idea, until The Rions had their own "Passionfruit" many years later.

If you're reading this post as it came out, you might be aware that Drake recently released 3 albums on the same day. If you're reading this further in the future, it's not too late, but who even knows what gimmicks he's resorted to since then. It's been a peculiar thing to witness, as I've watched the general perception of Drake change over the years. Maybe it all happened the moment he first had a #1 single and he was no longer the curious underdog to root for, and became the very establishment propped up solely on pure hubris and persistence. It was something that became very clear around when he released "For All The Dogs" in 2023. I just remember seeing a comment that was dismissive of the potential sales on Drake's album when physical formats were released, as it's hard to imagine someone spending actual money for a CD or vinyl over just streaming the latest disposable offering. I almost didn't question it but then I remembered back in the early 2010s, how different things were back then.

In a time when many artists were having trouble with that aspect of fandom, Drake was a glaring exception. It was mainly just in the US, but suffice to say, he was an absolute monster in terms of getting fans to buy his albums. His first four albums coincided with his own growing popularity and a slide in pure sales across the board, but it was he who was actually winning that battle. He'd consistently sell close to half a million copies in his first week, peaking with "Views" in 2016 which managed over 850,000 sales to go with record breaking streaming numbers. Almost nobody but Adele or Taylor Swift was doing Drake numbers. This is evidently not the case anymore. Drake is still a very bankable star, obviously, but that album-buying audience he once had has all but disappeared. Most recently, "ICEMAN" managed just 13,000 pure sales in its first week in America, and that was the big one of the three. Just a decade ago, Drake nearly moved half a million digital sales in a week with a barely announced mixtape.

You can make a lot of brash judgements on this. I do think the easiest is just to say that Drake eventually neglected the artistry of the album format. He's become one of the more infamous artists of late whose every action with regard to his discography seems to preference keeping the ship running with excess, rather than quality control. There's a need to seemingly always have something out around the corner, and to buff the streaming numbers by making as many songs as possible. It's begrudgingly working, but it feels like the disappearance of a once vital performance metric for Drake in pure sales has been the cost of doing business this way. You can't expect your fans to value your art if you treat it so frivolously.

My gut feeling is that this all set in when Drake released "More Life" in 2017. This was just under a year after he'd released his 20 track album "Views". "More Life" had 22 tracks, and then just a year later came "Scorpion" with 25 tracks. I hate to reference the TERF wizard franchise but I just can't not think of Harry Potter's cousin Dudley lamenting getting one less birthday present than last year and getting his parents to cave and buy two more presents when they go out. That feels like the mindset Drake is satiating, the idea that to slow down, is to signal to shareholders that it's all downhill from here. The aspect that I've left out here is that Drake marketed "More Life" as a playlist, as opposed to a mixtape. It feels like an attempt to modernise the nomenclature to something a younger generation is more familiar with, but you can't help but be cynical about just how banal it comes across. It changes the dynamic from 'Here's a fun sequence of songs I put together' into 'Here are some songs, do what you want with it'. I'll also admit that when it comes to his sheer excess of productivity, the line between studio album Drake & mixtape Drake has never felt less clear to me.

I'll be fair though. Regardless of how I might feel about where Drake's output has been heading lately, I didn't feel quite as uninterested back in 2017. I thought there was some potential in this project, and by all accounts, it had its moments. I have to give big props to "Get It Together", for introducing me to Black Coffee and also giving Jorja Smith a starring role. The two of them provide good balance so it's not just 4 straight minutes of Drake, in a way that seems increasingly common. His later Hottest 100 hits, "Rich Baby Daddy" and "NOKIA" feel more like bops that Drake happens to be on, rather than Drake songs in their entirety. Alongside this, "Passionfruit" is just a really good song too.

It's a song that's surprised me a little lately by just how well it's endured. Certainly it was a popular song in its time, but if any Drake songs are going to fade into the background after they have their moment, it's gonna be the more unassuming ones that aren't attached to a major project. It was a little hard to get a read on "Passionfruit" at the time because a lot of its momentum could just be owed by being the 'single' from the latest Drake project, but also being one that didn't feel entirely tuned to be a pop hit. "Passionfruit" is 5 minutes long. It takes about a minute to get going and then it resets itself. Drake's first verse starts at the 1:16 mark, and his last chorus ends at 3:46, meaning it's really a two and a half minute Drake song that's been stretched to double time. Unless you want to shut out other artists by being a time thief, there's no commercial benefit to making the song this long.

For that, I think Drake is just lucky that he landed on a brilliant instrumental. It's a very simple loop that doesn't really change much for the whole song, but in this simplicity, it just manages to land on something incredibly soothing. Sometimes he'll land a bullseye, but I often think much of Drake's negative perception of late is on how often he tries to make much harder raps that can't invite as many people in. "Passionfruit" is a big invitation for all the non-Drake fans and continues to be one of his absolute most popular songs to this day. As I write this, aside from tracks on his new albums, only "One Dance" (#796) is outstreaming "Passionfruit" daily on Spotify, so it's become an unexpected but welcome classic.

#87

#87. Ocean Alley - Deepest Darkness (#56, 2022)

4th of 2022

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I'll try not to belabour the point too much but it really is a red flag to me when anyone sweeps entire discographies under the same rug. I'm a believer in putting your best foot forward and choosing your battles. To chime in on literally everything feels like building up an ego that can't possibly be lived up to. I know, because I've sometimes overstepped my mark and felt the blunt force of my own ignorance getting called out. It doesn't feel great. Sometimes you can find yourself in the kind of echo chamber where it's a particularly shared ignorance, and you'll probably get away with it. Anyone willing to call it out either isn't there, or is just going to get shouted down by the collective who aren't willing to concede the fun they have in their broad summary.

Ocean Alley get this a lot, I feel. If you've heard one Ocean Alley song, you've heard them all,  apparently. Their most famous song (#521) doesn't do much to stand out, and so it feels fitting to say it's the band in a nutshell. The crucial mistake of conflating the most prominent example with everything else that hasn't done enough to earn its stripes in the conversation. Anyone dismissing Ocean Alley like this probably thinks "Way Down" (#312) and "Drenched" are like for like, and would never care enough to consider otherwise. There's just nothing in it for them, deep down, you crave the adversarial artist that you can put in their place, and the more popular they are, the more people you can position yourself above for having figured out not to waste time with them.

I have been holding onto a peculiar stat for Ocean Alley ever since around when I made this whole list years ago. In direct contrast to the reported stereotype, I've ended up giving Ocean Alley what could be argued as the most even spread of positions across all of this. If you split this all up into ten chunks of 100, you will find Ocean Alley in nine of them. It's only the #201-#300 section they don't snatch up. I think they had a pretty solid haul of entries in the most recent countdown though so there probably is space in that particular outer ring of my heart for them in the end. I just find the whole thing amusing for twofold reasons, firstly that I just really didn't know I had this in me, yet it made perfect sense as it came through. Secondly, that Ocean Alley have done so completely against the tide, where the latter years are relatively struggling on the overall standings, but here they are getting their highest two entries in 2021 & 2022. The heroes we didn't know we needed.

As a direct follow up to "Touch Back Down" (#150), it was probably the best context for me to give "Deepest Darkness" a proper look-in. I just had no idea that they'd so thoroughly surpass my expectations again and deliver something like this. It's not very Ocean Alley at all, and to me, re-calls mid-90s post-grunge. Think "Comedown" by Bush. Some of that stuff can get bogged down by sloppy production choices that haven't necessarily aged the best, but I can't hear any sludge in "Deepest Darkness", because all the instruments come through so pronounced. You can hear multiple guitar lines over the chorus counter-acting each other, and the drums & hi-hats get their chance to poke in above the mix. Outside of the chorus, even just the song's opening note is the ultimate mood-setter. This is the sound of completely locking in.

#88

#88. BENEE - Find an Island (#25, 2019)

7th of 2019

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I am once again presenting myself with a serious challenge which is to find a bunch of things to write about an artist whose career was very much in its infancy when they notched up multiple entries that all happened so quickly that there's not much in the way of unique stories here. That's right, I've got 3 consecutive singles from before BENEE even had an album out that all share the same producer and don't sound dissimilar. What a prospect.

Well, I suppose if nothing else, "Find an Island" is relatively noteworthy because it's technically BENEE's breakthrough single, the first to chart in Australia. That comes with some big asterisks, but then arguably the more realistic outcome also did, but much like how I said it's weird CHVRCHES got their first Hottest 100 entry with "Lies" (#91), it's weird here too in a different way. This feels like BENEE just trucking along, although I suppose if not for late virality on the part of "Glitter" (#737), then this could easily have wound up as her highest Hottest 100 entry of her career, so maybe I do have to consider it more closely.

I'll probably have more to say about the general vibe of BENEE's music and what it represents specifically for me in the future. I tend to enjoy introspective music which lets you into the head of the artist, and it's something I find she's generally quite good at. "Find an Island" is a slight change of pace as the song is directed outward. Instead of direct feelings, we're instead gleaming from this by her choice of words and tone. "Find an Island" could easily be a break-up song, but instead it's just a petty argument BENEE was having with her guitarist, turning into the logical extreme of asking them to get as far away as possible. By all accounts, I think she knows it's a bit silly and that's why it's expressed in this way. I am fond of committing to the bit, starting to talk about rafts and a search party. I wonder if BENEE has also seen Lost.

Up to this point in her career, it's probably her most openly upbeat song. I get the feeling that she was generally using a slight veil of darkness to shyly come into the world of music and not try to be too boisterous, so this might just be her getting more comfortable about it all. The production is a key part of this as it manages to suit the generally bouncy lyrics with some silliness as well. That one little cowbell is the signal not to take it too seriously, but also works as a solid transition. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to sound so effortless.