#83

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

11th of 2016

Listen

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.