Something odd that I noticed on the iTunes top songs chart yesterday: the #3 song was "This Is Why I'm Hot," the currently inescaple and tremendously annoying song by the rapper Mims that you hear every time you turn on the radio or BET these days. But the version on the iTunes chart was by Jae Millz, not Mims. At first I figured there was some weird glitch where Apple's data entry people couldn't keep their fourth-tier New York rappers straight. But rather it was the consumers that couldn't tell the difference; if you search iTunes for the phrase "this is why I'm hot," a freestyle over the track from a recent Jae Millz mixtape, which became available on iTunes this past Tuesday, is the only thing that comes up, because the actual Mims song isn't available on iTunes yet. Granted, Jae Millz is a much better rapper than Mims, so unless you're really hung up on the verses from the original, the freestyle is probably an improvment. But it's kind of remarkable that such an odd combination of coincidence and misunderstanding has led some random mixtape freestyle by a barely famous rapper to become the 3rd most downloaded song on iTunes, which I assume translates to thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of 99 cent downloads.
When I checked the list again this morning, it was still at #3, but a couple hours later, it had been taken off the list entirely, so I guess someone caught the mistake. But honestly, that doesn't seem fair, because evidently enough people were buying the song, for whatever reason, to push it up the chart, and the mixtape, illegal as it may be in some sense or another, is still available on iTunes (along with the countless Gangsta Grillz tapes that have remained available on there well after the DJ Drama arrest.) I wish it'd stayed there at least a little longer, if only to see what aftershocks could result. Considering how much iTunes downloads impact the Billboard charts these days, Jae Millz could've actually stormed the Hot 100 because of this fluke and ended up higher than the Mims version, which is currently at #46. This could become the latest desperate backdoor strategy for rappers to get heard, put their version of a hit song on iTunes before the real thing's on sale, and zoom up the chart for a couple days (and possibly rake in a few thousand bucks) before anyone notices.
When I checked the list again this morning, it was still at #3, but a couple hours later, it had been taken off the list entirely, so I guess someone caught the mistake. But honestly, that doesn't seem fair, because evidently enough people were buying the song, for whatever reason, to push it up the chart, and the mixtape, illegal as it may be in some sense or another, is still available on iTunes (along with the countless Gangsta Grillz tapes that have remained available on there well after the DJ Drama arrest.) I wish it'd stayed there at least a little longer, if only to see what aftershocks could result. Considering how much iTunes downloads impact the Billboard charts these days, Jae Millz could've actually stormed the Hot 100 because of this fluke and ended up higher than the Mims version, which is currently at #46. This could become the latest desperate backdoor strategy for rappers to get heard, put their version of a hit song on iTunes before the real thing's on sale, and zoom up the chart for a couple days (and possibly rake in a few thousand bucks) before anyone notices.
Labels: hip hop
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on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 8:49 PM.
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