The 20 Best Rap Radio Hits of 2020
In August, I put together my big list of the top 100 rap singles of the 2010s, so it’s interesting to turn the page to a new decade and see which stars from the previous era are still here and who’s taking over. Obviously, it’s been a weird year and people haven’t gotten to enjoy a lot of these songs in the club or in the car the way they ordinarily would, but in some ways it felt comforting that hip hop kept marching on and creating memorable moments and songs throughout the 2020 clusterfuck. Here’s the Spotify playlist.
1. Roddy Ricch - "The Box"
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
It feels a little, I dunno, unimaginative to put the same artist at #1 two years in a row, but “The Box” owned 2020 even more decisively than “Ballin’” owned 2019. In the streaming era, highly anticipated albums that don’t have a single in heavy rotation before the release date tend to get a crowdsourced hit, and it’s usually something with a big feature (“Sicko Mode,” etc.). But now and then, the wisdom of the crowd favors a solo track from early in the album that doesn’t really sound like it was made for the radio but is great nonetheless and has some unique quality that helps it catch on, like the flute in Future’s “Mask Off” or the ‘eeh-err’ loop in “The Box.” As I said in Spin earlier this year, it’s remarkable that a song like “The Box” topped the Hot 100 for about as long as far more carefully engineered crowd-pleasers like “In Da Club” or “Hot In Herre,” but it holds up to that kind of ubiquity pretty well. And to Roddy Ricch’s credit, he didn’t make a video until the song was already huge, directed it himself, and it totally lived up to the anticipation.
#6 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
For the last few years, I’ve regarded Moneybagg Yo as the most talented of the new wave of Memphis rap stars, and Blac Youngsta as the least. But when they both get on a roll together as they do on this song, they’re pretty evenly matched. Tracks that are basically just a few notes from the two lowest octaves on a piano over drums are one of my favorite styles of southern rap production, and it felt like “1 2 3” brought the sound back a little this year, with other hits like “Headlocc” by Yella Beezy and “Quarantine Thick” by 2 Chainz following in its wake.
#5 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #3 Hot 100
There is, of course, never a shortage of hip hop that addresses social issues, but little of it bubbles up to the level of heavy radio rotation, and what does is often laughably bad (for instance, 2020’s uprising of police protests actually inspired a lot of radio stations to put Childish Gambino’s loathsome and smugly incoherent 2018 hit “This Is America” back in rotation). By that standard, “The Bigger Picture” is remarkable: Lil Baby, who had already released the year’s biggest rap album, came out with a one-off topical single that was clear-eyed and vulnerable and a lot more interesting than someone more expected like Kendrick Lamar coming down from the mountaintop with a message. It’s not a flawless song -- saying “what happened to COVID? nobody remember” in June has aged really really poorly – but it was a welcome moment that added a little variety and depth to Lil Baby’s other 2020 triumphs.
#3 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
Digging deep into the backstory of “Whores In This House” with the man sampled on Cardi B’s song, Al “T” McLaran, for Vulture was one of the most fun and well received articles I wrote this year, so I have a fond association with this song apart from just the spectacle of this filthy track topping the Hot 100 and making half of America sound like Tipper Gore for a few weeks. I didn’t spend nearly as much time in the car in 2020 as other years, obviously, but I still found it odd that I never heard “WAP” on the radio once, given that the Baltimore and Washington stations I listened to played every previous Cardi B hit to death, and this is after all the region that birthed “Whores In This House.” It is a song that isn’t nearly as good in radio edit form, though.
#4 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #22 Hot 100
One of the many depressing things about the incredibly high death toll of young rap stars the last few years is that it feels like rap radio has largely squandered the opportunity to celebrate those artists and maybe give them a big “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” kind of moment. Nipsey Hussle, Mac Miller, a lot of guys could and should have had a posthumous hit all over the airwaves but for whatever reason it didn’t happen. So I’m glad that at least Pop Smoke got a big send off with a series of radio hits after his February death. The songs released posthumously, like the one with 50 Cent, were generally kind of middling and abandoned the sound that made Pop Smoke a star, but at least one of the best songs released during his lifetime, “Dior,” had a big surge on the charts too.
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #2 Hot 100
“God’s Plan” is one of the few Drake hits that always sounded barely like a single to me, like he just picked a song at random and threw it out there. Clearly I’m in the minority there, because it was his first and so far only diamond-certified single. But his next album-launching lead single with the same producers, Cardo and Yung Exclusive, was one of the rare Drake singles I liked right away, I didn’t have to kind of shrug and accept its ubiquity like I usually do.
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
If 2019 was the year that a wave of new stars swept into the mainstream, 2020 was when they cemented their spots, with Roddy Ricch, Megan Thee Stallion, and DaBaby all getting their first #1s on the Hot 100 this year. DaBaby was the only one that it felt like social media really turned on, though – I probably haven’t heard as much talk about a rapper’s career being over while they had a huge #1 record since Ja Rule. “Rockstar” is definitely a step away from the JetsonMade sound that he broke through with, with the kind of generic Spanish guitar loop that’s been on pop rap songs for decades, but it’s still kind of a dark, harrowing song when you stop to listen to it, and Roddy brings a great little countermelody in with his verse.
8. Jack Harlow - "Whats Poppin"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #2 Hot 100
While DaBaby was expanding outside his signature JetsonMade-produced sound, a white kid from Kentucky who looks like a teen movie protagonist teamed up with the producer to get the mainstream breakthrough he’d been hinting at for a couple years. A lot of the freewheeling charm of “Whats Poppin” comes from how it’s one long rambling verse bookended by a refrain at the beginning and the middle, and I was annoyed when the original track was replaced on radio playlists by the remix that runs the hook too many times and features a Tory Lanez verse that nobody needed to hear anymore about a month after it dropped.
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
As a female rapper from Houston, people had been rooting for Meg to get the elusive Beyonce feature as soon as she started making noise on a national level. So it felt inevitable, but still exciting, when B anointed Meg’s decent TikTok hit and really turned it into a great song, with no less than four seasoned hit songwriters (The-Dream, Starrah, Pardison Fontaine, and Jay-Z) lending Beyonce enough quotables to make the remix live up to its event status.
#5 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #31 Hot 100
The day My Turn was released, I published a Spin piece that positioned Lil Baby as one of the most likely rappers to ascend to the A-list in 2020, but I was still a little surprised at just how quickly and decisively the album took him to that level in the following weeks. My Turn’s two advance singles “Woah” and “Sum 2 Prove” are some of the more unremarkable songs to ever launch a multiplatinum blockbuster, but the first album track to catch on, “Emotionally Scarred,” really puts the strength of Lil Baby’s writing on perfect display. And it still kind of birthed a meme with that “each occasion two hundred” video.
#13 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #95 Hot 100
I don’t even feel comfortable as a white person typing out M*latto’s awful stage name, but she undeniably had a great year and made the biggest career leap from 2019 to 2020 of any of the growing number of female rappers on the chart. And I did like her breakout single, it kind of conjured a mid-2000s crunk feel without just outright sampling a Lil Jon beat like Saweetie’s hits.
#32 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
The Verzuz against Rick Ross was probably the biggest look 2 Chainz got this, and he used the opportunity to release a great lead single for his latest album, but both the single and the album underperformed. I really loved Playa Pizzle’s production for “Money Maker,” though, the HBCU brass band interpolation of Guy’s “Piece of My Love” with weird glitchy percussion bursts sounded so cool.
#5 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #17 Hot 100
The Twitter meme that Moneybagg Yo adapted into the chorus of “Said Sum” was always an eye-rolling and annoying joke format, but he turned it into a hot song, the biggest of his career to date. And he got probably the best remix of the year thanks to JT from City Girls.
#8 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay
In the past, Young Dolph’s singles have never performed as well on the radio as his features for O.T. Genasis and Colonel Loud, and it kinda felt like he was a huge regional star who might never be totally embraced on a national level. But while I’m sure the Meg feature helped push this song up the charts, it was the one time this year her presence on a song didn’t feel like the main attraction, it was more about Dolph on a great Juicy J beat giving Memphis another win.
#9 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #62 Hot 100
NBA Youngboy is another guy whose huge popularity has yet to really translate to radio spins – he got his biggest hits this year with the Gucci Mane homage “Make No Sense” and a Migos collaboration, which suggests that rap radio’s Atlanta-centric idea of southern rap is kind of keeping him at arm’s length. But “Need It” was kind of unexpectedly great, 4 MC’s going back and forth bar-for-bar over a sample of Hi-Tek’s beat for the 50 Cent deep cut “Get In My Car.”
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #20 Hot 100
Roddy Ricch and Mustard are really 2 for 2 with their collaborations. I was a little disappointed at first that Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial only had one Mustard track and it was kind of a softer song than “Ballin’,” but that sparkling piano sound really grew on me. Roddy Ricch’s Young Thug influence has probably never been more prominent than it is here and in some ways “High Fashion” feels like his “Lifestyle.”
#7 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #10 Hot 100
Most of the songs that made Lil Baby the biggest rapper of 2020 were melodic and melancholy. But the biggest hit from the deluxe edition of My Turn gave him a more traditional bragging-about-money club anthem, albeit one that sounded pretty weird thanks to Section 8’s unnerving and minimal production and Detroit rapper 42 Dugg’s bizarre gargle of a voice.
#3 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #25 Hot 100
Most rap stars in 2020 are singers to some degree, but Florida’s Rod Wave is the guy who went full-on balladeer with his breakthrough hits “Heart On Ice” and “Girl Of My Dreams.” In another time he would’ve been the 4th most talented member of an R&B quartet, but now he’s a star.
#10 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #30 Hot 100
After the triumph of 2019’s So Much Fun, it felt like Young Thug was quietly everywhere in 2020, finally enjoying the level of success he’d deserved for years. His album with Chris Brown was huge, he was on two Travis Scott hits and more by Yella Beezy, DaBaby, Gunna, Jacquees and Migos. I was a little surprised to see him on one of the big singles from Megan Thee Stallion’s debut album but he’s a great fit for that surprisingly harsh, almost industrial-sounding Buddah Bless beat.
#5 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #8 Hot 100
I don’t think much of Lil Mosey, but that Johnny Gill sample really made this song irresistible. It still doesn’t sit right with me that someone made a major hit rap song about Faygo and didn’t get ICP on the remix.
1. 6ix9ine & Nicki Minaj - "Trollz"
2. Kanye West – “Follow God”
3. J.I. The Prince of N.Y. – “Need Me”
4. Internet Money f/ Gunna, Don Toliver and NAV – “Lemonade”
5. DJ Khaled f/ Drake - "Popstar"
6. Drake – “Toosie Slide”
7. Toosii & Summer Walker – “Love Cycle”
8. BRS Kash – “Throat Baby (Go Baby)”
9. StaySolidRocky - "Party Girl"
10. Russ f/ BIA – “Best On Earth”
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