In The Quantity Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Scorching 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my manner up into the current. Ebook Bonus Beat: The Quantity Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the Historical past of Pop Music.
The ee-urr is the hook. It’s not the solely hook, but it surely’s the one which issues. Roddy Ricch’s “The Field,” the primary chart-topper of the 2020s, is a decent, springy little marvel of recent-vintage melodic rap, and it’s obtained a number of parts that may catch your ear. There’s the swollen orchestral intro, the thunderous entrance of the 808s, and the glossy, playful manner that Roddy Ricch approaches the churn of the beat, including in a brand new cadence each few seconds. However each gigantic music wants at the very least one little further factor that makes it stand out. For “The Field,” that factor was the ee-urr — the unusual and ear-catching sound impact that repeats all by means of the monitor.
On TikTok, the ee-urr turned some extent of comedy. Individuals posted little skits highlighting all of the issues that ee-urr recalled — windshield wipers, Windex rags, squeaky sneakers on hardwood, smoke alarms that want their batteries modified. For causes that no person might ever fairly articulate, that bizarre, hypnotic repeated sound elevated “The Field” and remodeled it right into a phenomenon. When “The Field” stormed the Scorching 100 after which remained atop the chart throughout a second of profound cultural turbulence, a number of individuals tried to determine why the music was as huge because it was. Roddy Ricch was an ascendant major-label rap prospect earlier than “The Field,” however no person anticipated him to shoulderblock world pop stars out of the highest spot the way in which that he did. “The Field” wasn’t even picked as a single earlier than it blew up, and its music video didn’t come out till the music had already been caught at #1 for greater than a month. How did this music explode so rapidly? Why did it keep its maintain for so long as it did? Might it actually simply be the ee-urr? Sure. Sure, it might.
The ee-urr was a last-minute addition to a last-minute music. When Roddy Ricch recorded “The Field,” he was practically completed together with his first correct album Please Excuse Me For Being Delinquent. He’d been engaged on that album for some time, and he had his label behind him. Roddy had already made a handful of viral hits and cracked the Scorching 100 a couple of instances, and other people had huge plans for him. The LP has contributions from some well-known guest-rappers and producers, and some early singles had been already locked in. When he made “The Field,” Roddy Ricch was in a New York studio early within the morning, ending a productive all-night session. This was his basic working course of — get a ton of beats and file over these beats, nearly indiscriminately, in marathon periods. Roddy’s engineer as soon as estimated that he recorded 250 tracks whereas placing his album collectively. That workaholic flow-state technique doesn’t look like it might or ought to result in nice, dominant, profitable pop songs, however the world is an enchanting place. Mysterious issues occur on a regular basis.
Image your self in Roddy Ricch’s state of affairs. You’re 21 years previous, and also you’ve obtained an opportunity to make an actual influence. Individuals have cash invested in you. They’ve hope invested in you. However nothing is assured. So you’re employed. You’re employed on a regular basis. You spend complete nights rapping, phrases tumbling out of your mouth till these phrases threaten to lose all which means. You’re all the way in which throughout the nation from your property, and also you’re on one among your inventive benders. It’s six or seven within the morning. Perhaps the New York sky is purple simply earlier than daybreak. Perhaps the solar is simply cracking the horizon. Your head is cloudy from exhaustion and perhaps from no matter substances you utilize to push you thru these all-night periods. However you’re not accomplished. You hear a beat, a dramatic string fanfare with some booming drums, and it ignites one thing in you. You assault that monitor, splashing your voice over it in patterns that not even you’ll be able to predict. While you’re accomplished, you recognize that you’ve got made one thing particular. But it surely nonetheless wants one thing. It wants the ee-urr.
In response to just about everybody who labored on “The Field,” the ee-urr was Roddy Ricch’s thought. The sound is his voice. He’d completed recording the music, however he instructed his engineer and his A&R man that he simply added yet one more factor. He jumped again within the sales space and made that squeaky noise, the one which at all times appeared like a creaky door to me. I might like to know extra about what it takes to reach at that second — how drained you have to be, how excessive, how deep in your individual inventive course of, to understand that the ultimate contact your music wants is a nonverbal loop of you imitating a really decided squirrel. Inspiration takes so many alternative types, and that’s one among them.
A lot of items needed to fall into place for Roddy Ricch to make that ee-urr. Perhaps his entire life was divinely plotted out, main as much as that second. Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr. grew up transferring backwards and forwards between Los Angeles and Compton. (When Roddy was born, the Barenaked Girls’ “One Week” was the #1 music in America.) His father wasn’t round, and his mom raised him within the church — the identical church, because it occurred, that previous and future Quantity Ones artist Kendrick Lamar attended. When Roddy was a child, he obtained his braveness up and requested if he might rap some bars for Kendrick, and Kendrick stated encouraging issues. Roddy performed basketball and went to remedy, however he additionally obtained concerned in road life. He dedicated robberies, wrecked a automotive, and confronted a gun fees. (Afterward, he was additionally charged with felony home violence, but it surely was dropped.) In a 2020 Rolling Stone profile, Roddy remembers the second, sitting in jail, that he realized he needed to determine his shit out. That, he says, is when he began taking rap critically.
Fairly quickly, rap itself was taking Roddy Ricch critically. There was by no means something notably California about his sound. As a substitute. Roddy grew up on the skittering, moaning Atlanta entice of Future and Younger Thug, in addition to Lil Durk’s Chicago variation on that stuff. Speaker Knockerz, the South Carolina sing-rapper who died in what was in all probability a freak carbon monoxide accident at age 19 in 2014, was a selected inspiration. As a child, Roddy frolicked in each Atlanta and Chicago, so perhaps that’s a part of the rationale that he has by no means appeared like he’s from anyone specific place. Or perhaps that’s only a perform of the web.
Roddy belongs to a era the place area and atmosphere didn’t at all times outline a rapper’s perspective. He developed a method — fast bursts of staccato syllables that stretch into elongated singsong gurgles, all delivered in a bluesy chirp-rap. Melody is constructed into his supply. He doesn’t sing, precisely, however his rapping at all times comes out sounding like singing. That was the pan-regional sound of street-rap within the late ’10s, and Roddy got here off like a blurry mixture of all the obvious influences. That meant that his personal persona might get misplaced, but it surely additionally meant that he was good at a selected factor.
Roddy Ricch’s debut mixtape Feed Tha Streets got here out in 2017, only a few weeks after his nineteenth birthday. Individuals began to note. A few of his tracks went viral. Nipsey Hussle, a significant determine in West Coast rap, took Roddy beneath his wing. On the 2018 evening that former Quantity Ones artist XXXTentacion was murdered, Roddy recorded “Die Younger,” a basic lament about impermanence, over a twinkling beat from London On Da Observe, a big-deal producer within the Atlanta entice world. That music made sufficient noise to crack the Scorching 100, the place it peaked at #99. Across the similar time, Roddy signed to Atlantic and launched his Feed Tha Streets II mixtape. He began displaying up on tracks with big-deal rappers, in addition to the masked dance producer Marshmello.
2019 was an enormous 12 months for Roddy Ricch. He began it out singing the hook on “Racks In The Center,” a single that Nipsey Hussle launched simply earlier than he was murdered. (After Nipsey’s passing, “Racks In The Center” peaked at #26. It’s Nipsey’s highest-charting single as lead artist.) Quickly after that, Roddy was named an XXL Freshman, a part of the identical class as future Quantity Ones artists DaBaby and Megan Thee Stallion. Close to the tip of the summer time, the West Coast rap producer Mustard launched his album Good Ten, and its greatest monitor was “Ballin’,” a solo showcase for Roddy Ricch. It’s a slick, exuberant, celebratory singalong that also rivals “The Field” as my favourite Roddy Ricch monitor, and it grew slowly for months, lastly peaking at #11 on the Scorching 100 in January 2020. (“Ballin’” continues to be Mustard’s greatest hit as lead artist. As a producer, he’ll ultimately seem on this column.)
Within the ultimate months of 2019, Roddy Ricch launched the singles supposed for his precise debut album, and none of them had the identical spark as “Ballin’.” “Huge Stepper,” the Gunna collab “Begin Wit Me,” “Tip Toe” with A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie — these had been all strong street-rap tracks that sounded extraordinarily of their period. However even with B-list rap-star collaborators and expensive-looking movies, they didn’t stand out, although all of them charted. (“Huge Stepper” peaked at #98 on the Scorching 100, “Begin Wit Me” at #56, “Tip Toe” at #73.) Roddy’s sound was a playlist-friendly amalgam of all the pieces that was taking place in rap proper then, and his hooks had a manner of sneaking up on you. His LP Please Excuse Me For Being Delinquent got here out in early December and moved about 100,000 album-equivalent items — adequate to debut at #1 in a gradual week. A lot of individuals streamed that album, and plenty of of them evidently obtained caught on “The Field,” its first correct music.
As soon as Mariah Carey’s “All I Need For Christmas Is You” ended the primary of its annual holiday-season runs at #1, the 2020 pop-music 12 months was supposed to begin with the return of a really huge identify. Justin Bieber, somebody who’s been on this column a bunch of instances and who will return, launched his newlywed-bliss meditation “Yummy,” his first correct solo single in a few years. “Yummy” obtained an enormous push, regardless of being an precise horrible music. (It’s a 3.) Def Jam and Bieber’s highly effective supervisor Scooter Braun constructed a advertising marketing campaign round “Yummy,” and Bieber himself went public together with his flop-sweaty try to push the music to #1. In an embarrassing second, Bieber reposted after which rapidly deleted an Instagram with a useful information for his followers to push “Yummy” to the highest. That submit requested Beliebers to purchase the one a number of instances and to construct playlists with the monitor on repeat, preserving these playlists working all evening: “Don’t mute it! Play it at a low quantity. Let it play whilst you sleep.” It requested followers outdoors the US to purchase VPNs, so they might add to the monitor’s Billboard whole. It was simply unbelievably corny. You possibly can think about the schadenfreude that a few of us felt when the first-week numbers got here in and “Yummy” obtained caught at #2 behind “The Field,” a non-single from a rookie rapper.
God, that was satisfying. When his chart victory was safe, Roddy Ricch tweeted, “stream yummy by justin bieber,” with the bicep-flex emoji. It was a lot enjoyable to root for him in that second. This was the very starting of the interval when fan armies mobilized on-line to help their favorites on the Scorching 100, a phenomenon that’s going to play a task in manner too many future columns. However all of the efforts of Def Jam, Scooter Braun, and the Beliebers weren’t sufficient to conquer this underdog banger that had one thing else in its favor. “The Field” had TikTok, and TikTok made all of the distinction. The music didn’t latch onto anyone specific TikTok pattern. Individuals danced to it, but it surely didn’t have its personal dance. They did comedy skits concerning the ee-urr, and people had been enjoyable, however I don’t suppose they had been what turned “The Field” right into a juggernaut. For those who pull up compilation of TikTok clips set to “The Field” — there are many them — you may not see any specific sample. It was only a cool, dramatic music, and other people preferred the way in which that they seemed with it taking part in within the background.
Right here’s the place we get past the ee-urr and speak about how “The Field” is only a nice rap music. Even with out the ee-urr, the cinematic swell of the intro catches you straight away. “The Field” has three credited producers, however the primary one appears to be Samuel Gloade, recognized professionally as 30 Roc, a Bronx native who got here up as a protege of Atlanta entice hitmaker Mike Will Made-It. 30 Roc first made an influence when he produced “Nasty Freestyle,” a freak viral smash that the Houston rapper T-Wayne launched in 2015. (“Nasty Freestyle” peaked at #9. It’s an 8.) Within the years that adopted, 30 Roc co-produced hits like “Rake It Up,” from Yo Gotti and Nicki Minaj, and “Bartier Cardi,” from Cardi B and 21 Savage. (“Rake It Up” peaked at #8. It’s a 7. “Bartier Cardi” peaked at #14.) There was by no means actually any specific 30 Roc sound. He was only a producer you’d see in Wikipedia-page credit and suppose, “Oh, that’s humorous, that man named himself after 30 Rock.” However the tracks I simply talked about all have a sure pop-friendly bounce, and I don’t actually hear that in “The Field.”
30 Roc co-produced “The Field” with two guys who don’t have plenty of credit to their names, Datboisqeeze and ZenTachi. There are a few different credited songwriters, too: Khirye Tyler, somebody who did plenty of work on the final Beyoncé album, and Larrance “Rance” Dopson, the co-founder of the musical collective 1500 Or Nothin’. I don’t know what these guys contributed to “The Field.” I do know that the opening orchestral flourish is Roland plug-in, a pre-recorded toy for producers. When 30 Roc and his collaborators discovered that sound, they knew they might construct one thing from it, and it actually does set an impressive temper. It seems like storm clouds gathering, helicopters taking off, tank engines rumbling to life. That swell of strings is blended manner quieter than the ee-urr, however you’ll be able to nonetheless really feel it. One thing is about to occur, after which one thing does. When the beat kicks in, it’s thunderous, partly as a result of Roddy Ricch begins rapping a split-second earlier than the primary drum-hit lands. It makes for an actual adrenaline-rush second.
“The Field” isn’t a music about anyone specific factor. There’s not even a lot consensus about what the titular field is. It’s in all probability a removable journal cartridge, but it surely may be jail. It’s in all probability not a vagina — not on this case, anyway. It’s undoubtedly not a cardboard field, although there’s a humorous bit within the video the place Roddy is rapping on a conveyor belt in a literal field manufacturing facility that’s populated totally by ladies in underwear. If Principal Skinner took Bart Simpson on a area journey to that field manufacturing facility, Bart may not be so dissatisfied. Anyway, you don’t have to grasp the connotations of all the pieces that Roddy Ricch says on “The Field.” What the music conveys is sheer exhilaration, the sensation of bending the world to your will. Even when Roddy talks about consuming codeine cough syrup and going into sloth mode — “pour up the entire rattling seal, I’ma get laaaaazy” — he seems like he’s obtained electrical energy coursing by means of him.
Roddy Ricch’s “The Field” lyrics are free-association, however he hits them with objective. On the primary verse, he cruses the town in a bulletproof Cadillac, his stashbox stuffed with illicit substances, looking out for the individuals attempting to rob him. Then he’s dunking together with his elbow within the rim like Vince Carter, bragging about how his woman appears to be like like Aaliyah, and ready for the day when he will get the important thing to the town of Compton. His move lurches into completely different gears, generally hitting erratic pauses and bizarre emphases for impact: “I! Acquired! The pink! Slip! All! My whips! Is key-less!” My favourite a part of the second verse is the bit the place he transitions from saying a run for nationwide workplace into placing a six-figure bounty on Trayvon Martin’s assassin after which getting proper again to road shit: “I’m a 2020 president caaaandidate/ I accomplished put 100 bands on Zimmerman, shit/ I been transferring actual ganster, in order that’s why she picked a Crip/ Shawty name me Crisco ’trigger I pop my shit.” It’s extremely enjoyable to rap alongside to “The Field,” particularly on the climactic second the place Roddy enforces visitor etiquette: “Bitch, don’t put on no footwear in my home!” I don’t know the way he makes that line sound anthemic, however he does.
“The Field” struck a nerve. After the music boxed Justin Bieber out of the #1 spot, it held onto that spot for a very long time. Roddy Ricch and Atlantic weren’t essentially prepared for “The Field” to develop into what it turned. The world obtained behind that music earlier than they did. However they tailored. Roddy and Christian Breslauer co-directed an insane video for “The Field,” which got here out a month after the music reached #1. The video makes use of CGI to free-associate the way in which that Roddy does verbally on the music. I might’ve most popular a extra bare-bones, atmospheric clip, but it surely’s enjoyable to see the goofy shit they give you — a Quick & Livid pastiche, a bank-vault heist, a halfassed re-staging of the final Scarface scene, an ending the place a tiny Roddy is trapped in a glass case at an artwork museum. Watching it appears like flipping by means of film channels whereas stoned.
Whereas “The Field” was caught at #1, the world modified. Throughout the music’s tenure on high, the COVID-19 virus swept internationally and arrived within the US. All the pieces shut down immediately in mid-March. 1000’s of individuals died on daily basis. Journeys to the grocery retailer felt like provide runs within the apocalypse. The sensation of facemask straps round your ears turned extraordinarily acquainted. The world modified, however individuals nonetheless saved listening to “The Field.” That was a fucked up time, however I can hear “The Field” at present with out flashing again on it too arduous. That in all probability says one thing concerning the music’s sturdiness.
Not one of the different tracks from the Please Excuse Me For Being Delinquent album resonated like “The Field,” although one among them, the Mustard-produced “Excessive Trend,” reached #20. The album nonetheless went double platinum, and “The Field” went diamond in 2021. Roddy Ricch turned a kind of rappers who exhibits up on tracks with each different huge rapper, and a number of the songs that he appeared on turned hits. However the pleasure round Roddy was short-lived. It was bizarre. When his sophomore album Reside Life Quick got here out in 2021, it appeared like no person was checking for Roddy Ricch anymore. The album didn’t even go gold. Lead single “Late At Evening” peaked at #20, and he hasn’t been again on the Scorching 100 as lead artist since then. Roddy didn’t hit some sudden creative decline. He simply wasn’t sizzling anymore.
Final 12 months, Roddy Ricch was a shock visitor at Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out live performance, and he obtained a heat reception, but it surely wasn’t something just like the hero’s welcome that Tyler, The Creator obtained. A number of months later, Roddy sang backup vocals and obtained off one nice line — “fifty on me, don’t die tryin’ and shit” — on the extraordinarily clean Kendrick monitor “Dodger Blue,” which peaked at #11. Proper now, Roddy Ricch is simply 26, so he might at all times strike gold once more. However Roddy simply launched a brand new full-length referred to as The Navy Album final Friday, and I solely discovered of its existence as a result of I researched this piece, which isn’t a great signal. He’s in all probability not going to overshadow the brand new Justin Bieber file this time.
Roddy Ricch by no means absolutely got here off as a star. He was only a man who had a second. That’s superb as a result of the second was nice. There are many rappers who do come off as stars however who won’t ever make a music as huge or pretty much as good as “The Field.” And anyway, Roddy Ricch’s second didn’t finish with “The Field.” In a guest-rapper function, he shall be again on this column quickly.
GRADE: 9/10
