Ten pop-rap crossovers that went horribly wrong.
artwork by Sally North.
In recent years, lines between musical genres have grown increasingly blurred, arguably none more so than between pop and hip-hop. Modern melodic rap, pioneered in large part by albums like Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak and taken up by younger artists like Juice WRLD and Polo G, has seen rappers singing more often, changing our definition of what hip-hop sounds like. In rap circles, crossing over into pop was (and still is) considered “selling out.” For West, the initial reaction to 808s was lukewarm, with fans wondering if this release, as well as the pop-embracing Graduation just a year prior, meant the Chicago rapper was angling towards poppier pastures. He would gloriously return, of course, with 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with traditional hip-hop stylings that pleased fans and critics alike.
For the most part, pop artists haven’t started rapping on their own. Instead, record labels have mashed together singers and rappers who, frankly, have no business being on the same song. The incentive is understandable: these crossovers expose audiences to artists across genres they might not otherwise listen to. Too often, though, they miss the mark, and prove that sometimes, less is more. There are an infinite number of these efforts to choose from, so think of this less as an ordered list, and more as a collection of half-baked attempts to attract diverse audiences.
P!nk — “Here Comes the Weekend” featuring Eminem (2012)
P!nk handles most of this track competently. Eminem’s featured verse is rough. Ignoring how out of place he sounds in the mix—the verse sounds like it’s lifted from an actual Eminem song—his contribution is chock full of the staccato flow he’s been famously mocked for, never quite finding a comfortable pocket. P!nk’s vocals let the song breathe, conveying energy without being overbearing. Eminem, on the other hand, raps with trademark angst while seemingly ignoring the beat. The crown jewel? P!nk adlibs “Ahh, Ahh” throughout the track, and Eminem ends his verse trying to emulate it, instead sounding constipated. Eminem, of “Rap God” fame, should be last on the list of desirable features for a pop rock song.
Imagine Dragons — “Radioactive” (Remix) featuring Kendrick Lamar (2014)
Content wise, you’re not looking for a whole lot of substance from crossover features, but Lamar led with “Bury me alive, bury me with pride \ Bury me with berries… \ Thank you berry much, but tonight’s my night and I’m Barry Bonds \ …barbaric Kendrick in idle time.”
Anyone know Lamar’s favorite fruit?
As his verse progresses, he gets drowned out by swelling instrumentation that becomes less of a pop rock beat and better fit for a Mission Impossible action sequence, with jarring strings and pulsing drum kicks trying to make the verse feel bigger than it is. The impending doom of the entire song, for that matter, might work for some crowds, but it just takes itself too seriously for me. Even though, I will admit, “Radioactive” does have nostalgia going for it.
Matoma & The Notorious B.I.G — “Old Thing Back” featuring Ja Rule and Ralph Tresvant (2015)
So, how did we get a Biggie verse in 2015? The Notorious B.I.G. unfortunately passed away in 1997 at just 24. His posthumous releases quickly outnumbered the music he shared while he was with us, and this 2015 single is an egregious example. The Biggie verses you hear on this song belong to “One More Chance,” from his 1994 opus Ready to Die. They were then repurposed into “Want That Old Thing Back,” a posthumous cut on 2007’s Greatest Hits. Eight years later, Matoma shoehorned the 1994 vocals onto a house beat, and here we are.
Trepidation about the song’s creation aside, it isn’t very good. Neither B.I.G. nor Ja Rule sound like they belong anywhere near this tropical house mix: the latter’s trademark gruff delivery could not be further from the assignment here. It is no coincidence that whenever the instrumental takes a back seat, Biggie sounds better, and it is sobering to realize that the raw talent of arguably the greatest rapper of all time is being exploited for a middling house track. If you’re going to gravedig, at least make the song bearable.
Taylor Swift — “Bad Blood” (Remix) featuring Kendrick Lamar (2015)
Lamar was on this song too much. That much was clear as soon as his ad libs were mashed into the remixed introduction. With all the knife/wound analogies Swift fit into her verses, Lamar decides to follow her uninspiring lead, doubling down on cheesy ‘love is war’ punchlines, touting both “battle scars” and “battle wounds,” completing his feature by comparing a failed relationship to turmoil in war-torn Iraq. Sure, I guess.
Prior to this release, Lamar complimented Swift’s “Shake It Off,” and she posted a video rapping along to his “Backseat Freestyle,” celebrating the immediate commercial success of 1989. It seems like this collaboration, certified by Lamar’s interpolation of the “Backseat Freestyle” hook in this song’s second verse, was engineered to capitalize on the novelty of them being fans of each other. Who knew?
Maroon 5 — “Don’t Wanna Know” featuring Kendrick Lamar (2016)
Somehow, the greatest rapper of our generation is here again. This instrumental comes nowhere close to working as a house beat. Levine’s vocals offer very little in the way of emotion. His falsetto on the pre-chorus is especially cringeworthy, and his chorus takes on a repetitive, frustratingly monotone pattern: tripling down on the last syllable of every single line, each one is more mind-numbing than the last.
And that’s before we even get to Lamar’s verse. Maroon 5 managed to get who is arguably the mainstream’s most lyrically proficient rapper to say absolutely nothing for twenty seconds. This crime of a song becomes more egregious when you consider that Levine has performed admirably with hip-hop artists before (“Heard ‘Em Say” with Kanye West is sobering and phenomenal) and clearly respects the craft. None of that shows up here.
Katy Perry — “Bon Appetit” featuring Migos (2017)
How many food innuendoes could Katy Perry and trap supergroup Migos fit into four minutes? Between Michelin star steak, sugar, wine, and sweet potato pie, the entire food pyramid gets a shoutout, and each simile is more forced than a mother saying, “Here comes the airplane!”
Lyrical dexterity notwithstanding, why are all three Migos here, for only four bars each? Takeoff and Offset both disappear as quickly as they arrive. Quavo, traditionally the group’s frontman, had a ubiquitous feature run from 2016 to 2018, starring on countless hits. Here, Quavo was probably asked to do another one, but stipulated that his fellow Migos join him. The triplet flows that they repopularized are abrupt and jarring, not helped by the fact that two featured artists combine for 18 seconds of airtime. Offset’s verse in particular, if you can even call it one, is especially haphazard and even less coherent than usual.
Not to mention, the music video is genuinely disturbing. No thanks.
Thirty Seconds to Mars — “One Track Mind” featuring A$AP Rocky (2018)
This track might’ve benefited from being about 1.25x faster. I don’t say that lightly. Leto’s lead vocals are uncomfortably slurred and robotic, while A$AP Rocky’s inclusion is particularly comatose. Usually, rappers inject energy into the tracks they’re featured on, but Rocky managed to take an already sluggish song and put it to sleep, mumbling through meaningless nothings to fulfill what sounds like an obligation to appear on this song. Perhaps he just had a “One Track Mind” for the feature advance.
Maroon 5 — “Girls Like You” (Remix) featuring Cardi B (2018)
If you had a focus group targeting consumption on pop radio, elevators, and Forever 21, this would be the result. Adam Levine uses whiny vocals to pine over a woman who doesn’t seem all that interested. The plucky strings and snaps in the background ring so hollow and leave absolutely no impression. Really, most of the instrumental sounds like a lead-in, which is fine enough, until you get through the song’s four-minute runtime and realize it went entirely nowhere. I would compliment Cardi B’s verse, but it’s so pigeonholed into the “please inject some energy into this corpse” mold to the point that it’s serviceable (relative to the rest of the track), but how low of a bar is that?
Ed Sheeran — “Remember the Name” featuring Eminem & 50 Cent (2019)
Remember how I said pop artists weren’t trying to rap nearly as much as rappers try to sing? Well, at the start of this song, Sheeran quips that people always told him, “Stick to singing, stop rapping like it’s Christmas.” If that line is any indication, whoever warned him had a point. After he stumbles through a sing-speaking opening verse, Sheeran flows on the chorus with what sounds like an impersonation of the late Nate Dogg: he’s credited with those vocals and I’m still not convinced it was him. Eminem and 50 Cent both deliver verses far below par, and it all comes together as an uninspired hip-hop track that is less than the sum of its parts.
This track is on Sheeran’s 2019 effort No.6 Collaborations Project, which featured so many rappers, from the superstars on this song, to modern trap pioneers Young Thug and Travis Scott. I chose “Remember the Name” here, but that project gave me plenty of options. Consider them all (dis)honorable mentions.
Dua Lipa — “Not My Problem” featuring JID (2021)
The most recent song on this list is a mess I was personally invested in. JID is one of my favorite rappers, and I really hoped this song would start a huge moment for him. (“Enemy” with Imagine Dragons ended up being that moment, and is fine enough to avoid this list).
Here, however, the beat never decided what it wanted to be; the breakdown before the guest verse is especially frenetic and overdone; Lipa’s lyrics are puzzlingly surface — declaring “I used to like you, now I don’t” isn’t exactly groundbreaking; and JID never gets a chance to do much of anything. To her credit, Lipa struck commercial and critical gold on a similar crossover, with the DaBaby-assisted “Levitating.” Lightning doesn't strike twice.
If nothing else, this song’s release shows that this pop rap crossover trend wasn’t just a 2000’s or 2010’s thing. Unfortunately.
edited by Eric Harwood.
artwork by Sally North.
