Weekly Billboard Theory — I’m the One
“Can’t wait to read about what song you hate this week,” my friend says to me. He’s not entirely wrong. There have been a lot of songs at the top of the charts that I find to be lackluster. Unfortunately, “I’m the One” by DJ Khaled and literally everyone else doesn’t do it for me either. This will be a pretty short one this week since it doesn’t really do anything I haven’t already covered. Sigh. Let’s go.
DJ Khaled feat Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, Lil Wayne
Key: G Major
Tempo: 80 Bpm
Listen to the first ten seconds of the song. Seems like a pretty standard instrumental intro for a top 40 song with a lot of features, right? Jokes on you, this is the entirety of the song. Like, everything. Some percussion gets added and other parts are subtracted but we get nothing new throughout the entire 4 minutes and 48 seconds of “I’m the One.” This phenomenon only seems to happen in hip hop music since rock and pop will universally have some difference between the choruses and verses of a song. Since there are so many artists on this song there are some pretty clear changes already built in to the structure. In theory, it’s not necessary to have different chord progressions for choruses and verses.
Unfortunately, the instrumentation is just toooooo rudimentary. It feels like a missed opportunity to me because at first the beat sounds fine. Not particularly interesting. But sure, fine, whatever. Since we only have those ten seconds, let’s look at that. We get slightly syncopated bassline playing an I-vi-IV-V progression. We’ve seen different arrangements of this progression before and I’m sure this won’t be the last of it. It’s nothing new but the problem I see with it is the range. The range of the bassline is never THAT low. Like, you can probably hear it from your iPhone speaker. Actually, if that was the intent of the beat, this is an interesting idea. Attempting to create a beat you can hear every part of through a low def speaker is an admirable effort. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the case. If the tonic chord sounded an octave down it might have a more interesting effect, or if the entire progression was doubled with a lower octave it might sound a little stronger, especially if this was done during choruses. This would likely help differentiate it and add to the sound in a club setting. Eh, I dunno. It’s just almost 5 minutes of the same boring bassline over and again. I’m assuming this song will be chopped down when it’s on the radio because who on earth needs to hear all of those verses.
The other two aspects of the instrumentation are a simple synth line with a decent amount of reverb and some chopped up and modulated vocals. Obviously, the synth is nothing new. The vocal thing would be interesting if it was 2011 but Skrillex has been doing this for years and these days everyone else has been doing it as well. And that’s it. Nothing else. The chorus is certainly singable which is for sure a saving grace as this song definitely wants to be ~the song of the summer~. Unfortunately for this song, it’s still May…and it’s not a particularly great song.
So, if there’s really not anything going on with this song, how did it just appear at number one? Well, it’s very ~now~ due to all of the stars on it. I’ll never understand what DJ Khaled does but ever since his Snapchat adventures he’s been back, I guess? Bieber’s comeback is still coming and backing. Quavo and the rest of the Migos crew have been kind of unstoppable since Bad and Boujee which is really great for them. Everyone loves Chance. And on that note people are (for some reason) still giving chances to Lil Wayne. Do you get it?
Anyway, this song has probably the most star studded cast since 2008’s “Swagger Like Us.” Actually, I take that back, Jeezy’s “I Do” is more recent and wow that is what “I’m the One” should have tried to be like. Is the lineup the reason why this song is number one? I can’t say for sure, but there’s a good chance that everyone checked it out and will never really listen to it again. Only time will tell I guess. Who cares. This music video also has super hot babes in it so that can’t hurt since YouTube plays count towards the Billboard numbers. At the rare chance that any of those super hot babes are reading this, hmu.
This ended up being longer than I thought, although it is still shorter than my average theory lesson. What’s up for next week? Despacito is number one, Bruno is two and Mr. Khaled is three. Ed Sheeran is STILL up here at #4 and Kendrick is at a humble #5. I’m pretty excited for next week because the number six song on the charts is Future’s “Mask Off” let’s goooo babyyyyyy. You’ve seen the memes by now but I’ll be sure to post some of my favs. See ya next week!
