Which rap song held the number one spot for the longest in 2004?
The year 2004 was a big one for rap, as it established itself as a genuinely mainstream style favoured by the masses. Several of the most popular singles and artists that year at least featured a rap verse or two, including the song that claimed the number one spot for the longest period throughout the year.
For 12 consecutive weeks—literally almost an entire season—this track sat atop the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, which is about as solid a marker of success as can be found. Anyone old enough to remember 2004 can probably hazard a guess as to what it is, given how ubiquitous it was.
The year began as the previous one had ended: with Outkast topping the singles chart with ‘Hey Ya!’ That was a huge song, released in August 2003, but it took its time to become a defining track of the era. By mid-December it was topping the Hot 100, and it remained there for nine weeks in a row, taking us into February 2004. But even counting its weeks at number one across both 2003 and 2004, it still wasn’t up there for as long as another hit.
Other rap songs that reached number one in 2004 include ‘Slow Motion’ by Juvenile and Soulja Slim, ‘Lean Back’ by Terror Squad, and ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ by Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams. Outkast also scored a second number one hit with ‘The Way You Move,’ while Kanye West achieved his first ever number one as the producer of Twista’s track ‘Slow Jamz.’ But the true master of the charts that year was none of these figures. It was Usher, who saw four of his singles hit number one—and one of them reign there for a long, long time.
The biggest of Usher’s hits that year was undoubtedly ‘Yeah!,’ which featured rappers Lil Jon and Ludacris and appeared on his album Confessions. The song became a massive hit in the US, but also in several other places around the world, going to number one in 12 other countries, too. It really was about as big a song as is possible to imagine. Basically the only thing that could dethrone it was… another Usher track.
‘Burn’ featured on the same album as ‘Yeah!,’ and it was the song that proved capable of knocking ‘Yeah!’ off its perch. ‘Burn’ stayed at number one for seven weeks in a row, plus an additional lone week, which is itself incredible, but it still fell short of the success of ‘Yeah!’ But that wasn’t all, because the track ‘Confessions Part II’ also spent a couple of weeks at number one, while Usher’s duet with Alicia Keys, ‘My Boo,’ spent six consecutive weeks at number one, too.
In total, about half of the year 2004 was dominated by Usher at the top of the charts. His broad popularity was wild, but it was ‘Yeah!’ that was specifically his greatest achievement. It probably remains the most iconic track of his career and is certainly among the defining songs of the mid-2000s.