Sicko Mode: Scott collab conquers charts

Ken Partridge (@kpartridge), Genius, 9/29/23; Sheldon S., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What's the sickest, rap or rock?

How Travis Scott and a small army of collaborators conquered the charts. In honor of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary year, Genius.com is looking back at the top artists, songs, albums, and producers of “The Genius Era,” 2009 to the present. Chances are readers or someone reader know worked on Travis Scott’s “SICKO MODE.”

The top hip-hop song of 2018 on Genius according to pageviews boasts six producers and a whopping 30 credited songwriters. Seven different voices are heard on the track, counting samples. The whole thing runs 5:12, and it features two jarring beat switches — three if we include the one that happens around 5:00 and teases a fourth section that never materializes. It’s probably the most unwieldy song to ever reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and that may be what makes it great.

“SICKO MODE” is ostensibly a collaboration between Travis and Drake, who grabs the first and fourth verses. Drizzy — who’d worked with Scott twice before — apparently submitted his contributions at 2:00 am on August 3, 2018, the day Travis’s ASTROWORLD album came out.

This may account for the song’s abrupt first beat switch, as Drake begins rapping over an organ-driven groove by Hit-Boy and Rogét Chahayed before quickly flipping the mic to Travis, who goes hard over a tense, throbbing trap instrumental cooked up by OZ and the duo CuBeatz.

Hit-Boy and Chahayed composed their section of the song all the way back in 2016, and there’s apparently a full version of the song featuring Travis and Drake over just that beat. OZ has said that he thought the finished song’s bizarre structure would prevent it from becoming a hit.

But “SICKO MODE” is basically three songs for the price of one, and thanks to Drake’s fourth verse, there was enough intrigue to keep people talking for the rest of the year.

[Dissin the most important man alive]

This b*tch Drizzy is talking about you, Honey. - Did you just call him Drizzy? Don't do dat.

.

This MoFo right here be talkin'bout Me!

In a series of December 2018 tweets, Kanye West accused Drake — with whom he’d already been beefing — of slipping “sneak disses” into “SICKO MODE.”

Ye also blasted Travis Scott, who had a baby with his (Kanye’s) sister-in-law, Kylie Jenner, for letting it happen. There’s nothing super overt in the song, but West was likely miffed about this section:

"I still got scores to settle, man/ I crept down the block (Down the block)/ Made a right (Yeah, right)/ Cut the lights (Yeah, what?), paid the price (Yeah)/ Niggas think it’s sweet (Nah, never), it’s on sight (Yeah, what?)"

As explained in a popular tweet thread, Drake and Kanye lived in the same Calabasas neighborhood [with Justin Bieber and the Kardashians, in the suburbs of the Valley], and in order for Drizzy to roll up on West at home, he’d only need to go “down the block” and bang a right.

And then there’s the section a few seconds later, where Drake implies that his footwear partner, Nike, is better than Ye’s, Adidas (“checks over stripes”).

Drizzy then essentially calls West a has-been.

"Jesus Christ (Yeah), checks over stripes (Yeah)/ That’s what I like (Yeah), that’s what we like (Yeah)/ Lost my respect, you not a threat."

So were those lines really about Kanye? “I can’t lie to you; of course they were,” Drake told Rap Radar. “Like I said, this is a sport at the end of the day. You know from a very early point, I’ve never shied away from defending myself. And I’m also sometimes eager to engage; if I feel you want to be slick or offensive behind the scenes, I might choose to address it in music.”

So what does Travis Scott bring to “SICKO MODE”? “Who put this shit together?” he raps at the end of the song’s third verse. “I’m the glue.”

That proclamation is very much in keeping with Scott’s reputation as more of a “curator” than a traditional rapper or producer. Though the song’s refrain, which features vocals from both Swae Lee of Rae Sremmurd and late Houston rapper Big Hawk, suggests that Travis doesn’t want to be mistaken for a lightweight.

"Some-Some-Some-Someone said/ To win the retreat, we all in too deep/ Play-play-playin’ for keeps, don’t play us for weak/ (Someone said) To win the retreat, we all in too deep/ Play-play-playin’ for keeps, don’t play us for weak"

“SICKO MODE” took four months to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it finally reached the summit due to some savvy maneuvering from Scott’s team. According to Billboard, the combination of a Skrillex remix, a “69-cent strategy” on iTunes, and the song’s availability on Travis’s web store in the form of a vinyl record and a bonus add-on to limited-edition tie-dyed shirts all helped to push “SICKO MODE” ahead of Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next.”

“Me and Drake been working to make something so crazy for the kids,” Travis told Billboard just after the song reached its chart peak. “It’s dope that one of our illest collaborations just went No. 1. The whole idea when we made the song was to go ‘sicko mode’…and what’s more sicko mode than going No. 1?!”

Here are the Top 10 hip-hop songs of 2018 on Genius:

1. “SICKO MODE,” Travis Scott

2. “God’s Plan,” Drake

3. “SAD!” XXXTENTACION

4. “In My Feelings,” Drake

5. “Killshot,” Eminem

6. “This Is America,” Childish Gambino

7. “FEFE,” 6ix9ine

8. “Lucky You,” Eminem

9. “The Ringer,” Eminem

10. “iLOVEFRiDAY,” Mia Khalifa.