Michelle Obama Joins the President as a Billboard Charting Artist
Michelle Obama's "Go To College" debuts on the Billboard + Twitter Top Tracks chart. The First Lady joins her husband, President Barack Obama, as a Billboard-charting artist.
Michelle Obama: First Lady, lawyer…charting rapper?
The First Lady can add that new line to her resume as “Go To College,” her comedy hip-hop collaboration with Saturday Night Live’s Jay Pharoah, debuts at No. 26 on the Billboard + Twitter Top Tracks chart dated Dec. 26. The joint venture originally debuted on the real-time Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart on Dec. 10, holding the No. 1 spot for 11 nonconsecutive hours on Dec. 10 and 11. With her debut, Michelle joins her husband, President Barack Obama, as a Billboard-charting artist. He sports a featured credit on JX’s Cannon’s “Pop Off,” which remixed a line from a Nov. 17 presidential address into a dance cut. The track bowed at No. 10 on the weekly Billboard + Twitter Emerging Artists chart dated Dec. 5.
The College Humor-produced clip unites Pharaoh and Mrs. Obama to rap (yes, she raps!) about the importance of attending college. The track comes via the First Lady’s Better Make Room and Reach Higher initiatives, which promote college readiness skills for teenagers and aims to instill post-secondary education as a key goal.
But her own track isn’t all that Michelle Obama affects on this week’s chart. The First Lady’s magic touch also causes the No. 19 debut of Kendrick Lamar’s “How Much A Dollar Cost.” In an interview with People first teased on Dec. 9, Mrs. Obama told the magazine that Lamar’s cut is President Obama’s favorite song of 2015.
Based on Lamar’s commercial and critical performance this year, it’s safe to say POTUS has good taste. “Dollar” features on the Compton rapper’s sophomore album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in April. The set has garnered strong critical acclaim, fueling Lamar to 11 Grammy nominations — the most among any artist this year. It was also named Billboard’s critics’ pick for the best album of 2015.
For those wondering, Mrs. Obama also shared her favorite track of the past twelve months: “Uptown Funk!,” the inescapable single from Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. The hit track topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 straight weeks and was recently named the top Hot 100 song of the year.
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