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Rolling Stone dropped its “The 250 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century So Far” list.
According to the outlet, Missy Elliott’s iconic track, “Get Your Freak On,” is the No.1 song of the 21st century. “…It was a challenge, a dare, the sound of Miss E and Timbaland defying everyone else to keep up with the future or get left behind,” the outlet wrote.
The outlet continued: “And after more than two decades, ‘Get Ur Freak On’ still sounds like the future — everything vibrant and inventive and cool about 21st-century pop is in here somewhere.” The track, which dropped in 2001 and featured on the rapper’s third studio album Miss E… So Addictive. Upon its release, the track landed at number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Other notable tracks that made the list:
#249 Tweet – Oops (Oh My)
Tweet’s biggest hit was well ahead of its time. Produced by the ever-future-forward Timbaland and co-written by Missy Elliott, the song takes on self-love over a hypnotic, techno-reggae beat. Tweet was inspired to write the song after watching an episode of Oprah where a doctor advised people to start looking at themselves naked in a mirror to learn self-acceptance. Tweet takes this to sultry levels, describing the experience of coming home after a night out and discovering that it was her own body that left her breathless. And while most interpreted the sexy, intoxicating track as being about masturbation, Tweet has maintained it’s about however one learns to love the body they’re in.
#243 Davido – Unavailable
Big tribal vibes inform this illuminative 2023 anthem. The teeming chorus and rustic percussion of this poignant single from the Lagos, Nigeria, representative’s fifth LP resound like a vigilant village in motion. When’s the last time a song about being aloof went bonkers on the charts? For all of its “left-on-read” insistence (with a hearty declaration that “I can’t talk”), “Unavailable” reached Number Three on the Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart. Davido’s fiery tenor feels intimate and expressive as he reflects on his busy rock-star life, not without a touch of regret. “I’m changing my life, oh/Got my mama proud, innit?,” he proclaims. This smart single about ghosting is indeed haunting.
#232 Tems – Free Mind
Virality often threatens to cheapen great music, but the reason Tems’ “Free Mind” became so inescapable — especially on places like TikTok and Instagram — was because the Nigerian singer-songwriter’s visceral yearning for peace on the song resonated with many people, particularly Black women. It was one of her earliest tracks, a cut from her debut EP, 2020’s For Broken Ears, from which Future lifted her “Higher” hook for his own Grammy-winning smash, “Wait 4 U.” But years later, that success brought the masses back to Tems’ original masterpiece “Free Mind,” and from there, she became one of the continent’s brightest stars.
#223 Kanye West – All Of The Lights
Kanye West essentially assembled the Avengers of pop music for “All of the Lights” and impressively assembled them like a voltron rather than a slate of superheroes shining on their own. If you didn’t know better, you might think Rihanna, with her searing hook; Kid Cudi, with his mantra on the bridge; Fergie, with her lightning-quick rap sequence; and Alicia Keys, with her belted ad-libs, were the only features. Yet under what may be West’s most inspiring, invigorating, and empathetic production and performance laid Elton John, Drake, The-Dream, Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Ryan Leslie, Elly Jackson, and Tony Williams, too.
#218 T-Pain – I’m Sprung
If you wanted to pinpoint the big bang of pop music’s Auto-Tune era, you could do worse than “I’m Sprung,” the infectious first single by T-Pain. Eventually, the self-proclaimed “rappa turnt sanga” would become synonymous with the pitch-correcting technology. But on “I’m Sprung,” it feels like a eureka moment, enlivening millennial pop-rap signifiers (see acoustic guitars) with an army of eerily perfect, harmonizing T-Pains. Despite the fact that the track is basically just complaining about being in a relationship (“she got me doin’ the dishes,” he croons, amazed), it’s all surprisingly sweet, a guy lost in the clouds and wondering how he got there. There’s probably less Auto-Tune than you remember, too, but what’s there transformed popular music.
#210 Usher – Yeah!
“Yeah!” wound up heralding the arrival of Usher’s album Confessions after Lil Jon leaked it to DJs in late 2003. The song caught fire, and eventually there was no choice but to make it the lead single. All these years later, “Yeah!” still hits with unmitigated delirium: the blaring synths and booming bass, Lil Jon’s inch-perfect ad-libs, Ludacris’ hall of fame feature, and Usher spinning crunk&B gold with a spicy club drama about a guy struck dumb by the realization that the baddie coaxing him onto the dance floor is his girl’s ex-best friend. The angel and devil on his shoulder duke it out for a few minutes, but there was only ever one answer to this conundrum. It’s right there in the title
#203 Original Koffee – Toast
Jamaican songstress Original Koffee stormed onto the scene in 2019 with this invigorating banger, all about giving praises due. The righteous refrain and invincible hook — all explosive swag and glasses-raised excitement — drove her debut EP, Rapture, to Number One on Billboard’s U.S. Reggae Albums chart. The sporadic riddim and Koffee’s melodically jestful salvos are just ripe for a packed-to-the-rafters club near you. But the track’s upbeat message comprises its hyperactive heart. “Blessings all pon me life and/Me thanks God for di journey,” Koffee yelps over a piercing Island pulse. A motivational speaker-imploder? It’s no surprise this insatiable anthem won her a Best Reggae Album Grammy: The fluid blend of mindful energetics on “Toast” makes it a dance-floor triumph.
#184 Outkast – Ms. Jackson
A window into the stormy emotional lives of two young fathers became the first Number One single for OutKast, eventually the most successful Southern-rap group in history. “‘Ms. Jackson’ came from just wondering — after a relationship kinda goes to the left — about a parent of a girl who has a child, like, how does she feel about the situation?” said OutKast’s André 3000, who had famously dated R&B superstar Erykah Badu. Originally written by Dré on acoustic guitar, the song took life as a psychedelic ballad slurping with backmasked percussion. Big Boi lashes out as the wounded suitor, André 3000 goes sensitive and apologetic. “How did my mama feel?” Badu said to RapRadar. “Baby, she bought herself a Ms. Jackson license plate.”
#181 Rihanna & Drake – Work
Though Rihanna debuted with her Caribbean culture on full display on 2005’s Music of the Sun and kept a reggae through line into her second album, 2006’s A Girl Like Me, by the time she was at the essential pivot point of 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad, her world and sound had expanded massively. Though subsequent island-tinged hits like “Rude Boy” and “You Da One” were musical homecomings, 2016’s “Work” is a perfect meeting of all the cool she had accumulated over her years at the top of pop music and the Bajan girl she’s always been. Armed with PartyNextDoor’s most resonant songwriting, Drake with the melodies doing what he does best, and her own biting blend of Caribbean creoles, Rihanna has dominated dance floors with “Work” for nearly a decade.
#175 Aaliyah – Rock The Boat
The second single from Aaliyah’s third record represented a new phase in her career. While her slippery soprano hadn’t changed, on “Rock the Boat” Aaliyah was using it to express her desire in a more assertive fashion; “Let’s take this overboard now,” she asserts before the first chorus, where she offers up detailed directions on how to ride her waves. Using glitter-flecked synths and sinewy rhythms, producers Eric Seats and Rapture Stewart gave Aaliyah’s bedroom come-on a backdrop that recalls the Quiet Storm era’s most splendorous moments; Aaliyah sets her vocal to simmer, bringing the heat as she reminds the listener that she’s in total control.
#162 Drake – Marvin’s Room
The song that moved the phrase “Are you drunk right now?” into the heart of the pop lexicon. Released at the onset of Drake’s imperial era (2011-16), “Marvins Room” turns a late-night drunk dial into a neo-noir confessional, the camera gliding across postparty detritus before finding our protagonist glaring forlornly into a golden chalice, pining. Noah “40” Shebib’s beat is vaporous, and Drake’s at his neediest, but the result is alchemical, magical — and massively influential. Drake was already a star, but Take Care solidified his influence on R&B, inspiring a decade of sine-wave production flourishes and frankly emo bloodletting. “Marvins Room” is the apex of this mode: tuneful, embarrassing, indelible.
#150 Nelly – Ride With me
Nelly came out of St. Louis giving Dirty South hip-hop his own unassumingly laid-back Midwestern twist. The third single from his multiplatinum album Country Grammar stretches out the shuffling groove from OutKast’s recent hit “Rosa Parks” into a high-rolling, top-down glide, with Nelly inviting all the thicky-thicky-thick girls to smoke an L in the back of the Benz-E. He adorably shows just how big a fly-over-state yokel he is when he raps that his big fantasy is a first-class flight sitting next to Vanna White from Wheel of Fortune, and delivers the call-and-response hook “Oh, why must I feel this way? Hey, must be the money” like a guy who almost can’t believe the dream he’s living.
#147 Travis Scott & Drake – Sicko Mode
“Sicko Mode” exemplifies Travis Scott’s world-conquering maximalist style. It was made with more than 30 credited songwriters, eight producers, an opening verse from Drake, an uncredited melodic hook from Swae Lee, and allusions to Big Hawk’s “Victory Flow,” the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Gimme the Loot,” and Luke’s “I Wanna Rock.” Despite all of that, the track pulses with focused energy as Scott flows about his innate freshness. Hitting Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning a diamond certification from the RIAA, “Sicko Mode” arguably represents the Houston artist at his peak, and an era when he molded the rap genre into his rage-fueled image.
#140 M.O.P. – Ante Up
Don’t let the umpteen dance-movie placements in “Ante Up” fool you: M.O.P.’s smash single is the representation of a group of grizzled New Yitty residents who don’t breakdance, but break jaws. Brownsville’s Mash Out Posse were known for ruckus, uptempo tracks that become gym playlist staples, and “Ante Up” may be the crown jewel. Riding atop producer Dr. Period’s impossibly massive horns, Billy Danze and Lil Fame, two of Brownsville’s finest, rhyme about sticking up marks with the kind of impassioned delivery that could wake the dead. The song epitomizes a bygone era of New York that so many clamor for — even if it had its dangerous moments.
#135 Tyla – Water
Draping her breathy, iridescent voice over amapiano’s trademark thunk-thunk log-drum beats — arguably the most irresistible groove to emerge from the Afrobeats revolution — Tyla sidled onto the world stage like a 21st-century Sade. This breakout, an international hit that earned her the first-ever Best African Music Performance Grammy, mixes the choral call-and-response of old-school Afropop with South African slang (“haibo!” “asambe!”) and a bubbling flow of come-ons. The song was so undeniable that Travis Scott jumped on a remix, and you barely noticed him alongside the petite singer’s quiet dazzle. (The pleasingly sub-aquatic Marshmello remix couldn’t extinguish her flame, either.) The opening shot of what may well prove to be Afrobeats’ biggest global pop crossover artist.
#125 Gyptian – Hold You
“Hold You” by Gyptian boasts one of the most iconic riddims at the crossroads of modern reggae and dancehall, from its chipper, plucky keys to its deep, grounding bass line. Though it inspired many of the Caribbean’s hottest stars — including the song’s Jamaican-American producer, Ricky Blaze, and icons like Trinidad and Tobago’s Machel Mantano and Nicki Minaj — to render their own versions, Gyptian’s delivery in particular, drenched in passion and rasp, has always been most memorable. Equal parts sweet and sensual (OK, maybe mostly sensual, as a three-and-a-half-minute double entendre for a carnal lust that sounds a lot like love) “Hold You” has become a contemporary classic.
#118 Childish Gambino – Redbone
For the glistening, beguiling “Redbone,” Childish Gambino put away the puns and punch lines of his hip-hop past, instead hot-wiring the P-Funk Mothership for a memorable joyride. Armed with vintage Mellotron, Rhodes, and Telecaster — not to mention plenty of modern software — co-producer Ludwig Göransson created a velvety atmosphere that was at once retro and contemporary. Released in the middle of the social-justice era, Gambino’s psychedelic cry to “stay woke” resonated far deeper than the song’s narrative about suspicious lovers — it ended up soundtracking a waterfall of memes and a cultural event no less tectonic than the opening credits to Jordan Peele’s landmark Get Out.
#101 Missy Elliott – Work It
To push music forward, Missy Elliott had to go backward. The buzzy, burbling “Work It” beat, co-produced by Timbaland and Elliott herself, was, even by their standards, so intergalactically freaky that Eliott needed a few tries at writing a song over it before she found the right approach. Running her vocals in reverse turned out to be the song’s signature trick. “When she got to that reverse part,” Timbaland once told Rolling Stone, “I was like, ‘Oh, we out here. We’re done.’ When you bake a great cake, you need the right icing on top.”
#95 Burna Boy – Last Last
It was thrilling to see so many of the 21st century’s R&B innovations coming from West Africa — after all, the style’s deepest rootstock reaches back to the region. Burna Boy is head of the Afrobeats class, and this jam may be his best. With its Brazilian-tinged beats and West Indian-tinged flow, it mixes English, Yoruba, and Nigerian pidgin slang in a way that feels irresistible, expanding pop’s vernacular musically and lyrically. The highlight of his 2022 Love, Damiani LP, it’s an anthem of heartbroken struggle that topped Billboard’s newly christened U.S. Afrobeats chart with a universal, time-tested prescription: spark some igbo, raise a cuppa shayo, and dance the pain away.
#92 sean Paul – Get Busy
Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” is arguably the most famous use of producer Steven “Lenky” Marsden’s Diwali Riddim, no small feat given that the dancehall beat inspired hundreds of tracks, including major pop hits by Rihanna (“Pon de Replay”), Lumidee (“Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)”), and Wayne Wonder (“No Letting Go”). It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and remains one of those anthems that serve as a clarion call to the dance floor. “It’s the ignition of those butterflies,” Paul told The New York Times in 2023 when describing how the handclap percussion makes listeners feel, readying them for the excitement of the moment when Paul beckons, “It’s all good girl, turn me on, let’s get it on to the early morn.”
#75 Kanye West – Jesus Walks
A spiritual rap that took over secular radio, Kanye West made a hip-hop masterpiece by exploring his faith, combining the personal and the political with his most grandiose production effort to that point. West and co-producer Rhymefest borrowed much of the track from a performance by the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Choir, a Harlem-based acapella group composed of musicians in recovery. Serving as both a criticism and a dare to radio — “So here go my single, dawg, radio needs this/They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus” — the track ended up a Top 20 smash, a Grammy winner, and a staple song that West has performed with gospel choirs, marching bands, string ensembles, and Mavis Staples.
#60 Lil Wayne – A Milli
The second single from Tha Carter III transforms a Phife Dawg snippet from a “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” remix into the never-ending vocal bedrock to one of the rapper’s most enduring songs. “That record did something I didn’t know it could. It took on a life of its own,” the song’s producer, Bangladesh, said in 2022. “I don’t think [Wayne] knew what the record was.” What was initially supposed to be just an album interlude featuring other rappers became, as the rapper himself would say later, his “GOAT song.” “‘A Milli’ is just Weezy solo,” Rolling Stone wrote when putting the track on our 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, “blacking out in the booth and dazzling everyone who hears him.”
#54 50 Cent – In Da Club
This omnipresent party anthem was the climax following a crescendo of hype formed around the Queens rapper. “In Da Club” would be not just a huge rap record, but also the biggest pop single of 2003. The track emerged from the very first session that the mixtape sensation had with producer Dr. Dre and co-producer Mike Elizando. Upon hearing the thunderous beat, 50 wrote the entire thing in under an hour and recorded it that night. The celebratory intro “Go shorty, it’s your birthday” has helped make “In Da Club” one of rap’s most enduring songs, officially certified diamond in 2023. “Everyday it’s someone’s birthday,” 50 said, “The song’s relevant all over every day.”
#43 Drake – Hold On, We’re Going Home
There are many versions of Drake and songs that exemplify them. “Hold On, We’re Going Home” is one of Drake’s most earnest pop-star moments ever. Alongside Majid Jordan, he crafted a dreamy ode to unfettered romance that’s still being co-opted and karaoke’d to this day. When he gently calls his romantic interest “home,” lovers hope home feels like Jordan, 40, and Nineteen85’s Eighties-inspired production. The song is a snapshot of Drake the certified lover boy, who’s gentle enough to have someone “act so different around me,” but talented enough to croon it unforgettably. When he rhymed, “I still got some love deep inside of me” on 2023’s “Rich Baby Daddy,” he was referring to whatever well he culled for this wedding song favorite.
#39 Eminem – Lose Yourself
“That was one of those songs where I remember telling [my manager], ‘I don’t know how to write about someone else’s life,’” said Eminem, on writing the inspirational narrative of his 8 Mile character, Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith. “It would sound so corny if I was just rapping as Jimmy Smith Jr. How is that going to come from a real place?” Naturally, Em pulled from his own experiences as a struggling battle rapper balancing his ambitions with baby-mama drama, financial struggles, and trailer-park malaise — by the third verse of “Lose Yourself” the “he” stealthily turns into “I.” The result was hip-hop’s very own “Eye of the Tiger,” a motivational speech performed with acrobatically cunning rhymes. The gambit earned him 12 weeks atop the Hot 100, and the first Best Original Song Oscar given to a rapper.
#32 Beyonce – Formation
Beyoncé stopped the world yet again when “Formation” crash-landed like a spaceship in 2016, ushering in her era as a political voice, a once-in-a-lifetime touring artist, and a true troublemaker with her Super Bowl 50 performance of the song, dripping Black Panther aesthetics. Yet, beyond all that historic cultural context, “Formation” remains one of Beyoncé’s most interesting sounding songs to date. Armed with production from MikeWillMadeIt that was somehow at once kookily mechanical and royally orchestral and vocal contributions from his rambunctious Rae Sremmurd protégé Swae Lee, and New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia’s blessings, Beyoncé solidified her rap bona fides on “Formation,” letting herself become the most crass and defiant she’d ever been to that point.
#25 Jay-Z – 99 Problems
Rick Rubin moved away from hip-hop in the Nineties to work with rock acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, and Slayer. But he returned to his roots in 2003 for Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.” It’s a work of genius that fuses the chorus of Ice-T’s “99 Problems” with the drum beat from Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat,” elements of Mountain’s “Long Red,” and Wilson Pickett’s “Get Me Back on Time.” In the lyrics, Jay calls out music critics, racist police officers bringing drug-sniffing dogs to his car, and pathetic men unworthy of his time. (Each verse is about a different “bitch,” and it’s never a woman.) The song wraps with Jay calling out Rubin by name. “He pushed me to take the track to a whole other level.” Jay later said.
#22 Wizkid & Tems – Essence
“Essence” is bewitching, shimmering, and impossibly soulful. Of course, this Tems-fueled 2020 single is about being reluctant, yet its tropical bass and mashup of sharp and cool tones make it feel wonderfully direct and decidedly urgent. No shocker that “Essence” became the first song by a Nigerian artist to bogart Billboard’s Hot 100: Its chorus is so indestructible, Tin Pan Alley’s best songwriters are low-key hating from the grave. Tems’ humid whine — modal, plaintive, and electric— bristles with untapped desire as she insists, “You don’t need no other body.” And Wizkid’s mellifluous effusions serenade your ears, while inviting you to a scorching-hot dance floor. “Essence” essentially intoxicates.
#17 Drake – Hotline Bling
There’s a reason young people have taken to idolizing mid-2010s hip-hop. The era saw an abundance of releases that went on to define a generation. At the center of it all was a red-hot Drake, at the zenith of his cultural influence, atop a peak seen only by the likes of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and, as he’s apt to remind us, Michael Jackson. In particular, Drizzy was at his most powerful in 2015. He successfully warded off threats to his legitimacy in his beef with Meek Mill and capped off the affair by dropping a cross-genre hit. “Hotline Bling” would turn out to be a viable microcosm for Drake’s career, an undeniable pop crossover capable of reorienting the conversation around him. If he could only rediscover the formula today.
#13 SZA – Snooze
SZA has said she hates being generalized as an R&B singer, which makes sense since her music is an incisive blend of rock, rap, pop, and more. But she did make a perfect R&B song with “Snooze,” her longest charting hit to date. It helps that she had R&B impresario Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and guitar hero Leon Thomas backing her with a classic instrumental that sounds like longing incarnate, but SZA loaded it with her irreverent wit and signature contradictions to make it utterly unforgettable. People like to compliment records as timeless, but this one shines precisely because it boasts such a contemporary take on the age-old drama of a relationship going wrong — matched with a feeling so right.
#10 Frank Ocean – Thinking Bout You
It can be easy to forget how shocking it was in 2012 to press play on Channel Orange and, after a short intro, crash into this instant-classic love song. Most people at the time knew Frank Ocean as the most melodic member of the fast-rising Odd Future crew; some might have heard about his experience writing for Beyoncé and Justin Bieber, or tuned into the sample-jacking, genre-surfing buzz around his 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. But no one was ready for what he did on “Thinkin Bout You,” cooing sweet romantic metaphors on the verse before unleashing his generationally smooth falsetto on the hook: “Or do you not think so far ahead?/’Cause I been thinkin’ ’bout forever.…” A simple melody, delivered unforgettably — sometimes that’s all it takes. By the time the song was done, Ocean was firmly established at the forefront of both R&B and pop. And while he’s often seemed uninterested in new music in recent years, this song is brilliant enough to keep him in the canon forever, just like he said.
#3 Beyonce – Crazy In Love
From the moment those opening horns explode open the track, it’s clear that “Crazy in Love” is more than just a single: It was a warning to the rest of the pop world that Beyoncé the solo star had officially arrived. Like much of the artist’s work, the song bridges the relationship between the past and the present, with Beyoncé delivering a modernly funky R&B cut. Rich Harrison produced the track, which led off the rollout of the star’s first solo album, Dangerously in Love, and perfectly placed a Chi-Lites sample that gives the track enough of a retro touch to feel like an instant classic. Beyoncé herself sounds effortless: A natural, convincing confidence made her stand out while in Destiny’s Child, and carries the buoyant, catchy anthem. Paired with an instantly memorable verse from Jay-Z, “Crazy in Love” was destined for greatness from the jump, influencing a generation of pop stars in its wake.
See their entire list here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-of-the-21st-century-1235410452/train-drops-of-jupiter-1235414778/
