Already an established household name in the Atlanta hip-hop scene, we look at how a series of successes plus a shout out from Donald Glover at the Golden Globe Awards is helping to push the group Migos to the top.
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Guest post by Emily Blake of Next Big Sound on Medium
For tuned-in hip-hop fans — particularly those tuned into Atlanta — Migos have been a household name for a few years now. Specifically, since “Versace,” their 2013 debut single that went on to hit the Hot 100, all thanks to a remix from Drake. Since then, they’ve racked up collaborations with the likes of Kanye West, Gucci Mane and Big Sean, released several critically acclaimed mixtapes and singles, and — perhaps most importantly — were instrumental in the proliferation of “dabbing.”
But it wasn’t until last Sunday night that the trio — composed of Quavo, Takeoff and Offset — went from a household name among hip-hop heads to, briefly, a household name among everyone who was watching the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards. (Around 20 million people, by the way.) That’s when Donald Glover, fellow rapper and star of FX’s Atlanta, thanked the trio during his acceptance speech for Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy, deeming their latest single, Bad and Boujee, “the best song ever.”
Speaking to reporters backstage after his speech, Glover went even further.
[See original tweet HERE]
“I think that they’re the Beatles of this generation, and they don’t get a lot of respect, I think, outside of Atlanta,” Glover said. “Not that they don’t get respect, but there’s a generation, sort of like the YouTube generation that I kind of came up with. There’s a generation of kids that are growing up on something that’s completely separate from a whole group of people.”
The very next day, Billboard announced that Bad and Boujee, which also features rising Philadelphia MC Lil Uzi Vert, dethroned Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” for the №1 spot on the Hot 100.
That’s all to say: It was a hell of a week for Migos.
Bad and Boujee’s rise on the Hot 100 can’t be directly attributed to Glover’s Sunday night shoutout. After all, Billboard charts run on a Monday to Sunday cycle, and the song had already been on a tear thanks in large part to a number of viral memes. But judging by a variety of social and streaming data over the past few days, it most definitely didn’t hurt them.
On Monday, for example, Migos saw over 37,000 Twitter mentions. In the three months leading up to that, they were averaging right around 1,600 mentions per day. They also saw right around 5,200 new followers that day on the social media site.
Migos also saw about 27,000 Wikipedia page views that day, and around 18,500 on Tuesday. In the past 90 days, they’ve averaged 2,300 views per day. Between Sunday night and Wednesday, they added 10,415 Facebook page likes and racked up over 15.5 million views on YouTube, too.
And the best song ever is getting a lot more love, too. Bad and Boujee is approaching the top 10 of the Pandora Top Spins Chart. And the music video has attracted over 103 million views to date.
But don’t call this a one-hit wonder. And while Bad and Boujee is seeing a solid number of Track Station Adds on Pandora — right around 28,000 weekly — Migos are also seeing over 60,000 weekly Artist Station Adds. That signifies that it isn’t just Bad and Boujee that people are dying to hear; it’s Migos they want.
The attention couldn’t come at a better time for Migos, as the trio are due to release their sophomore album, Culture, on Jan. 27.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on January 13.