Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip. See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news This week: Only in 2024 could we use the phrase “post-assassination-attempt streaming bump” for a pair of hits — one new and one old — while the most recent albums from Megan Thee Stallion and Charli XCX both spin off new viral jams, and more.
On Saturday night (July 13), the world was rocked by news of an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump during a campaign rally near Butler, PA. As folks tried to make sense of what had happened, they inevitably turned to contemporary culture’s most reliable source of comfort in helping to process world events: memes. One of the most common such templates compared Trump to the rapper 50 Cent , who famously rose to fame following an attack that left him shot nine times.
50 himself got in on the game, posting a photo of his iconic Get Rich or Die Tryin’ album cover with a photo of Trump’s head crudely pasted over his own, along with the shrugging caption, “Trump gets shot and now I’m trending.” It wasn’t just his image that was trending, though: Listeners also flocked to 50’s Get Rich staple “Many Men (Wish Death),”.
