Last week, Compton crooner Steve Lacy managed to overtake Harry Styles to take the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Lacy’s surprise hit, “Bad Habit,” dethroned Styles’ record-breaking hit “As It Was,” with Sam Smith & Kim Petras’ “Unholy” coming in third place. This week, though “Unholy” rose one position to take second place and leave “As It Was” in third, Lacy fended off the two pop stars to hold onto the top spot for the second week in a row.
The Billboard #Hot100 top 10 (chart dated Oct. 15, 2022)
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 10, 2022
Considering that “Bad Habit” has been labeled an R&B/Soul song, the feat is even more impressive as the genre hasn’t traditionally been all that successful in the history of Hot 100 chart. Even more impressively, the song’s narrative is explicitly queer, which makes it something of an outlier within the R&B genre. The track’s success was largely driven by TikTok, soundtracking thousands of videos on the platform and spiking the sort of curiosity that drives engagement on traditional DSPs.
According to Billboard.com, “Bad Habits” pulled in 20.6 million streams and 2,000 downloads in the past week, as well as 41.5 million radio airplay audience impressions, a 7% increase from the week before. The album on which it appears, Gemini Rights, was Lacy’s first top 10, peaking at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.
