Kanye West Debuts On Billboard Hot 100 This Week With An 8 Year Old Song

A viral video helps bring 'Gone,' from the rapper's 2005 album 'Late Registration,' onto the tally at last
Kanye West debuts on the Hot 100 this week with a song that's eight years old. "Gone" (featuring Cam'ron and Consequence), from West's 2005 sophomore album "Late Registration," starts at No. 18 after a YouTube clip featuring the song as a backing track went viral.

(Per Billboard policy, songs showing renewed activity past their initial release cycles are eligible to chart if ranking in the top half of the Hot 100 and genre hybrid rankings.)

The song's revival started when Marina Shifrin, a writer and comedian, quit her job as a video editor by creating a video for her boss in which she dances around her deserted office (at 4:30 a.m.) to the appropriately-themed "Gone."


Views for the kiss-off clip soared – it currently stands at more than 15 million global views – drawing praise as one of the awesomest ways to quit a job ever and spawning hordes of parody and response videos.

U.S. digital sales of "Gone" spiked from minuscule levels in the previous week to 9,000 in this week's sales tracking frame, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Overall usage of "Gone" across these videos on YouTube pulled in 6.2 million U.S. streams for the song, according to Nielsen BDS, enough to send the title onto the Streaming Songs chart at No. 4.

"Gone" concurrently debuts on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at No. 6 and Rap Songs at No. 4.

With its No. 18 start, "Gone" represents the fifth-highest start of West's 59 Hot 100 chart entries. He launched at a career-best No. 3 with "Love Lockdown" five years ago this month. His 59 hits mark the 12th-most in the Hot 100's 55-year history. Among rappers, only Lil Wayne (120), Jay Z (80) and Drake (65) have more.





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