News January 3, 2019

Barack Obama has debuted on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart

Barack Obama has just ticked another achievement off his list, debuting on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart.

In addition to being one of the most popular US Presidents in recent history, Barack Obama has maintained a rather strong relationship with music. In addition to releasing his annual lists of favourite music, the ex-Pres has also scored himself a couple of Grammy Awards for the audiobook versions of his first two books.

Now, he’s become a Billboard charting artist once again.

If you’re not too well-versed in the world of musical theatre, you might have missed out on hearing about Hamilton, the 2015 historical musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Based on the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, the musical has become a massive success, breaking numerous records in the process.

Last month though, Lin-Manuel Miranda released ‘One Last Time (44 Remix)’, a remixed version of a song from the musical, credited to Christopher Jackson, Barack Obama and BeBe Winans. Featuring a speech read by Obama himself, The Hollywood Reporter notes that it’s seen the former President reach the Billboard charts.

Released back on December 20th, the track managed to receive 307,000 on-demand U.S. streams and 9,000 paid downloads for the week ending December 27th, enough for the track to hit #22 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart this week.

Oddly, this isn’t the first time that Barack Obama has hit the charts before, previously appearing on two, now defunct Billboard charts.

Back in 2009, A Moment in History: The Inauguration of Barack Obama managed to reach #6 on Billboards TV DVD Sales chart, which JX Cannon’s Obama-featuring ‘Pop Cannon’ hit #10 on the Billboard + Twitter Emerging Artists chart in December of 2015.