For the first time in nearly three years, Juicy J is back on the Billboard singles chart.
The former Three 6 Mafia member and Oscar-winning rapper returns to the Hot 100 as a featured artist on "Powerglide," the latest single from the duo Rae Sremmurd. The track debuts there this week at No. 76.
The artist born Jordan Michael Houston last appeared on the Hot 100 in May of 2015, as a guest on R&B star Usher's single "I Don't Mind," which had peaked a month and a half prior at No. 11. That same year, he featured on Ne-Yo's "She Knows," which reached No. 19 there during its 20-week run.
Those back-to-back hits came roughly a year after Houston's role on Katy Perry's chart-topping pop smash "Dark Horse." That single spent 57 weeks on the Hot 100, with four of those weeks at No. 1.
First released earlier this month, "Powerglide" had a respectable initial showing this week on Billboard's genre-specific charts. It debuts at No. 37 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and No. 20 on R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales. The track has not yet appeared on R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs or R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, though both seem likely to contain it in the coming weeks.
"Powerglide" is expected to appear on SR3MM, an ambitious triple album from Rae Sremmurd comprising solo efforts from members Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee as well as a joint full-length. The duo topped the Hot 100 in November of 2016 with their No. 1 hit "Black Beatles," which also featured trap godfather Gucci Mane. Since they, Sremmurd has logged a number of additional Billboard charting singles including "Swang" and "Perplexing Pegasus," which peaked at No. 26 and No. 84, respectively. This week, Swae Lee also appears on the Hot 100 as a guest for Jhene Aiko's "Sativa," which debuts at No. 98.
Whether or not "Powerglide" will do for Houston what "Black Beatles" did for fellow rap veteran Gucci remains to be seen. The song is off to a good start, accumulating more than 3.7 million domestic Spotify plays in the qualifying frame to become the 35th most played song on the platform in the U.S. that first full week. Over at YouTube, the "Powerglide" audio stream logged over 925,000 domestic plays in the same period. More recently, the just-released official music video garnered over 1.4 million global plays in less than two days.
Juicy J's last commercial release, 2017's Rubba Band Business, peaked at No. 191 on the Billboard 200 album charts. That's a far cry from his prior solo album Stay Trippy, which reached No. 4 there in 2013, and the group effort TGOD Mafia: Rude Awakening, which debuted at No. 26. That latter release also featured rapper Wiz Khalifa.
