Could This Rap Remix Trend Bring the Genre Back To the Charts?
Categoria: Musica
The Game, Meek Mill & Run the Jewels all remixed their own hits this summer. Did it move the needle?
Por Billboard | 05/10/2026
When The Game recently decided he wanted to remix his 2005 hit “Hate It or Love It,” “Everybody thought that I was crazy,” he says. “They’re like, ‘This is a classic. You shouldn’t touch this. How are you going to make it better?’ And I thought to myself, ‘I love challenges, so how am I going to make it better?’” Without original collaborator 50 Cent on the hook — which two decades ago helped the song reach No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 — The Game brought Snoop Dogg into the fold, helping the Doggfather to write a verse that recalls his iconic counting flow on Dr. Dre’s 1992 G-funk classic “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” Both Game and Snoop made references to the original “Hate It or Love It,” while saluting West Coast legends including Nipsey Hussle, 2Pac and Ice Cube. A sample of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 hit “What You Won’t Do for Love” — not present on the 2005 track — tied the new version together. Related Drake’s ‘HABIBTI (FOMO)’ Deluxe: All 4 New Songs Ranked Fans Choose Victoria Monét's 'Frequency of Love' as This Week's Favorite New Music Shakira's Madrid Concert Sets an Amazon Music Livestreaming Record “Love It or Hate It,” The Game figured, would generate buzz for the August release of his 11th studio album, The Documentary III — and serve as connective tissue between his new project and his debut album, The Documentary , which featured “Hate It or Love It” and stamped him as a torchbearer of West Coast hip-hop in the aughts. “I knew for my core fans, them being able to go down memory lane and in such a nostalgic way early on in the album would set the tone for the listener and kind of trick your ears into understanding that this album is going to be a classic album too,” he says. “So when you listen to the song, you think you’re listening to ‘Hate It or Love It’ because you’re used to it, but you’re not. That’s just me playing mind games with my fans — and even myself.” “Love It or Hate It” was part of a trio of rap remixes that arrived this summer — and all reanimated existing hits. Meek Mill recalled his millennial motivational scripture “Dreams and Nightmares” for the new “Nightmares to Dreams,” and DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels celebrated 10 years of their collaborative “Nobody Speak” with “Nobody Speak Part 2,” which featured buzzy rappers Denzel Curry and TiaCorine. Crate-digging, and flipping known intellectual property, have always been fundamental to hip-hop. Nas released a sequel to “N.Y. State of Mind” (“N.Y. State of Mind Pt. II”) five years after dropping his classic Illmatic (the revamped track appeared on his 1999 album, I Am… ), and more recently, Lil Uzi Vert released “P2,” a sequel to the top 10 2017 smash “XO Tour Llif3” that arrived three years after the original and used its same hypnotic melody and TM88 production. (“P2,” which featured on 2020’s Eternal Atake , reached No. 11 on the Hot 100.) Reworking catalog hits of the past — albeit by other artists — has previou