5 First-Timers on Billboard’s Charts This Week: Cloonee, Alek Olsen, King Hendrick$ & More

Xander Zellner
·5 min read

Billboard has more than 200 different weekly charts, encompassing numerous genres and formats.

While established artists often compete for a spot on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart and Billboard 200 albums ranking, which track the most popular songs and albums of the week, respectively, up-and-coming talents typically start off on genre-specific lists.

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Here’s a look at five artists who appear on surveys for the first time on the March 30, 2024-dated charts.

Cloonee

The house DJ arrives on Billboard’s charts with “Sippin’ Yak.” Released March 15 via Polydor/Hellbent, the song tallied 644,000 U.S. streams and sold 1,000 downloads in its first week of release (March 15-21), according to Luminate. Those sums help the track debut at No. 25 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, as well as No. 6 on Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales. The song samples Tracey Lee’s 2001 song “We Like” featuring Fatman Scoop.

Cloonee, from the U.K., has been performing the song during his live shows for months, but began teasing the song on his TikTok page in January. (The song is no longer available on TikTok due to the ongoing dispute between the platform and Universal Music Group.)

Cloonee has been performing and releasing music, including multiple EPs, for more than a decade. He has collaborated with many fellow dance acts, including Brisotti, Caleb Calloway, Dances, Chris Lake and Wade. He has North American and European tour dates lined up through August, including Coachella this April.

Alek Olsen

The singer-songwriter scores his first career entry on Billboard’s charts thanks to “Someday I’ll Get It.” The song, which he self-released Oct. 23, debuts at No. 17 on Hot Alternative Songs, No. 22 on Hot Rock Songs and No. 24 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs (all of which use the same multimetric methodology as the Hot 100) with 2.6 million official U.S. streams (up 126%) in the March 15-21 tracking week.

The song has been surging in recent weeks due to buzz generated on TikTok, where it has been used in more than 375,000 clips on the platform to date. Many creators are using the song to soundtrack their experiences losing beloved pets, namely with the lyric, “I think of you all the time/ now that you’re gone.” The virality led to the song’s No. 19 debut on the Billboard TikTok Top 50 chart dated March 23.

Olsen originally released the song earlier this decade under the name Imsad., before he rebranded to his birth name. He has released five other songs on streaming services, all since 2015.

King Hendrick$

The Houston rapper debuts on Billboard’s charts with his breakthrough single “Leaving the Lot.” The song, released Feb. 15 via Bigmoneymissions Records, debuted at No. 48 on the March 23-dated Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs survey and ranks at No. 49 on the latest list. It tallied 3.3 million U.S. streams March 15-21, up 10%. King Hendrick$ also rises 40-35 on the Emerging Artists chart.

Recent gains for “Leaving the Lot” can be attributed in part to the Twitch streamer Sketch (aka @thesketchreal), who boasts more than 500,000 followers on the platform and streams himself chatting and playing video games. After playing the song on a Feb. 14 stream, it drew 500,000 on-demand official U.S. streams Feb. 16-22. From Feb. 23-29, it surged 175% to 1.4 million. Sketch has continued to play the song, which has led to other viral clips with the cut’s audio across TikTok and Twitter. King Hendrick$ gave Sketch a shoutout in a March 20 Instagram post celebrating his chart debut.

King Hendrick$ has released eight albums, all since 2016. He has already released nearly two dozen songs this year alone, including, most recently, “Blocking on a Sunday” with Hoodrich Keem (March 13), and “Special Teams Anthem” with Top$ide and Sketch (March 6). He has also collaborated with Babyface Ray on “Wavy Gang Immortal” and “Big Meech Holiday.”

Novulent

The shoegaze artist reaches on Billboard’s charts with his breakout song “Scars.” Released in June 2023 via The Royals, the track debuts at No. 45 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs with 1.5 million streams (up 11%). TikTok has been a contributing factor in the song’s growing exposure, as a portion of its audio has soundtracked more than 90,000 clips on the platform to date, including one by Megan Thee Stallion on March 11.

“Scars” appears on Novulent’s third LP Vol. 1, released in October. He has released three additional albums: My Story (2022), My Story 2 (2023) and DEARY DIARY (this January). He has a new set, Secret Letters, due this Friday (March 29).

Bjrnck

The Chicago native lands her first Billboard chart entry thanks to her featured appearance on Omarion’s “Taking Off.” Released in December on Omarion’s latest LP Full Circle: Sonic Boom Two (on Omarion Worldwide), the track debuts at No. 28 on Adult R&B Airplay with a 28% gain in spins. “BJRNCK is a pure superstar,” Omarion wrote in a Jan. 28 post on Instagram. “Loved working with her.”

Bjrnck has released six solo songs on streaming services, all since 2019, including collaborations with Big Freedia, HappyBirthdayCalvin and Lucky Daye. In February, she released a new collaboration with Eric Bellinger, “Pheenin.”

As for Omarion, “Taking Off” is the R&B veteran’s second song from Full Circle to hit Adult R&B Airplay, after “Serious” reached No. 18 in January. Before that, he had last charted at the format in 2006, with “Entourage.”

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