Hip hop songwriters had the most chart success in 2017

Hip hop has overtaken every other genre when it comes to sales, and this success is being reflected in MBW’s list of the most successful hit songwriters for the first half of 2017.

Before we reveal the winners, let’s look at how the chart works.

As Royalty Exchange — who crunched the numbers for MBW, explain — “each track on the Billboard Hot 100 chart across the six months is assigned a point value, with 1,000 points for a No.1 record and down 10 points for each subsequent weekly placing (so the No.100 song each week gets 10 points). These points have then been split equally between all songwriters credited on each track, to create a cumulative total each week.”

Right. So the most popular songwriter for the first half of 2017 was Metro Boomin (Leyland Wayne) who netted nine Billboard Hot 100 hits, including ‘No Heart’ and ‘X’ under his own name, and other smashes such as Future’s ‘Mask Off’.

Quavo from Migos is second on the list, mainly due to the massive success of ‘Bad and Boujee’ by the Atlanta trio, but also due to his dominance on other hit singles — 19 in total — which flooded the Hot 100 over the first six months of the year. Quavo was involved in writing ‘Slide’ by Calvin Harris, ‘Sacrifices’ by Big Sean, ‘I’m The One’ by DJ Khaled, ‘Congratulations’ by Post Malone, ‘Bon Appitit’ by Katy Perry’ and numerous others.

Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN album was enough to make him the third most-successful songwriter, while Ed Sheeran slots in at number 4 and Drake sits at #5. Lower down the list is Andrew Taggart from The Chainsmokers, Taylor Swift and Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose Hamilton soundtrack continues to dominate.

Check out the entire list, with artist rankings and songs they have contributed to, here.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.