It seems as though every other week there is a new viral dance or song that seems to bubble up from vine (soon no longer), or another social media network. The latest craze has been the Mannequin Challenge that started on Oct. 26 with a tweet by students at Jacksonville, Florida's Edward H High School showing the people on camera posed like mannequins. Then it spread like wildfire with everyone from the Cleveland Cavaliers doing the challenge in the White House, to Beyoncé, to Rae Sremmurd themselves and even Paul McCartney getting in the action. This has all propelled "Black Beatles" with Gucci Mane to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts with some impressive numbers to back it up.
Getting to No. 1 was not an easy feat. It had to unseat The Chainsmokers & Halsey's "Closer," which had dominated for a pretty astounding 12 straight weeks and was getting ready to go into history books if it lasted much longer.
It vaulted all the way to the top from the ninth position last week. This was done on the back of strong digital sales, going 16-1 with 144,000 downloads sold, up 320 percent.
Unsurprisingly streaming, primarily syncs has been a major help as well. It has gone from 5-1 in streams, with 43.3 million in the United States alone. 20.8 million of those are YouTube plays, up from 8.7 million the week before. 12.1 million are on Spotify. Again a big increase from 5.8 million the week before. It is the first No. 1 for Rae Sremmurd, Gucci Mane and Mike Will Made It. The trend seems to be still going strong and we aren't complaining, as there are plenty of creative people doing it.
