99 ProblemsJay-Z
99 Problems
2004 · From The Black Album
Rick Rubin's first rap production in years, a Billy Squier drum break, and a second verse about a traffic stop.
★ 8.0
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2004
Showing 44 songs from 2004
Jesus Walks
2004 · From The College Dropout
A marching ARC Choir sample, Rhymefest's co-write, and a label convinced nobody would play a rap record about God.
★ 7.9
Gasolina
2004
A dembow riddim from Luny Tunes, an uncredited hook from Glory, and a place in the National Recording Registry.
★ 7.7
Mr. Brightside
2004 · From Hot Fuss
Flowers wrote it after a bad night at a Vegas bar; Britain has kept it charting past 500 weeks.
★ 7.6
Drop It Like It's Hot
2004 · From R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece
The Neptunes built it from tongue clicks and almost nothing else, and it gave Snoop his first number one.
★ 7.6
Since U Been Gone
2004
Pink passed on it and Duff couldn't hit the notes, so Clarkson asked for heavier guitars and won a Grammy.
★ 7.5
Take Me Out
2004 · From Franz Ferdinand
Two songs welded together, the tempo dropping a minute in, and a sniper film lending Kapranos his double-edged title.
★ 7.5
Float On
2004
Brock wrote it in the final days of tracking, fed up with darkness, and built indie rock's warmest chorus.
★ 7.3
All Falls Down
2004 · From The College Dropout
Denied the Lauryn Hill sample, West had Syleena Johnson sing the part, and got his first solo top ten.
★ 7.3
Maps
2004 · From Fever to Tell
Zinner's looped riff, twenty minutes of writing from Karen O, and a video where the tears are real.
★ 7.3
Dirt Off Your Shoulder
2004 · From The Black Album
Timbaland's beat is all snap and space, and in 2008 a presidential candidate borrowed the shoulder-brush on a Raleigh stage.
★ 7.0
Reptilia
2004 · From Room on Fire
Nigel Godrich's sessions got scrapped, Gordon Raphael came back, and the descending twin-guitar riff turned everything into a sprint.
★ 6.8
If I Ain't Got You
2004
Aaliyah's death in 2001 clarified what mattered, and Keys answered with piano, gospel restraint and a Grammy-winning vocal.
★ 6.8
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
2004 · From American Idiot
Armstrong wrote the lyrics alone in an East Village apartment, and that loneliness won Record of the Year.
★ 6.6
All These Things That I've Done
2004 · From Hot Fuss
Gospel choir the Sweet Inspirations, a bassline Flowers traced to Bowie, and a refrain built for arenas.
★ 6.5
Somebody Told Me
2004 · From Hot Fuss
Flowers called it the story of trying to meet someone in a club; Keuning's hook does the flirting.
★ 6.3
Evil
2004 · From Antics
Charlie White's video put an animatronic puppet through a real emergency room, six puppeteers digitally erased; fans named it Norman.
★ 5.8
How to Save a Life
2004
Slade wrote it after mentoring a troubled teenager at a Denver camp, and Grey's Anatomy did the rest.
★ 5.8
Whiskey Lullaby
2004
Two verses, two voices, and Jerry Douglas's Dobro; Bill Anderson and Jon Randall wrote country's bleakest modern ballad.
★ 5.8
I Miss You
2004
Cello, upright bass and brushed drums, roughly seventy acoustic tracks, and Hoppus and DeLonge trading verses about missing someone.
★ 5.8
Ocean Breathes Salty
2004
Recorded at Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, and it turns a hard look at mortality into something close to serene.
★ 5.6
Such Great Heights (Iron & Wine)Iron & Wine
Such Great Heights (Iron & Wine)
2004
Beam slowed Gibbard's synth-pop into hushed acoustic guitar for a Sub Pop B-side, then Garden State put it everywhere.
★ 5.5
1, 2 Step
Ciara and Missy Elliott
2004
Jazze Pha built the beat on an Akai MPC3000, and Missy Elliott cut her verse before ever meeting Ciara.
★ 5.5
Somewhere Only We Know
2004
Rice-Oxley hammered it out on piano after "Heroes", and Keane proved a rock band could skip guitars entirely.
★ 5.5
Naughty Girl
2004
Scott Storch built it on a Donna Summer interpolation, and Beyonce turns a club come-on into pure command.
★ 5.3
Lean Back
Terror Squad and Fat Joe
2004
Scott Storch's beat, three weeks at number one, and a hook that instructs the room not to dance.
★ 5.0
Unwritten
2004
Cut in Venice Beach with Danielle Brisebois, then adopted by The Hills and every graduation slideshow since.
★ 4.8
How We Do
2004
50 Cent wrote the chorus, liked it enough to take a verse, and Dre's beat carried Compton nationwide.
★ 4.7
Live Like You Were Dying
2004
Wiseman and Nichols built it from a friend's cancer scare, and McGraw cut it the year his father died.
★ 4.7
Naked as We CameIron & Wine
Naked as We Came
2004
Beam swapped his home four-track for Brian Deck's Chicago studio, and sang two lovers weighing which of them dies first.
★ 4.6
Everybody's Changing
2004
Rice-Oxley wrote it after the guitarist quit, which is why a rock band's biggest hook is played on piano.
★ 4.5
Breathe (Fabolous)
2004
Just Blaze cut it from Supertramp's Crime of the Century, and Fabolous raps it like a man being chased.
★ 4.4
Daughters
2004
Mayer lobbied his label against releasing it, then won Song of the Year in 2005 and said so onstage.
★ 4.4
Ocean Avenue
2004
Sean Mackin's violin cutting through the guitars, and an avenue that is really a boulevard in Atlantic Beach, Florida.
★ 4.1
Dare You to Move
2004
A song Foreman wrote to talk himself into moving, cut twice, the 2003 version the band's biggest hit.
★ 3.8
Tipsy
2004
Trackboyz built the stomp, J-Kwon was seventeen, and twenty years on Shaboozey turned the hook into a number one.
★ 3.7
Soldier
Destiny's Child and T.I.
2004
Sean Garrett wrote the hook in a taxi, and T.I. and Lil Wayne are the album's only guest verses.
★ 3.7
Overnight Celebrity
2004
Kanye looped a 1978 Lenny Williams record, Miri Ben-Ari sawed the violin, and Twista outran both to number six.
★ 2.8
These Words
2004
Writer's block became the subject; Bedingfield turned her failure to finish a love song into a UK number one.
★ 2.7