No Diggity

"No Diggity" is a song by American R&B group Blackstreet featuring Dr. Dre and Queen Pen. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and in New Zealand, and number nine in the United Kingdom. "No Diggity" ended "Macarena"'s 14-week reign atop the Billboard Hot 100. It ranked at number 91 on Rolling Stone and MTV: 100 Greatest Pop Songs. It sold 1.6 million copies in 1996, and won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and was nominated for Grammy Award for Best R&B Song. It ranked at #32 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s. In the United Kingdom, the song climbed back into the top forty of the UK Singles Chart in March 2013, peaking at number thirty-eight 16 years after its original release there.

Background

Co-producer Teddy Riley originally offered the song to Guy as part of their short-lived reunion in 1996. After failing to record any material, he then suggested the song to Guy's lead singer Aaron Hall, who refused to take part in recording the song. He then offered the song to his other group Blackstreet. In a 2010 interview, Riley revealed the song was initially a hard sell among group members. He stated:

Ed Sheeran

Edward Christopher "Ed" Sheeran (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He was born in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk. After dropping out of school at 16, he moved to London the following year, in 2008, to pursue a career in music. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project, which caught the attention of Elton John and Jamie Foxx. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (read as "plus"), was released on 9 September 2011 and has since been certified six-times platinum in the UK. The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act.

Sheeran's popularity abroad began in 2012. In the US, he made a guest appearance on Taylor Swift's fourth studio album, Red. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John. He spent much of 2013 opening for Swift's The Red Tour in North America dates. In late 2013, he performed three sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden as a headline act. He was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

Thrift Shop

"Thrift Shop" is a song by American hip hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. It was released on August 27, 2012 as Macklemore's eighth career single and the fourth single from their debut studio album The Heist (2012). It features vocals from Wanz. The song was composed to show Macklemore's esteem for thrift shops and saving money, opposing the flaunting of expensive items many rappers display. Music reviewers praised the song for its humorous lyrics and social critique. It was released in the United Kingdom in January 2013.

Despite being released on Macklemore's independent label with distribution by the Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), a Warner Music Group Company, the single was a sleeper hit. It peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since sold over 10 million copies in the US alone. The song also reached number one in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. A music video was released to accompany the song's release on August 29, 2012. The video has garnered more than 850 million views on YouTube, and as of February 2016 it is the site's 28th most-watched video. In 2014, the single won two Grammy Awards for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song.

Chet Faker

Nicholas James Murphy (born 23 June 1988), better known by his stage name Chet Faker, is an Australian electronica musician. Born in Warrnambool, Victoria, he grew up with 2 brothers (Harrison Murphy, 28) (Jacob Murphy, 25) and Step brother (Luke Mahony, 18) before he moved to the city to pursue his musical career. In 2012 he issued an extended play, Thinking in Textures and signed to Downtown Records in the United States. In October 2012 he won Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Thinking in Textures won Best Independent Single/EP at the Australian Independent Records Awards.

In January 2013 the work won Best Independent Release at the Rolling Stone Australia Awards for 2012. His cover of Blackstreet's "No Diggity" was featured in a 2013 Super Bowl commercial for Beck's Sapphire. In April 2014 Built on Glass, Faker's debut album, was released to generally positive reviews and debuted at number 1 on the Australian ARIA Charts. Three songs from the album were subsequently voted into the top ten of Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2014, including the number one spot for "Talk Is Cheap".

Dr. Dre

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Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics. Dre was previously the co-owner of, and an artist on, Death Row Records. He has produced albums for and overseen the careers of many rappers, including The D.O.C., Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Xzibit, Knoc-turn'al, 50 Cent, The Game and Kendrick Lamar. He is credited as a key figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats. In 2014, Dr. Dre was ranked as the second richest figure in the American hip hop scene by Forbes with a net worth of $550 million; he is at the top of the 2015 Forbes list, with an estimated pre-tax take of $620 million in 2014.

Dre began his career as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru and later found fame with the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella, which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap to detail the violence of street life. His 1992 solo debut The Chronic, released under Death Row Records, led him to become one of the best-selling American performing artists of 1993 and to win a Grammy Award for the single "Let Me Ride". That same year he produced Death Row labelmate Snoop Dogg's quadruple platinum debut Doggystyle, and even molded artists into top-notch producers such as his step-brother Warren G, which led to his multi-platinum debut Regulate...G Funk Era in 1994, and Snoop Dogg's cousin Daz Dillinger which led to the double platinum debut album Dogg Food by Tha Dogg Pound in 1995.