Top 12 Worst Hit Songs of 2001

Top 12 Worst Hit Songs of 2001

2001 was the year where the U.S. experienced a fraction of what it inflicted on other countries and immediately went completely insane for the next couple of decades. They still haven't recovered even today. It was also a pretty good year for the Hot 100. Not only because there were a lot of good songs this year but there was a lot of good variety on the charts. Hip hop, R&B, neo-soul, alternative rock, pop and post-grunge (for better or worse) all got a chance to shine. There was something for... maybe not everybody but for a lot of people on the radio this year. So let's now take a look at the worst of it.

#12: Jennifer Lopez ft. Ja Rule- I'm Real

We start the list with I'm Real by Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule. For some reason they called this a remix of a Jennifer Lopez song of the same name. Very misleading as this is a completely different song. It's also listed as a Jennifer Lopez song with Ja Rule as a guest artist, which is, again, misleading. This song has none of Jennifer Lopez's personality, and all of Ja Rule's stink slathered all over it. It's a Ja Rule song through and through. If I haven't made myself clear yet, I really don't like Ja Rule. He was consistently one of the worst mainstream rappers of the 2000s. He had a horribly rugged singing voice, as if he'd been a lifelong smoker. His flows were obnoxious and often paired with production that was simultaneously sickeningly light and upbeat while also cheap and full of shitty soundbytes. All of this perfectly describes I'm Real. Ja Rule's flow in his verse is all over the place and his super rough singing does not sound good over such a sickeningly sweet beat. As for Jennifer Lopez, her vocals are very weak and her attempts at rapping are pathetic. Pop-rap songs usually depend on the chorus but this one is so weak and half-assed that the whole thing is dead on arrival. The most memorable part of this song is Jennifer Lopez, a Puerto Rican woman, saying the n word. I would say a latino person saying the n word in a hit song is a very 2000s moment but unfortunately 6ix9ine did the same thing in the 2010s. Let's just hope it doesn't happen again.

#11: Crazy Town- Butterfly

For the past few years I've often seen posts on Twitter like "why don't white boys go back to making this music instead of being rappers". And I just want to make clear that white guys trying and failing at rapping was a trend long before the 2020s or even the 2010s. Take Crazy Town and their hit song Butterfly. The production is based on a sample from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Pretty Little Ditty. It's not the worst beat ever, but I don't think it works. They put way too many filters on it and it dates the song horribly. It's also too repetitive. But all of that is nothing compared to the atrocious rapping by Seth Binzer. It's done in an obnoxious frat bro voice that makes it immediately annoying. His flow isn't great and the lyrics he sings are so bad they border on self parody.

Such a sexy, sexy pretty little thing
Fierce nipple pierce, you got me sprung with your tongue ring

The first thing you say about the woman in the song is... how sexy her nipple and tongue piercings are?

'Cause I can't sleep, I can't hold still
The only thing I really know is she got sex appeal

This has to be one of the most forced rhymes of all time (every rhyme in the song is forced, for the record). Seriously, why would you use the word "sex appeal" here?

My lifestyle's wild, I was livin' like a wild child
Trapped on a short leash, paroled the police files

Now he's gonna interrupt this supposed love song to talk about how much of a hot shit gangster he is. This is embarrassing.

Come my lady, come-come my lady
You're my butterfly, sugar baby
Come my lady, you're my pretty baby
I'll make your legs shake, you make me go crazy

They even describe sex in the same way a meat-headed frat boy would. And did I mention how much the whispering backing vocals on the "you make me go crazy" line make my skin crawl? What an awful chorus. Crazy Town never had a hit again after this. Can't say I'm surprised. People like to make fun of Linkin Park and their music style of rap rock, but if there's any band who really deserved that scorn it was these guys.

#10: 3LW- No More (Baby I'ma Do Right)

3LW, or 3 Little Women, were another girl group in the 2000s and they were not one of the better ones. Their big hit in 2001 was No More (Baby I'ma Do Right). It's a fairly typical breakup song, except for the fact that the writing is awful. This song has this really annoying gimmick where the last word of each line is repeated:

I'm getting a little tired of your broken promises promises
Looking at your pager seeing different numbers and numbers
Call you on your cell you hangin' the fellas the fellas
Hangin' with my girls you always getting jealous n' jealous

It gets old fast. Oh, and the chorus?

You do or you don't don't
You will or you won't won't
No more No more baby I'ma do right
You can or you can't can't
Be a man Be a man man
No more baby I'm do right

It's fucking pathetic. The whole song just feels so lazy. It's as if this gimmick is here because the songwriters couldn't come up with another way to fill the entire measure. The problems don't end there. The production is a mess of the cheapest sound effects FL Studio could muster and the vocals are very grating. Whenever auto-tune is used to mask how subpar a singer is, it almost always sounds bad. There's no reason for there to be this much auto-tune and it still doesn't hide how thin and flimsy the vocals are. Also there's an embarrassingly bad rap breakdown in the middle with castanets at the center of the mix for some reason. 3LW did not have a long career following this. They only released two more albums in 2002 and two more singles in the mid 2000s that didn't chart anywhere before finally disbanding in 2007. Interestingly, two of the members of 3LW went on to form the Cheetah Girls, and got four made for TV movies (the last of which released literally this summer) out of it. The more you know, I guess.

#9: Destiny's Child- Bootylicious

For the record, no, I do not hate Destiny's Child. Though I find their discography far more mixed than most other people. Some of their songs were flat out awful, like for instance, Bootylicious. The production here is based on a sample from The Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks and it does not work. They tried to turn the guitar riff from an 80s rock song into something that would fit an early 2000s R&B ass anthem. The end result just sounds uncomfortable. This riff does not sound good pitched down and slowed like it is here. It sounds too off-tune. Plus, this is a sample that demands power and it certainly isn't getting any of that here. That's what I hate most about this song. It's easy to just say Bootylicious is annoying, and it is, but it's also so, so weak. When I said this song sounded uncomfortable, I meant it as in the verses are jerky and awkward. I meant it as in the chorus doesn't even sound finished and its melody comes off like it was made up on the spot. Everything just sounds so tense, as if the singers don't have the space they need to give their best performances. They sound oddly restrained, and the little grunts they put between nearly every line in the verses really does not help. Neither do all the parts where they do this weird half-whisper thing.

Kelly, can you handle this?
Michelle, can you handle this?
Beyoncé, can you handle this?
I don't think they can handle this!

Really gets under my skin whenever they half-whisper this part. Bootylicious does not sound like a real pop song, it sounds like an unfinished, half-assed attempt at one. You know a song has failed when it can't even be annoying correctly.

#8: NSYNC- This I Promise You

There were tons of slow ballads in the late 90s and early 2000s, and 2001's worst offering in that regard was This I Promise You by NSYNC. To start off, I don't think NSYNC's music has held up particularly well. I certainly understand the nostalgia for songs like Bye Bye Bye and It's Gonna Be Me (It's Gonna Be Me is actually a guilty pleasure of mine), but a good chunk of their discography is really bad, including This I Promise You. There's very little to say about this song. It's just another generic, boring ballad that sounds like a lullaby. Most ballads from this era at least feature the singers putting some passion into their vocals but here none of the members of NSYNC sound like they're even pretending to give a shit. The production is very bland and minimal, it sounds like elevator music. There's hardly a melody on the chorus and the song isn't even catchy. There's also a super (I still really hate using this word by the way) lame acoustic guitar solo in the middle. The whole thing goes in one ear and out the other. Apologize in advance for relitigating the boy band wars, but the Backstreet Boys were better than NSYNC.

#7: Willa Ford ft. Royce da 5'9"- I Wanna Be Bad

Willa Ford wanted to be bad. Can't say she didn't succeed *laughs so hard I choke to death*. Ahem, if you want a bottom of the barrel example of how egregious producers in the 2000s got with auto-tune, I Wanna Be Bad by Willa Ford is that song. It's not just that there's too much of it, but that it makes her vocals sound flat and nasal. At minimum auto-tune should enhance someone's voice but in this case it's restricting it. The producers also try multiple times to make the auto-tuned version of her voice part of the production and it consistently fails. As for that production, it's the worst of early 2000s dance pop. Hard hitting drums punctuated by electronic horns, thin synthesizers going crazy on the chrous, guitar strings playing a short, repetitive melody, and a gross sounding synth line playing throughout most of the song that once you notice you can't unhear. It all comes together to form a song that's equally ugly and dated. And of course it wouldn't be complete without that pointless, half-assed guest verse from Royce da 5'9". Willa Ford ended up being a one-hit wonder who never put out a single album after 2001... at least until earlier this year. She's actually made a comeback these past two years as she released an album titled Amanda in March 2026 and put out a good number of singles both this year and last year. I haven't listened to any of them but her last single before her comeback was Sexy Sex Obsessive in 2004, which is one of the worst songs I've heard in my life. Listen to that one on your own time.

#6: QB Finest ft. Nas, Bravehearts- Oochie Wally

Sometimes a song sounds so obviously terrible that you could probably get away with just posting a link of it and calling it a day. But obviously, I'm not going to do that. Oochie Wally by Nas and the Bravehearts has a 1.73/5 average rating on RYM, so this is clearly one of those songs that most people agree is awful. Getting the obligatory question out of the way, how did Nas, one of the greatest rappers of all time, find himself on a song like this? I wish I knew the answer. I think he just wanted to do a sex song. And he ended up making one of the worst songs of his career. The production is atrocious. It's based off a sample from a song called Bombooji by Gong. It's sped up and pitched up so high it sounds like one of those shitty chipmunk remixes you find on YouTube everywhere. It's incessant, it's annoying, it's obnoxious. There are not enough words to describe how unbearable this beat is. It reminds me of Mi Gente by J Balvin (if I ever do a 2017 worst list that song will surely be on there) with its terrible sampling and mind-numbing repetition. If that wasn't enough, the chorus also has sounds of a woman moaning at the back of the mix. And awful singing on top of everything. The woman they got to sing this chorus shouts these repetitive as hell lines without any subtlety or control.

Oo-chie wally wally, oo-chie bang bang

Oo-chie wally wally, oo-chie bang bang

Oo-chie wally wally, oo-chie bang bang

Oo-chie wally wally

He really really really work my body

He really really really turned me out

He really really really got to gut me

He really really made me scream and shout

Come on Nas, I know you can do better than this. What the hell does "Oochie Wally" even mean? What a gross sounding phrase to base a song off of. The rest of the lyrics are similarly gross. Here are some of the worst.

Little young thing go around my dick with your tongue ring

Clearly there wasn't enough pedophilia on the charts in 2001.

When it comes to sex I'm similar to the Thriller in Manilla

Why would you compare your sex to that? That's not the image I want in my head.

Hit her where she doodie at, make the booty fat

Because if there's one thing I want to think about when I hear a sex song, it's shit. Even better when it's said in the same way a 3 year old would say it. Look, this song is terrible. From a purely audio standpoint this might be the hardest song to listen to on the 2001 Year-End, with the exception of my #1 pick. Fortunately for it, that's not the only criteria I use, so it barely misses the Bottom 5. Still, it has earned its reputation as a complete embarrassment for Nas and a legendarily awful piece of music. Horrendous song.

#5: Lil Romeo- My Baby

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate it when sampling is used as a crutch? Because I really, really hate it. My Baby by Lil Romeo doesn't really sample I Want You Back by the Jackson 5, it blatantly rips it off. The entire instrumentation is taken. It's barely changed, even the melody on the chorus is basically the same. Except this time instead of Michael Jackson singing it's a female vocalist who isn't nearly as good as 10 year old Michael Jackson. Lil Romeo is, unsurprisingly, not a very good rapper. He was 12 when this song was released and all his verses are about him being hot shit. I'm going to repeat what I said about Bounce With Me in the 2000 worst list, it's embarrassing to hear a child brag rap about this. But it's a bit unintentionally funny here because the way he raps about being hot shit is the same way a 12 year old would. He brags about being an A & B student, being good at basketball, and having a Bugs Bunny chain. Like yeah okay bud. I wish it ended there but there's a whole other aspect to this song that makes it downright disturbing.

I'm a little boy, but live a big man's life
I got girls passin' up wanna be my wife
I got grown women wanna be in my life

What the actual fuck man. Why did the songwriters think it was a good idea to have a 12 year old boy brag about being swoon over by adult women? Why did they think it was a good idea to have him say "too young, I don't need a girlfriend" in the chorus while doing this? How old was the female vocalist when they recorded her lines? The mixing on her voice is so bad that if she was a kid she sounds way older than she is. I really just can't believe there was a hit song, in 2001 no less, about grown women chasing a little boy. Gonna end this by saying this song starts off with a radio station call in where someone requests the song. This happened a lot during the 2000s and 90% of the time it's a sign the song is going to be garbage.

#4: 112- Peaches & Cream

112 was a mediocre R&B group in the 1990s and 2000s. Most of their songs were pretty forgettable, with one major exception: Peaches & Cream. Obviously this song is not memorable for the right reasons. This is a sex song where the production consists entirely of synthesizers that sound like fart noises. It's the same loop of these noises that repeats throughout the entire song. Why? How is this a good sound for sex? I'd say more but I think the song mostly speaks for itself. There's so little to the production, it's literally just the same shitty synthesizers repeated over and over again. It's so barren that it's bizarre hearing the members of 112 sing like this is a normal R&B song. The clash between the vocals and the production is so great it becomes jarring. I also don't think "Peaches & Cream" is a good metaphor for sex. I'm pretty critical of food metaphors for sex in general. Most of the time it comes off as gross. You can imagine a chorus like this...

Peaches and cream
I need it cause you know that I'm a fiend
Gettin' freaky in my Bentley limousine
It's even better when it's with ice cream
Know what I mean

...doesn't exactly sound erotic. Also "it's even better when it's with ice cream"? Do people eat ice cream when they have sex? Do they put ice cream on themselves? You should really think about the lines you're writing before you put them in a song.

#3: Ja Rule ft. Lil Mo, Vita- Put It On Me

I can't emphasize this enough, Ja Rule fucking sucked. And Put It on Me has to be his worst song. It certainly has the worst production out of any of his songs. The main riff this time is just someone banging a bunch of random xylophone keys. It doesn't sound coherent at all and it barely matches the vocals. Also, most of the time Ja Rule at least spares us from really trying to sing. He has "sang" in his other songs but it's never a full attempt at it. Not here though. In this song he fully tries to sing the chorus and it sounds as horrible as you'd imagine. At least other Ja Rule songs usually have a different, better singer doing the chorus, but for this one he insisted on doing it himself. Not only does his rugged voice just sound awful, but he can not hold a melody to save his life. And he is belting all his lines as loudly as possible. It has to be one of the worst choruses of the entire 2000s. The guest rapper, Vita, certainly has a more tolerable verse than Ja Rule, but not even the best rappers of all time could write something that sounded good over this beat. She sounds like she's constantly flailing to match the beat, an impossible task. What shocks me the most about this song is that this was Ja Rule's first major hit. This was his first song to peak in the Top 10. This was the song that broke him into the mainstream. If Put It On Me was just another song that coasted off Ja Rule's name recognition that'd be one thing. But people seemed to earnestly want to listen to this, which I will never understand. Even though I put this song at #3, it's basically as bad as the #2 song, which mainly won over it sounding just a bit uglier. Speaking of which...

#2: Dream- He Loves U Not

Dream was the absolute nadir when it came to 90s and 2000s girl groups. Signed onto P. Diddy's record label, their big hit in 2001 was He Loves U Not, one of the worst pop songs of the entire 2000s. The song starts off with a short piano solo, then immediately devolves into a mess of cheap drum machines, ugly synthesizers buzzing every few seconds, and the bizarre choice to have this spazzing spitting sound play constantly throughout the majority of the song. What is that anyway? I can't wrap my mind around including something like that. There's other bizarre production choices too like how the first vocals we hear are the singers' voices slathered in badly applied auto-tune. The worst part of the song is the breakdown 2/3s of the way in where they play this sound of a guitar that is so badly mixed it sounds like auto-tuned singing. Or maybe it is auto-tuned singing, I can't tell. It just sounds really bad. The song is also unbearably stiff. It gives itself no room to breathe and so the melody on the chorus comes off as forced and stilted. Unsurprisingly, Dream did not have much success following this. According to Wikipedia, they only have five singles, two of which never charted anywhere. They broke up in 2003 after only putting out two albums. This group ran out of steam fast and, with He Loves U Not sounding as awful and dated as it is, it's not hard to see why.

Dishonorable Mentions

• Blu Cantrell- Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)
  
• Uncle Kracker- Follow Me
• Madonna- Don't Tell Me
• Sugar Ray- When It's Over
• Jay-Z ft. Pharrell- I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)
• Toya- I Do!!
• Jessica Simpson- Irresistible
• Trick Daddy- I'm a Thug
• Eden's Crush- Get Over Yourself

And the worst hit song of 2001 is...

#1: Mariah Carey ft. Cameo- Loverboy

2001 was not a good year for Mariah Carey. She was hospitalized in July after experiencing a mental and physical breakdown, her attempt to break into the film industry with being the lead star of Glitter was a total failure as the film bombed at the box office and was panned by critics, and her big single of the year, Loverboy, flopped, at least at first. I know Sean and Ethan already went over this in their worst songs of 2001 video but it bears repeating. The way this song managed to become the best selling single of 2001 is really pathetic. Mariah Carey's record company dropped its price to 49 cents, and it immediately jumped over 50 spots on the charts. Despite receiving very little radio play, it managed to peak at #2 on the Hot 100 and make the 2001 Year-End list (albeit only at #80). This kind of astroturfing will always be pathetic to me. It reeks of insecurity, and it's made even worse by the fact that this is Mariah Carey we're talking about. One of the most successful artists in the U.S. in the 90s and the 2000s. She was one of the last people who needed to do an astroturf campaign. All of this was enough to make the song worse in my eyes, and more deserving of being at #1, but at the end of the day, it does come down to how it sounds. And Loverboy by Mariah Carey and Cameo sounds awful. It's just a clusterfuck of noise. I could try to go into more detail. The drum machines sound shitty and cheap, the bassline is a mess, Cameo had no reason to be on this song and their parts sound awful and shoehorned in, Mariah Carey's vocals are overly breathy, the parts where she continually chants "I love him" (and other similar phrases) make my skin crawl, and the chorus is complete shit. Mariah Carey just whispers a bunch of words as the production tries to overpower her. It's hard to sit through. I wish I could say more but the song speaks for itself. It sounds bad, like it's structured objectively wrong. Mariah Carey is a very talented vocalist and producer. To see her release something this bad is a real shame. Loverboy is up there as one of the worst songs she's ever released. It more than deserves its spot as the worst hit song of 2001.

Not gonna bother with a proper outro this time. Thank you for reading and good bye.