Onyx are an American hip-hop group from Queens, New York whose place on this list is a matter of measurement, not influence. Bald-headed and ferocious, they were pioneers of hardcore, mosh-pit rap, and their aggressive sound left a real mark on the genre. Within hip-hop they are far more than a single song.
But streaming gathers around one anthem. "Slam", released in 1993, is a pounding, shouted hardcore banger built to incite a crowd, and it became their biggest crossover hit, the track that carried their name to a wide audience.
On streaming, "Slam" sits near 88 million plays, while their next most-streamed track, "Last Dayz", trails at around 15 million. That puts the ratio above 6, past our 5.0 line.
So by our strict, numbers-only measure, Onyx register as a certified one-hit wonder, and we flag the caveat firmly. This was a fierce, genuinely influential group with a real catalogue and a devoted following. It is only that one explosive, mosh-ready anthem has gathered the streaming crowd far ahead of the rest of their work. Decades later, its shouted chorus is still a guaranteed way to detonate a crowd, a hardcore-rap landmark that has comfortably outlasted the rest of their catalogue on streams.