R. City are a duo of brothers, Theron and Timothy Thomas, from the US Virgin Islands, who spent years as in-demand songwriters for other artists, also working under the name Rock City. Their own breakthrough came in 2015 with "Locked Away", a buoyant reggae-pop song featuring Adam Levine of Maroon 5.
The song became a worldwide hit, reaching the top ten in the United States, the biggest moment of the brothers' performing career. But nothing else they released under the R. City name approached it, and they continued to do much of their best-known work writing for others.
On streaming, "Locked Away" sits near 1.3 billion plays, while their next most-streamed track trails at around 40 million. That sends the ratio above 33, many times our 5.0 line.
By our measure R. City are a certified one-hit wonder. It is a familiar pattern for songwriters who step into the spotlight: a pair who helped build other artists' catalogues landed exactly one giant hit of their own, carried by a superstar guest, and it stands almost entirely alone. The hitmakers, it turned out, were better at making them for everyone else.