Number one on Billboard Rhythmic Airplay. Number one on Mediabase Rhythmic Radio. Over 30 million streams on Spotify. More than 220 million views on TikTok. Those numbers tell part of the story. The full story is what those numbers represent: Max B, home after 16 years in federal prison, walking out and putting a record at the top of the chart before most people had time to fully process that he was even free.
“Ever Since U Left Me” featuring French Montana dropped as the announcement that the wave was not just back. It was capable of doing things Max B never got to do in his first run, before the sentence interrupted everything in 2009.
The song builds on a sample of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way I Like It,” a piece of source material that gives the record an immediate warmth and familiarity while Max and French transform it into something entirely their own. The flip is melodic, nostalgic, and emotionally direct in the way that the Coke Wave era always was at its best. Max B does not come out swinging to prove a point. He comes out comfortable, as if no time has passed, as if the sound he built in those 2007 to 2009 mixtapes has been waiting patiently for him to come back and inhabit it again.
The hook is the anchor. “Ever since you left me” operates on at least two levels simultaneously. On the surface it is about a woman, about absence and longing in the romantic sense that Max B always handled with more emotional intelligence than his peers. But for the Wave listening to this record in late 2025 and early 2026, knowing the biography, knowing what 16 years means, there is a second reading that runs underneath the music. The world moved on. The wave kept going without him. And he is back now.
French Montana’s presence on the record is significant for reasons that go beyond the obvious. French was the first person Max called when he got out. Coke Wave 3.5: Narcos dropped three months after Max’s release. The reunion was not a PR strategy. It was the natural continuation of something that had never really stopped. When they are on “Ever Since U Left Me” together, you hear two people who share twenty years of history making music the way they always have, with a chemistry that no arrangement could manufacture.
The TikTok numbers deserve a specific conversation. More than 220 million views built around this record on a platform that Max B was not even established on when the song blew up. French Montana’s audience captured the discovery and the wave spread from there. That gap between the reach of the record and ownership of that audience is the central strategic reality of Max B’s comeback. The number one hit proved the music was undeniable. The work of closing that gap is ongoing.
Stream “Ever Since U Left Me” on Spotify where it sits at over 30 million plays and climbing. The full catalog from the original Public Domain run through the current releases is at wavegodmaxb.com/discography. For the complete story of the Max B and French Montana creative partnership, the Coke Wave history post at wavegodmaxb.com covers where they started and what they built together. Wave Gods 2: Cosmos Brothers, the joint album that followed, is out now on Coke Boys / Defiant / EMG.