Songoftheday 4/16/16 - I wanna rock right now I'm Rob Base and I came to get down, I'm not internationally known but I'm known to rock the microphone...

"It Takes Two" - Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock
from the album It Takes Two (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3

Today's song of the day comes from the rap duo Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, who got signed by Profile Records (home to then-huge Run-DMC) in the mid-80s. Their first single with the label would turn out to be one of the classics of the genre, and one of the first rap hits to get big-time mainstream exposure, "It Takes Two". The record runs off a riff from the Lyn Collins single "Think (About It)". A protege of James Brown, Collins' record sported undeniably infectious hooks throughout that hip-hop would mine for samples. But it was the breakdown (and bass riff) that would be used for the core (and the title) of "It Takes Two", which climbed to #9 on the R&B chart and #66 pop in 1972...

Rapper Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock kept that breakdown on repeat, with Rob spitting out rhymes at breakneck speed (for pop radio's ears), while the video showed them in the vinyl stores of the day that I haunted weekly...

"It Takes Two" became the duo's first and only top-40 pop hit in October of 1988. The single also climbed to #17 on Billboard's R&B chart, while the extended 12" version went to #9 on their Dance Club Play chart, and sold enough copies to earn the song a "platinum record" award for over 1 million sold. Internationally, the track made it to #24 in the UK.

Their follow-up jam, the Jacksons-sampling disco workout "Get On The Dancefloor", topped the dance chart and stopped at #11 on the R&B list. A third single from their debut album, It Takes Two, cribbed Frankie Beverly & Maze's "Joy & Pain", again went to #11 R&B, while the 12" earned them their third dance hit at #9, and the pop chart's last appearance at #58. Rob went off solo by the following year, and had two more R&B top-40 hits with "Turn It Out (Go Base)" going to #16 R&B at the end of 1989. They slipped under the radar since, though "It Takes Two" remains a pillar in the rap pantheon, showing up at wedding receptions and street parties everywhere to this day. Sadly, DJ E-Z Rock died from complications from diabetes in 2014.

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Here's the duo tearing the Apollo down in 1988...

The record itself became a sample mine for countless rap, pop, and dance songs since, most notably as the basis for Seduction's #2 pop hit "Two To Make It Right" in 1990...

Lastly, here's Rob bringing it back to the Queen Latifah show in 2013...

Up tomorrow: A performing songwriting duo expects some astronomy.