Songoftheday 9/24/17 - I know that I'm a very lucky guy to have someone like you, I never met a girl in my life like you before you make all my dreams come true...
from the album Rude Awakening (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from the R&B vocal group Rude Boys, who came together in Cleveland at the end of the 80's before being helped out by soul crooner Gerald Levert. He helped them sign a record deal and aided the vocal arrangement of their debut album, Rude Awakening. The first single from the set, the new jack swing jam "Come On Let's Do This", made it onto urban radio stations, peaking at #38 on the R&B chart in Billboard, but got lost in the shuffle of the glut of those types of records out and missed the pop chart. However, that turned around with their follow-up, "Written All Over Your Face". Written by group member (and cousin of blues legend B.B. King) Larry Marcus, the slinky come-on song featured a cameo from Levert, and was their biggest hit...
"Written All Over Your Face" topped the R&B chart in Billboard magazine for a week, and spend over seven months on the chart. It climbed to the pop top-20 in June of 1991. The next single from the albums, the mid-tempo "Heaven", reached #15 on the R&B chart, followed by "Are You Lonely For Me", which returned the foursome to the top of that list, but neither of them nicked the pop Hot 100. But that more reflected the nature of pop radio, which had eschewed a lot of straight R&B/New Jack albums, and this whole record was quality.
The Rude Boys released their second album Rude House the following year, and while lead single "My Kinda Girl" made it to #4 on the R&B chart, they again didn't make the pop list. After that, the members had more success as writers, re-emerging in 1997 on indie label Buchanan for the minor R&B hit "Nothing No One" (#76 R&B). Lead singer Joe Little continues to perform under the Rude Boys name, while Marcus passed away in 2016.
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Here's the Boys appearing on Arsenio Hall to promote the single with Gerald Levert joining in, and the sound on this video doesn't give them justice...
...and on Live At The Apollo...
Up tomorrow: A benefit for the troops overseas in the first war in Iraq that didn't take sides.
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