Songoftheday 12/11/17 - In order to play with this record you must tune your bass to up, look out one two three four hit it...
from the album Straight Outta Hell's Kitchen (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song of the day comes from the dance music act Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, who with the help of the R&B group Full Force, who wrote and produced most of their material, were the most successful group to emerge from the Latin freestyle dance movement in the 1980s, scoring two #1 pop hits and five top-40 singles in that decade, including "Little Jackie Wants To Be A Star" in the spring of 1989. Two years later, the trio of Lisa Lisa, guitarist Spanador, and drummer Mike Hughes released what would be their fourth and final album together, Straight Outta Hell's Kitchen. While the final half of the album was again written and produced by Full Force, the first six songs on the record would be from the production team of Robert Clivilles and David Cole, the men responsible for the insanely popular dance act C+C Music Factory that same year. That included the first single from the record, "Let The Beat Hit 'Em", which Clivilles and Cole wrote with Duran Ramos (or the band Trilogy) and Alan Friedman. Straying from their high energy rock-house hybrid on their on C+C album, the producers went for a much more smooth and jazzy feel for the Lisa Lisa single, with a slower tempo that R&B station went wild for...
"Let The Beat Hit 'Em" became Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam's sixth and final top-40 pop hit in August of 1991. However the song landed the trio their third #1 single on Billboard's R&B chart (after their pop #1s "Head To Toe" and "Lost In Emotion"). It also was their third to top their Dance Club Play list (after their debut "I Wonder If I Take You Home" and "Head To Toe"). Despite only spending a week in the American Top-40, the single sold over a half-million copies to go gold. Internationally, the track reached the top-40 in the UK (#17, their second-highest chart rank), Belgium (#27), Ireland (#27), France (#36), and the Netherlands (#30). A second single from the album, the Full Force-helmed ballad "Where Were You When I Needed You", made it to #65 on the R&B chart in America.
After this album, Lisa Lisa went on to release a solo album in 1993, LL77, with the first single, "Skip To My Lu" missing the pop chart here in America, but actually reaching the top-40 in the UK at #34 (and #38 on the American R&B tally). A second track from the set, "When I Fell In Love", is her most recent charting song, peaking at #28 on the dance chart and #96 on the R&B list. She most recently put out an independently-released album in 2009.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the radically transformed house music version that helped the song top the dance chart for a week...
Yet another remix of the song, dubbed "Let The Beat Hit 'Em Part 2", reached #49 in the UK...
Finally, here's Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam appearing on Soul Train to promote the single...
Up tomorrow: Pop singer is quite similar.
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