Songoftheday 12/1/17 - One two tell me what you got, let me slip my quarters inside your slot to hit the jackpot...
from the album Peaceful Journey (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15
Today's song of the day comes from the hip-hop act Heavy D & The Boyz, led by (the late) Dwight Myers, aka Heavy D, a Jamaican-born rapper whose family moved to New York when he was a child. Along with dancers (and "The Boyz") T-Roy and G-Wiz, his first single, "Mr. Big Stuff" (a riff off the Jean Knight 70s hit), came out in 1986, and reached #26 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list, and #60 on the R&B chart, and was a minor hit in the UK at #61. From that success his debut album Livin' Large was released on Uptown Records the following year (along with Al. B Sure!'s the first two acts on the label). The second single from the record, the LL Cool J-style rap-ballad "Don't You Know", became his first top-40 R&B single at #12.
In 1990, Heavy D got his big break when he made a cameo on Janet Jackson's "Alright" single, which reached the top ten in June. The single remix which went to radio featured Heavy's rap in the middle, and he appeared in the iconic music video as well. He also guested on the #1 R&B hit "Just Coolin'" by Levert. At the same time, his own single "We Got Our Own Thang" came out as the first single from his sophomore disc Big Tyme, and while it missed the pop chart, it scored Heavy and the Boyz their first top ten R&B hit at #10 (the record also hit the top-40 in the Netherlands and Belgium). It was followed by "Somebody For Me", which made it a couple of notches higher at #8. Although mainstream radio hadn't caught on, their exposure in nightclubs (both singles hit the top ten on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart), the hit with Jackson as well as appearances on Yo MTV Raps set them up for what would be their pop breakthrough.
Heavy D, still with the Boyz, released their third album Peaceful Journey in July of 1991, a year after T-Roy would die from a fall. The album, dedicated to the dancer, would be a more thoughtful affair, but the first single did provide something to shimmy to. It was an interpolation of the song "Now That We Found Love", which first set sail on the R&B group the O'Jays' 1973 album Ship Ahoy...
Jamaican reggae band Third World covered the song in 1978, and their version reached the top ten on the British singles (#10) and American R&B (#9) chart, but stopped short of the pop Hot 100 here in the States...
Heavy tossed the verses and kept the chorus intact for his take in 1991, turning it into a frenetic new jack swing jam which alluded to the "safe sex" movement in the start of the height of the AIDS crisis, with him and the dancers in the video driving that message home with their raincoat couture. Aaron Hall from the new jack group Guy provided the vocals on the record...
Heavy D & the Boyz' "Now That We Found Love" became their biggest pop hit, just missing the top ten by a notch in October of 1991. The single also climbed to #5 on Billboard's R&B chart, while the remixes of the track helped it be his biggest dance hit, spending two weeks at #2 on their Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the record peaked at #2 in the UK, and reached the top ten in the Netherlands (#2), Sweden (#2), Germany (#4), Switzerland (#4), Belgium (#5), Australia (#6), Ireland (#6), Norway (#6), Austria (#8), and New Zealand (#10).
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Here's Heavy appearing on Club MTV to promote the single, and was one of the few who didn't lipsync...
...and again on Arsenio Hall's show (sorry about the poor sound)...
Next up is the house mix from David Morales that helped it spend a couple weeks in the runner-up spot on the dance chart...
Lastly, here he is at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1992...
Up tomorrow: A dance-rock act from London raises your intelligence.
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