Songoftheday 2/20/18 - See ain't no use pretending you don't feel the way I do, with this message that your body's sending well I can tell you want it too...

"Housecall (Your Body Can't Lie To Me)" - Shabba Ranks featuring Maxi Priest
from the album As Raw As Ever (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1

Today's song of the day comes from Jamaican reggae artist Shabba Ranks, who was a pioneer in bringing the style of "toasting" (that genre's equivalent of rap) to the mainstream. His debut album Rapping With The Girls was released in 1988, but it wasn't until his fifth album that his international success started in the UK, as the lead track "Trailer Load Of Girls" became a minor hit at #63 in May of 1991. That was followed by a collaboration with singer Maxi Priest, at that time the biggest living artist in reggae music, and who had already scored a #1 pop hit in America with "Close To You", and was about to reach the top ten again with a duet with Roberta Flack, "Set The Night To Music".  That combination on the song "Housecall", written by Ranks and Priest along with Brian Thompson and Mike Bennett, gave enough name-exposure cred for R&B stations in the U.S. to start playing it. It entered the American R&B chart that August, and by the end of the year, it had finally crossed over to the pop charts...

"Housecall" became Shabba's first top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in December of 1991, after the song had gone all the way to #4 on Billboard's R&B chart. In the UK, the track also was his first top-40 hit there at #31. His follow-up single, "The Jam" featuring Bronx rap legend KRS-One, missed the pop Hot 100 but managed to climb to #52 on the R&B list, and gave Shabba the unique "in" with the hip-hop world that helped his career carry on for a time.

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Shabba and Maxi came on The Letterman Show to promote the album...

Here's Shabba and Maxi appearing on In Living Colour to close out the show...

This is a clip of the pair in concert in 1991...

And finally, from a Maxi Priest live date ten years later (Redd Foxx is filling in for Ranks)...

Up tomorrow: Prince protege demands direction.