Songoftheday 6/23/18 - A woman take a trip she's coming from England, to satisfy her soul you know that she wants a man...
from the albums Rough & Ready Volume 1 and Deep Cover (Original Soundtrack) (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song of the day comes from dancehall artist Shabba Ranks, who had his crossover breakthrough in the U.S. in the winter of 1991 with "Housecall" featuring Maxi Priest. The following year, Ranks released his Rough & Ready Volume 1 album, with the first single already appearing on the soundtrack to the Larry Fishburne/Jeff Goldblum movie Deep Cover. "Mr. Loverman", written by Ranks with Mike Bennett and Hopeton Lindo, was originally a takeoff on the song "Champion Lover" from Guyanese singer Deborahe Glasgow. Retitling it "Mr. Loverman", Ranks included it on his 1988 album Rappin With The Ladies. But after Glasgow became ill with cancer, Ranks would re-record the song for the single with Jamaican reggae singer Chevelle Franklyn. That redo, included on Rough & Ready, gave him his second big American pop hit...
"Mr. Loverman" became Shabba's second American top-40 pop hit, spending a week at the bottom rung in August of 1992. The song was his biggest success on Billboard's R&B chart, spending a week at #2. Internationally, the record reached the top-40 in Germany (#17), the Netherlands (#21), Austria (#22), the UK (#23 in 1992), Sweden #31, and Belgium (#33). A year later the song was re-released in the fury of popularity of Dancehall in the British Isles, and it returned to the British charts climbing to #3, going to #8 in Ireland, and even peaking at #19 in France.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
The orignal incarnation of the track with Deborahe Glasgow...
Here's Ranks performing the song on Canadian TV in 1990, before the revised version with Franklyn...
Comedian Marlon Wayans parodied Shabba and the song on In Living Color...
And lastly, live in 2016...
Up tomorrow: British trio remake a "disco ballad" into a top ten hit.
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