Songoftheday 11/24/18 - On the floor with the girl in the blue, I got a pocket full of chance so what you gonna do?
from the album Quad City Knock (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16
Today's song of the comes from the "bass" hip-hop act 95 South, who named themselves from the highway that traverses their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. Rappers "AB" Artice Bentley and "Daddy Black" Carlos Spencer, the pair released their debut single "Whoot, There It Is" in the spring of 1993. Originally a local hit, especially in strip clubs, its rep traveled north, where it happens a sidejobbing strip club DJ in Atlanta, Cecil Glenn, put together a group, Tag Team, to record a single with the name "Whoomp! (There It Is)" which sounded a lot like the 95 South record (albeit with a different sample and lyrics). Even though 95 South's was released a couple months before Tag Team's, it was the latter that had the earlier promotion nationwide and in such the edge in sales and airplay. Nevertheless there were enough fans of the original "Whoot" that it also enter the charts and eventually followed it up the top-40 as well. For the record, 95 South's is my fave of the two, for its energy and representation of the Miami bass sound, as songwriters and producers CC Lemonhead and Jay Ski, aka the Bass Mechanics would go on to dominate the genre with other acts like the 69 Boyz ("Tootsie Roll")and Quad City DJ's ("C'mon Ride The Train")...
While Tag Team spent seven weeks at #2 on the American pop chart, 95 South did rather respectably, stopping one notch short of the pop Top 10 in August of 1993. The track also climbed to #7 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart.
Despite being overshadowed by Tag Team on that first single, 95 South had proved themselves a bit better in the long run. Whereas the "Whoomp!" guys could only get minor chart hits from remakes of the track tied to the Addams Family and Disney, 95 South landed a hit from the second single from their Quad City Knock album, "Hump Wit It", climbed to #83 on Billboard's R&B chart while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #122. In 1995, the duo returned with a sophomore album, One Mo' Gen, which made the R&B albums top-40 at #29, while lead single "Rodeo" hit #58 on the R&B single chart spending 20 weeks on the list and crossing over to the pop Hot 100 at #77. A second release from the set, "Heiny Heiny", got to #87 R&B and again "Bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #121. Their third and so far last album, Tightwood 3000, arrive in 2000, but it went unnoticed nationally, though the duo (with Michael Phillips taking over from AB) remain a local following.
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Here's 95 South appearing live on the Arsenio Hall show...
Miami female rap duo Dis-N-Dat, also produced by the Bass Mechanics, released a retort with "Whoot, Here It Is" in 1994 on their Bumpin' album, which climbed to #53 on the R&B albums chart...
Up tomorrow: Sax man counts down to midnight, perhaps.
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