Songoftheday 4/19/19 - My man the scene was so thick, lowriders seventy-seven Sevilles El Do's nuttin' but them 'Llacs...
from the album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from the rap duo Outkast, who came together in Atlanta in the early 1990s as high schoolmates. Andre Benjamin ("Andre 3000") and Antwan Patton ("Big Boi") were recruited by the production team of Organized Noize, who later helmed TLC's work, and signed to Arista Records' LaFace imprint, run by Babyface and L.A. Reid, as their first rap act. After a cameo on the remix to TLC's "What About Your Friends", the pair released their debut single "Player's Ball" at the end of 1993. Written by Andre and Big Boi with Organized Noize, the single became a big hip-hop hit, then crossed over to mainstream radio to become their first big success, even as the lyrics referenced Christmas (it was originally a track on the label's holiday multi-artist compilation)...
"Player's Ball" became Outkast's first top-40 pop hit in May of 1994. The song also climbed to #12 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine. But the biggest success was on their Rap Singles list, spending six weeks at #1 in March and April of that year. Internationally, the single slipped on to the British singles chart at #92. The second release from the album was the album's title track "Southernplayalisticadillacmusik", which was a minor pop hit at #74, just missed the R&B top-40 at #41, and was again a decent hit on the Rap Singles chart at #9. Finally, the track "Git Up, Git Out" with fellow Atlanta rap act Goodie Mob, peaked at #59 on the R&B chart, hit #13 on Rap Singles, and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #109. But by then, the smooth sound of hip-hop from the Peach State had been established in a big way, with the album hitting the sales top-20 and selling over a million copies.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the remix of the track that helped it top the Rap Singles chart...
And finally, here's Outkast with Goodie Mob (with a very young Cee-Lo Green) doing "Git Up, Git Out" and then "Player's Ball" live in concert...
Up tomorrow: Grammy-winning soul singer is discussing your worth.
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