Songoftheday 5/21/19 - It's time to take your ass on another kind of trip, 'Cause you can't have the hop if you don't have the hip...
from the album It Takes A Thief (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 21
Today's song of the day comes from rapper Artis Ivey Jr., who records under the moniker Coolio. Coolio started his music life on the gang-dominated streets of Compton, and his first success was being a part of the rap group WC and the MAAD Circle, recording their debut album Ain't A Damn Thing Changed, which was a minor R&B album hit. He left shortly thereafter to start a solo career. Signing to Tommy Boy Records, he released his debut album It Takes A Thief in 1993. The first single, "County Line", a comical look at the unemployment line, slipped on to the R&B chart in Billboard magazine for a week at #97, while it "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #109. But his fortunes would skyrocket with his second release. "Fantastic Voyage", named for the 1980 funk classic by Lakeside that the record would heavily interpolate and sample, was an escape from the cruel streets, and with the bonus of being accessible on mainstream radio...
"Fantastic Voyage" became Coolio's first top-40 pop hit, reaching the top-three in July of 1994. The song climbed to #12 on Billboard's R&B chart. Internationally, the single peaked at #8 in New Zealand, and made the top-40 in Sweden (#29), the Netherlands (#31), Australia (#37). In England, it stopped just short of that mark at #41. Despite the big success of "Fantastic Voyage", Coolio had trouble following that up. His next single "I Remember", a laid back view of his youth built on an al Green sample, only got to #83 on the R&B chart, and "Bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #107. That was followed by "Mama I'm In Love With A Gangsta", which missed both the R&B and pop charts, "Bubbling under" the Hot 100 yet again at #119. But by the next year, he would regroup with the biggest hit of his career, courtesy of a Michelle Pfeiffer movie...
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Here's the song Coolio's hit was based on, Lakeside's "Fantastic Voyage", which climbed to the top of the R&B chart and #55 on the pop Hot 100 in 1980, and was one of the pioneering hit songs that incorporated rapping...
And here's Coolio performing the song on the Nickelodeon show Kenan & Kel, which he did the theme song for...
Up tomorrow: Another rap newcomer gets nostalgic.
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