Songoftheday 5/22/19 - When he went out with girls I could go taggin along, naggin if she had a sis maybe could mack a baby hoodrat...
from the album Ahmad (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from rapper Ahmad Lewis, who grew up in Los Angeles, where he eventually launched his music career, recording under just his first name. Ahmad released his self-titled debut album in the spring of 1994, led by the single "Back In The Day". A nostalgic look back at his youth, the original album version of the track, which sampled the Staple Singers' "Let's Do It Again", didn't get as much attention as the remix, which was grounded by a swaying sample of Teddy Pendergrass' soul classic "Love TKO". It landed Ahmad his biggest and only success on the pop chart, making himself a true "one-hit wonder"...
"Back In The Day" became Ahmad's first and only top-40 pop hit in August of 1994. The song also climbed to #19 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the single was a minor hit in the UK at #64. A pretty enjoyable follow-up single, "You Gotta Be", went nowhere, sadly, and he stopped his solo career for a while. In 2000, he joined the alt-hip-hop group 4th Avenue Jones. With them he had a couple of minor R&B hits with "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." in 2001 (R&B #88) and "Move On" (R&B #86) a year later. However, through that he met his wife Tena Jones. In 2009 he independently released a second solo record, The Death Of Me.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the original Staples Singers-sampling album version of "Back In The Day"...
And finally, Ahmad performing live in 2011 (turn your sound down)...
Up tomorrow: The radio breakthrough for a vice-obsessed punk trio.
Comments