Songoftheday 9/20/19 - A poor single mother on welfare tell me how ya did it, there's no way I can pay you back but the plan is to show you that I understand...
from the album Me Against The World (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17
Today's song of the day comes from the late rapper and poet 2Pac (Tupac Shakur), whose second album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. (despite the title) brought him his first mainstream success, with a pair of top-20 pop hits in "I Get Around" and "Keep Ya Head Up", the latter one peaking in the beginning of 1994. Within a years time, 2Pac returned with his third album Me Against The World, but at that time he was also entering a prison sentence for sexual assault against a woman. Still denying that the episode was totally consensual, 2Pac and his label went ahead and released the topical statement of family love as a single in the spring of 1995, preceded by the first single, "Dear Mama", which detailed the strained and complicated relationship between the poet and his mother. Afeni Shakur, who at one time was involved with the activist group The Black Panthers and was in jail for her disputed involvement with them, appears at the start of the music video, as the clean and sober woman finally makes peace with her son. The chorus of the record interpolates the melody from the Spinners' 1974 hit "Sadie" (which also honored a mother), as well as jazz artist Joe Sample's "In All My Wildest Dreams" from 1978...
"Dear Mama" became 2Pac's first top ten pop hit in April of 1995. The song also spent a week at #3 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine, while on the Rap Singles chart the single (with B-side "Old School") spent five non-consecutive weeks at #1, shifting positions over and over with the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa"/"Warning". Internationally, the single climbed all the way to #4 in New Zealand (at the time a fertile ground for hip-hop music), and made the top-40 in the Netherlands (#31) and Australia (#37). In the UK, where his success came late, the single initially stalled at #84, but on a re-release in 1999 went to #27. At the Grammy Awards in 1996, "Dear Mama" was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance, which he lost to Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise"; the Me Against The World album was also nominated for Best Rap Album, which Naughty By Nature took for Poverty's Paradise. While "Dear Mama" was still on the charts, album track "Can U Get Away" got enough airplay on urban stations to make Billboard's R&B Airplay chart at #70 despite not being released as a true single.
The second physical release from Me Against The World was the Stevie Wonder-sampling "So Many Tears", in which he had help from groups he was a part of before his fame, Digital Underground and Thug Life. The song just missed the pop Top-40 at #44, while on the R&B chart stopped at #21, and on the Rap Singles chart topped out at #6. The third and final single from the record would be "Temptations", which cleared the R&B top-40 hurdle at #35 while peaking at #68 on the pop Hot 100. That one would be notable for carrying a music video with a truckload of guest cameos like Coolio and Ice-T since 2Pac was in jail at the time.
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And here's 2Pac performing "Dear Mama" live in concert...
Up tomorrow: A South Central soul singer makes his debut with a chart-topping party jam that remains a Sports Center staple.
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