Songoftheday 2/16/20 - Everybody listen up cause I'm about to get my speak on, fools be trippin when it's time to get their freak on...
from the album Gangsta's Paradise (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from rapper Coolio, who had just coming off the biggest hit of his career with the Grammy-winning #1 song "Gangsta's Paradise" from the soundtrack to the movie Dangerous Minds in the fall of 1995. Later that year, he released his sophomore album Gangsta's Paradise which included the hit, with the single "Too Hot" released as a follow-up. An interpolation of the Kool & The Gang disco hit from 1979 that kept the chorus but with rap verses by Coolio about the dangers of unsafe sex, AIDS, and cheating, he was able to get singer J.T. Taylor to re-sing on the record, Taylor by then having left Kool & The Gang for a solo career that never took off. The topical track plus the identifiable hook got fans and radio on board, if only for a short while...
"Too Hot" became the second top-40 pop hit from Gangsta's Paradise in January of 1996, but spent a quick five weeks in that level. The song also stopped at #31 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, but did better on their Rap Singles list, peaking at #6. Internationally, the single did better, reaching the top ten in Italy (#6), New Zealand (#7), the UK (#9), Iceland (#9), and the Netherlands (#10). It also made the top-40 in France (#15), Belgium (#16W/#41F), Switzerland (#18), Ireland (#18), Germany (#24), and Sweden (#35).
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Here's Coolio at MTV's Fashionably Loud in 1996 performing "Too Hot" and "Gangsta's Paradise" (starting with "is there anybody here having sex?)...
And here's Kool & The Gang with JT Taylor and Coolio in a TV show for Motown...
Up tomorrow: A double-hitter from Seattle's grunge kings with a Canadian twist.
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