Songoftheday 2/3/20 - When the scene unfolds young girls thirteen years old expose themselves to any Tom, Dick, and Hank...
from the album Soul Food (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3
Today's song of the day comes from the rap group Goodie Mob, who came together in Atlanta in the early 1990s. Signed to Babyface's vanity label LaFace, Big Gipp, Khujo, T-Mo, and Cee-Lo (Green) released their first single "Cell Therapy" in the late summer of 1995. Written by Gipp and Khujo along with producers Organized Noize, the song is a bleak look at life in poor cities like Atlanta, where there are always two sets of rules and the "gated communities" meant to keep drugs away only serve to keep its residents in, with a heavy helping of paranoia about a "new world order"...
"Cell Therapy" became Goodie Mob's first and biggest success, their sole top-40 pop hit in November of 1995. The song also climbed to #17 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while topping their Rap Singles list for a week. Meanwhile their debut album released that fall, Soul Food, made it to #45 on the album sales chart (#8 on the R&B specific list).
The second single released from Soul Food was the title track with featured singer Sleepy Brown, a member of the Organized Noize production team. That song scored them a second R&B Top-40 hit at #31, while going to #64 on the pop Hot 100 and #7 on the Rap Singles chart. A third release, "Dirty South", rose to #53 on the R&B chart, #92 on the pop Hot 100, and scored their third top ten Rap Singles hit at #8.
The group returned in 1998 with their sophomore effort, Still Standing. The lead single, "They Don't Dance No Mo'", wasn't released as a commercial "single", so it only was able to please on the R&B Airplay chart at #53. But with their fanbase, that may have goosed purchases of the album, which was their biggest success and first top ten record at #6. They did put out second single "Black Ice (Sky High)" commercially, and combined with the Outkast cameo on the song, did a little better, getting to #48 R&B and #50 Pop. That same year, Goodie Mob featured on rapper Cool Breeze's hit "Watch For The Hook", which rose to #18 (their own second-best) and #73 Pop. But with a third album World Party that only landed them a minor R&B hit ("Get Rich To This", which peaked at #65 R&B, their most recent), Cee-Lo left the group for a solo career, which would bring him far bigger successes. Gipp, Khujo, and T-Mo continued on and released one more album, One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, which radio ignored, but sold enough to make the top half of the albums chart (#85).
In 2013, after a major legal trouble where accusations of rape were shifted to a drug charge, and Cee-Lo's time as a pop star and Voice coach were in trouble, he reunited with the Mob for one more album, Age Against The Machine, which landed them a top ten R&B/top-40 pop album despite no radio singles charting.
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Here's Goodie Mob performing "Cell Therapy" and "Soul Food" on Soul Train...
And at a show in 2009 in the non-Cee-Lo days..
and on tour in 2019...
Up tomorrow: Dance act goes to the stars for their biggest jam.
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