Robbed hit of the week 3/2/20 - Tha Dogg Pound's "Let's Play House"...
from the album Dogg Food (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45
This week's "robbed hit" comes from Tha Dogg Pound, two rappers from the Dr. Dre/Snoop Dogg camp that were on Death Row records. Daz Dillinger (Delmar Arnaud) and Kurupt (Ricardo Brown) were independent rappers who got together under the advice of Dre, and first appeared on Snoop's debut album Doggystyle, with Daz guesting on the top ten hit "Gin & Juice" and the pair featuring heavily on the radio single "Doggy Dogg World" with almost made the airplay top-40 at #46 in 1994. They also were on MC Hammer's Death Roy misstep The Funky Headhunter that same year. That exposure on those project got their name out for their own debut under the Dogg Pound moniker, Dogg Food, in the fall of 1995. The lead radio single "Respect" went to #35 on Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart, but it wasn't released commercially, so people went and grabbed the album, which went to #1 on Billboard's albums sales chart. That set up their first commercial single release, "Let's Play House", featuring Michel'le, Dr. Dre's squeeze and top-40 hitmaker of her own right ("No More Lies"). In that era of gangsta-rap dominance, it was a hit by association if anything...
While "Let's Play House" went all the way to #5 on Billboard's Rap Singles chart, and at #21 was their biggest hit on the R&B chart, the song stalled right under the pop top-20 in January of 1996. Internationally, the single went top-40 in New Zealand at #26, and was a minor hit in the UK at #82. A third track promoted to radio, "New York, New York" (with a cameo from Snoop Dogg) made it to #51 on the R&B Airplay chart. After actually scoring a top-40 pop hit with "Nothin' But A Cavi Hit" later that year, the duo would go their separate ways and eventually both leave Death Row. They reunited in 2001, and while they put out a new album Dillinger and Young Gotti, Death Row dug up some unfinished business from their 90s days and released the odds set 2002, which actually put a single on the British Chart with "Just Doggin'" at #99 that also appeared in the movie and soundtrack to Sunset Park. They've been putting out solo and duo album since, their most recent Dogg Pound studio album 100 Wayz came out in 2010.
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Here's tha Dogg Pound and Michel'le performing live at the Soul Train Awards...
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