Songoftheday 3/7/20 -You want to sip Mo' on my living room flo', play Nintendo with Cease-a-Leo...

"Get Money" - Junior M.A.F.I.A. featuring Notorious B.I.G.
from the album Conspiracy (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song of the day comes from the rap collective Junior M.A.F.I.A. (the second part standing for "Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes"), who were associates of rapper Notorious B.I.G. on the Bad Boy record label. Featuring Lil' Kim and Lil' Cease with other wordslayers, they landed a top-40 pop hit/top-10 R&B hit in the summer of 1995 with "Player's Anthem". They also released their debut album Conspiracy that month, and a second single from the record, "I Need You Tonight", stalled under the R&B top-40 at #43 while only "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #103, despite the most accessible and radio friendly of records that sampled Lisa Lisa and a feature by the singer Aaliyah. So for the third release from the album, the group went back one of the other tracks that featured their mentor Biggie, "Get Money". Remixing the song for the single release to interpolate the classic soul jam "Don't Look Any Further" with verses from Kim, Cease, and Biggie, it proved a big hit with the hip-hop crowd, and flowed over to pop radio. The music video was made with the original...

"Get Money" became the Junior Mafia's second and final top-40 pop hit in May of 1996. The song also climbed all the way to #4 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, their biggest success there, while spending three weeks at #1 on their Rap Singles chart. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in New Zealand at #35, and was a minor hit in the UK at #63.

After Biggie's death in 1997, the group scattered, with Lil' Kim and Lil' Cease going on the lucrative solo careers. Cease did reunite with members Klepto and Larceny for a one-off Junior M.A.F.I.A. album called Riot Musik in 2005, but besides selling enough to place at #61 on the R&B chart, radio left them alone.

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Here's the "Gettin' Money" remix that really did push the sales of the single into top-40 territory...

and finally, the group and Biggie live in concert...

Up tomorrow: Younger soul trio are possessive.