Songoftheday 6/12/20 - Seven double oh P.M. fly low to them hoes in the b, sipping Seagram chewing on a wheat stem...
from the album Picture This (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13
Today's song of the day comes from the hip-hop group Do Or Die, who came together in Chicago in the mid 1990's with rappers AK (Dennis Rounk), Belo Zero (Darnell Smith), and N.A.R.D. (Anthony Round). Their debut single, "Po Pimp", was originally released locally, before being picked up by Rap-A-Lot Records (home of the Geto Boys). Besides the trio, the track also featured the first big appearance of rapper Twista, who would eventually go on to be way more successful than they ever were, and he properly steals the show here...
"Po Pimp" became Do Or Die's only top-40 pop hit in October of 1996. The song went to #15 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while spending a week at #1 on their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in New Zealand at #37. Their debut album Picture This reached the top-40 on the Billboard 200 sales chart at #13, while cresting at #3 on the R&B albums list and selling over a half a million copies (gold). Trying to capitalize on that momentum and boost sales of the album (I assume), the trio's next radio single "Playa Like Me And You" wasn't released commercially. However, it only made it to #53 on Billboard's R&B Airplay chart, not even making the pop list in any form.
In 1998, Do Or Die returned with their sophomore effort, Headz or Tailz, again recruiting Twista for the lead single "Still Po Pimpin'". This time, the single even missed the R&B top-40 at #44, while stopping at #62 on the pop Hot 100. But the album did much better, with their highest rank on the Billboard 200 sales chart at #13, and matching their debut at #3 on the R&B Albums list. I think the idea of positioning them somewhere between the rapid-flow gangsta rap of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony with the seductive crooning of groups like Jodeci just confused everybody.
The trio would record three more albums for Rap-A-Lot, and while all three made the sales chart, they were absent from radio or any singles list until 2004, when they switched over to Atlantic Records imprint Legion for their D.O.D. album. That set featured a cut with another then-new rapper in Kanye West with "Higher", which got to #63 on the R&B Singles chart, with the album reaching #40 on the sales list. But for some reason that may not have been good enough, with the trio returning to Rap-A-Lot for their next set, Get That Paper, which is their most recent chart appearance at #159 (#29 R&B) in 2006. A year later, Belo Zero went to jail for murder for years on a plea deal, sidelining the act for recording. They reunited in the 2010s and released a Picture This 2 album in 2015 that went unnoticed. The trio just put out a new set, The Pass-Out, this past April.
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Here's Do Or Die (well, 2/3's of them) with Twista live in 2015...
Up tomorrow: Four soul powerhouses get together to set it off...
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