Songoftheday 8/13/20 - Everybody want to be fast see the cash, f*ck around they weak staff get a heat rash...

 

 

"Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" - Puff Daddy featuring Mase

from the album No Way Out (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (six weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 26

 

Today's song of the day comes from rapper/producer/label exec Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, who by the mid-1990s was mostly a behind the scenes force, responsible for bringing many acts to the forefront first through Uptown Records with Mary J Blige and Jodeci, and then later forming his own label Bad Boy Records, signing friend Christopher Wallace (the Notorious B.I.G.) and Craig Mack, who both scored top ten pop hits for the imprint. Combs, a New Yorker whose dad died when he was only two years old, assembled a production team that guided a huge chunk of the popular R&B music of the decade so far. In the closing of 1996, Combs appeared as a credited rap artist for the first time on Lil' Kim's first solo single "No Time", which reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.  He released his own debut track at the start of the following year. "Can't Nobody Hold Us Down", featuring another protege' in rapper Mase from Florida, who had previously guested on R&B vocal group 112's hit "Only You" with the Notorious B.I.G.. Floating on a generous riff of Grandmaster Flash's classic "The Message" with a chorus cribbed from Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride", the single was an immediate smash with his built fanbase of R&B-lovers...

 "Can't Nobody Hold Us Down" topped both the American pop and R&B charts for six weeks starting in March of 1997. The song also was #1 for twelve weeks on their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#11), the UK (#19), Germany (#23), Australia (#27), and Switzerland (#37). It set up the release of his debut album No Way Out, originally set to be called Hell Up In Harlem, but the death of collaborator/friend Wallace put a huge wrench in that, pushing the date to July. The set ended up going to #1 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, going on to sell over seven million copies, and in 1998 Combs was up for two Grammy Awards, winning the Best Rap Album trophy and being nommed for Best New Artist, which went to indie-pop songwriter Paula Cole. 

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Here's Puff Daddy and Mase performing "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" at the BET Teen Summit in 1997...

and later that year on Sprite Night...

and lastly, Puff and Mase in 2014 doing the single as well as a tribute to Biggie's "Mo Money Mo Problems"...

Up tomorrow: Neo-soul finally finds its female voice.