Songoftheday 10/5/20 - Hah sicka than your average Poppa twist cabbage off instinct...

 

 

"Hypnotize" - The Notorious B.I.G.

from the album Life After Death (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song of the day comes from New York rapper the Notorious B.I.G., whose debut album Ready To Die established him as one of the biggest stars of the genre, and spinning off three top-40 pop hits with "Juicy", "Big Poppa", and the reworked version of album cut "One More Chance/Stay With Me".  However, his life was getting more and more dangerous, as his feud with rapper 2Pac, who was murdered in September of 1996, raised questions on his involvement. He was also hit up on other drug, weapons, and assault charges as well during that year. He also was badly injured in a car accident while recording his second, and what would be his final studio album Life After Death. The lead single from the record would be Christopher Wallace's, or Biggie Smalls if you will, first #1 hit. "Hypnotize", built on a looped sample of Herb Alpert's #1 disco-jazz instrumental "Rise", was released March 1st, a week before he was shot dead in a car leaving an after-awards party in Los Angeles. Actually the second track from the album to make urban radio, after "Notorious Thugs" with the group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, which went to #36 on Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart, with "Hypnotize" arriving a week later. Combined with the publicity over his death, the single came on to the chart in the #2 position, behind his producer Puff Daddy's "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down", before going to #1. Pam Long of the R&B group Total provided the chorus vocals...

"Hypnotize" became Biggie's first #1 pop hit in May of 1997. The song also topped Billboard's R&B chart for three weeks, and spent seven weeks on top of their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single got to #3 in Canada and #10 in the UK, and reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#15), the Netherlands (#16), and Sweden (#29). The Life After Death album, released a couple weeks after the single, spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales list, going on to sell over five million copies (counted as ten times platinum since it was a double-disc set). At the Grammy Awards in 1998, "Hypnotize" was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance, but was defeated by Will Smith's milquetoast "Men In Black". 

Up tomorrow: Irish rockers probably go blind.