Songoftheday 11/6/20 - Bang this in your whips, pack em call the roadie with the chips in the wrists...

 

 

"Not Tonight" - Lil' Kim featuring Da Brat, Left Eye, Missy Elliott and Angie Martinez

from the albums Hard Core (1996) and Nothing To Lose (Original Soundtrack) (1997) 

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's song of the day comes from rapper Lil' Kim, who landed her first solo hit in the beginning of 1997 with "No Time", from her debut album Hard Core. Another track from the record, "Crush On You" featuring Lil' Cease, wasn't released as a commercial single, but managed to make both the Pop (#52) and R&B (#9) Airplay charts. She also made the charts in the spring with a collaboration with rapper Too Short, "Call Me", from the Jamie Foxx movie Booty Call, which went to #30 R&B and #90 on the Hot 100. The third song promoted to radio from Hard Core would be the track "Not Tonight". The original version on the album featured producer Jermaine Dupri and was built on a sample of George Benson's post-disco nugget "Turn Your Love Around". However for the single and on the soundtrack to the movie Nothing To Lose, the track was completely overhauled, ditching Dupri for a bevy of female rappers including Da Brat, Left-Eye Lopes from TLC, Missy Elliott, and radio personality Angie Martinez. Switching the sample to Kool & The Gang's "Ladies Night" and dubbing itself the "Ladies Night Remix" and released as the second single from Nothing To Lose after Coolio's "C U When U Get There", "Not Tonight" got a completely new life that it quite apt looking back in 2020, where this transformational remix phenomenon is commonplace now...

The mainstream familiarity of that sample coupled with the novelty of an all-female "supergroup" single helped the remix of "Not Tonight" become Lil' Kim's first top ten pop hit in August of 1997. The song also spent two weeks at #3 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and #2 on their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single peaked at #4 in New Zealand, and made the top-40 in the UK (#11) and the Netherlands (#31). 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the original album version of "Not Tonight", which is much dirtier with a slower tempo with the Benson sample...

 

And here's the fivesome performing the remix on the MTV Music Video Awards in 1997...

 

Up tomorrow: