Songoftheday 12/3/20 - I want ya'll to play this at funerals in the hood, 'til all this black on black crime stop...

 

 

"I Miss My Homies" - Master P featuring Pimp C, Silkk The Shocker, Mo B. Dick, O'Dell, Sons of Funk, and Mercedes

from the album Ghetto D (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 13

 

Today's song of the day comes from rapper Percy Miller, who records and produces records under the names Master P or Ice Cream Man. Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana, he used a small inheritance to buy a record store and start his own independent label, No Limit Records, in 1990. He released his solo debut album Get Away Clean in 1991, followed by two more small album releases in the next few years. He also began a group project with his brothers Vyshonne (Silkk The Shocker) and Corey (C-Murder) called TRU, and put out their first disc Understanding The Criminal Mind in 1992. Three years later, Miller made a distribution deal with Priority Records, experts in selling music in the indie urban marketplace. His fourth solo album, and first under the deal, 99 Ways To Die, popped on to the R&B albums chart at #41, followed by a third TRU record, True, which cracked the R&B Albums top-40 at #25. In 1996, his next set, Ice Cream Man, landed his first hit single with title track "Mr. Ice Cream Man", which hit #55 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine and #90 on their pop Hot 100 tally. The album placed in the top-40 of the Billboard 200 sales list at #26, and #12 on the R&B-specific list, going on to sell over a million copies. Then the TRU set Tru 2 Da Game arrived at the start of 1997, with single "I Always Feel Like", which sampled the camp Rockwell hit "Somebody's Watching Me", gave Percy and his brothers their first top-40 R&B hit at #27 (and #71 on the Hot 100). That set came in at #8 on the Billboard 200, eventually shifting over two million units. That spring, a  single for the movie I'm 'Bout It, "If I Could Change", awarded Master P a solo lead-billed top-40 R&B hit at #31. 

This building momentum came to a head with the release of Master P's sixth studio effort, Ghetto D, in the fall of 1997. Selling over a quarter-million copies in its first week alone, the record would put the rapper straight at the top of the charts. The lead single from the record was "I Miss My Homies", which takes the template of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's success with "Tha Crossroadz" - mournful rhymes over a more subdued beat than usual - translated to New Orleans-style funk beats. The result, reportedly inspired by the death of his other brother Kevin, put Percy in the American Top-40 for the first time, accompanied by brother Silkk and a whole crew from his label in tow...

 

 
"I Miss My Homies" reached the pop top-40 in September of 1997. The song also climbed to #16 on Billboard's R&B chart, and #2 on their Rap Singles list. The Ghetto D album spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to move over three million records.

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And here's Master P performing "I Miss My Homies" at SXSW in Texas in 2013...

Up tomorrow: R&B group are asking for recognition.