Songoftheday 2/27/21 - New York to the heart but got love for all, lie and die in the fire where I learned to ball...
"Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)" - Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz
from the album Make It Reign (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18
Today's song of the day comes from rappers Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz, who came together in the Bronx in the late 1990s. After working with such ends of the "hip-hop" spectrum as Jay-Z and Shaquille O'Neal, the pair were signed to label titan Columbia Records. Their debut single "Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)", starts with a shoutout to their hometown but quickly devolves in gangster porn, with guns and money and women through all along like props. But what made the mainstream pay attention was the unusual sample of yacht-rock stalwarts Steely Dan and their 1977 album cut "Black Cow" from their album Aja. The upbeat jazzy instrumental part of the sample counteracts the hard lyrics, and is so overwhelming to the track that in order to use it the duo had to give up all songwriting royalties to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, so Lord knows how much they ever made from this hit. But at least on the chorus we have all the ways you can get killed in each of the New York boroughs...
"Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)" became Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz' first and only hit on the American pop chart, reaching the top ten in March of 1998. The song also rose to #4 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and topped the Rap Singles chart for five nonconsecutive weeks, the best showing on that chart that year. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in the UK (#21) and New Zealand (#29). Their debut (and only) album Make It Reign, released in June of 1998, made it to #38 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and #8 on the R&B Albums list.
Despite the success of "Deja Vu", the pair weren't able to follow-up on that success. Their next track from Make It Reign promoted to radio, "We Will Ball", which used an upbeat but original production backdrop, only made it to #49 on the R&B Airplay chart, and mainstream pop radio completely gave it a pass, so without any singles sales it never charted. They did appear on a remix of Mariah Carey's #1 pop hit "My All" that spring, their biggest success, but their version wasn't credited on the charts. They split shortly after, with Tariq (Sean Hamilton) being featured on R&B singer SHIRO's 1998 single "Good Love" (#63 R&B), while Peter Gunz (Peter Pankey) guested on Shaquille O'Neal's 1998 radio offering "The Way It's Goin Down" (#48 R&B Airplay). Since then, Tariq released an unnoticed solo set, while Peter Gunz appeared on Love and Hip Hop: New York, and is the current host of the the salacious "reality" program Cheaters.
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Here's the duo performing "Deja Vu" for a TV appearance...
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