Robbed hit of the week 3/29/21 - Jay-Z's "The City Is Mine"...

 

 

"The City Is Mine" - Jay-Z featuring Blackstreet

from the album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #52 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from rapper Sean Carter, aka "Jay-Z", who had a "robbed hit" in the summer of 1996 with the "double-A-sided" single "Ain't No Ni**a"/"Dead Presidents". Jay-Z landed in the pop top-40 for the first time nearly a year later as a featured artist on rapper Foxy Brown's top ten hit "I'll Be". Later in 1997, the rapper released his second studio effort In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, switching his Roc-A-Fella Records label from the indie Priority to the Polygram-distributed Def Jam Records. The record was much more mainstream-radio oriented; Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs executive producing made its mark by the use of prominent pop samples in many of the tracks on the set. Lead single "Sunshine", which interpolated Alexander O'Neal's soul nugget "Sunshine", sported Babyface singing the chorus and Foxy returning the favor with a cameo. However, even with Babyface and Brown's name recognition, the single stalled all the way down at #95 on the pop Hot 100 chart in Billboard magazine, and #37 on the R&B list. It was a bigger success overseas, reaching the top-40 in Germany (#18) and the UK (#25). The second release from the record would rework a much bigger hit, in Glenn Frey's Miami Vice smash "You Belong To The City". "The City Is Mine", featuring new jack swing group Blackstreet singing the vocal hook (and member Teddy Riley producing), at first serves as a tribute to the recently murdered Notorious B.I.G., then goes on to be a standard East-Coast gangsta-style track. The video even tries to play large, as Michael Rappaport play cop in this Usual Suspects-style homage...

While "The City Is Mine" also climbed to #37 on Billboard's R&B chart, the song stopped just short of the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 in March of 1998. Internationally, the single landed in the top-40 in Germany (#28) and the UK (#38). The In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 album became his first to reach the top ten on the Billboard 200 sales tally, cresting at #3.

Another cut from the album, which riffed off the Rose Royce 1970s soul classic "Wishing On A Star", and featuring its lead singer Gwen Dickey, became a decent hit in the UK at #13.

 

(3/10)

 

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The "B-Side" of the single, "A Million And One Questions", got enough urban radio airplay to appear on the chart with "The City Is Mine" for three weeks, topping at #49...