Songoftheday 3/23/21 - I shoulda seen you was trouble right from the start taught me so many lessons, how not to mess with broken hearts so many questions...

 

 

"Do For Love" - 2Pac featuring Eric Williams of Blackstreet

from the album R U Still Down? (Remember Me) (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

 

Today's song of the day comes from hip-hop icon 2Pac (Tupac Shakur), who went all the way to #1 with his "double-shot" single of "How Do U Want It" and "California Love" in the summer of 1996. However, his joy of success was fleeting, as the rapper was murdered in Las Vegas in September of that year. An album of material that he recorded just a month prior, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (named for the amount of time to record and mix the set), was released at the beginning of November under the moniker "Makaveli". Despite it not having any pop radio hits, two of the tracks made the top-40 on Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart, with "Hail Mary" climbing to #12. Neither were released as singles, helping goose sales for the album to go over a half million copies in its first week debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200, and going on to move over four million. In the spring of 1997, a track from 2Pac and Snoop Dogg from the soundtrack to the movie Gridlock'd starring the rapper with Tim Roth, "Wanted Dead Or Alive", reached #16 on the British singles chart, but went unnoticed on American radio, but the album reached #1 here in the U.S. 

With Shakur's death leaving the remainder of his work in the control of his mother, Afeni, who set up a new label, Amaru, under Interscope (who also distributed the late rapper's Death Row Records albums), the first in a series of posthumous releases arrived at the close of 1997. Titled R U Still Down? (Remember Me), the double-CD/vinyl/cassette collection had material recorded between 1993 and 1995, when he was still with Jive Records. The first song released as a commercial single from the album would be "I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto", which sampled Cameo's smooth jam "The Two Of Us", went to #14 on Billboard's R&B chart, while cresting at #67 on the pop Hot 100 list. That was followed by the extremely radio-friendly "Do For Love". With Eric Williams of the new jack swing group Blackstreet singing the chorus, which generously interpolates the Bobby Caldwell urban soul classic "What You Won't Do For Love", which made the pop top ten in 1978. Over this groove, 2Pac goes through the ups and (mostly downs) of being romantic in the baller era, admitting to letting women take advantage of him. The music video had animated versions of the rapper over an artistic background...

"Do For Love" became 2Pac's first (but not last) posthumous top-40 pop hit in March of 1998. The single climbed to #10 on Billboard's R&B chart, his fifth at the time, while making it to #2 on their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the UK (#12), the Netherlands (#18), New Zealand (#18), and Sweden (#33). The R U Still Down? album came in at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over two million copies. 

(7/10)

Up tomorrow: The Queen of Soul discusses flowers.

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