Songoftheday 5/13/21 - I feel so lost don't know why this has happened to me, my closest friend I never would've thought it could be...

 

 

"Friend Of Mine" - Kelly Price featuring Ronald Isley and R. Kelly

from the album Soul Of A Woman (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

 

Today's song of the day comes from Kelly Price, a native New Yorker who had spent years singing backup for artists like Mariah Carey and singing on some major hits, including the hook on the Notorious B.I.G.'s classic "Mo Money Mo Problems". Signed to Island Records, Price released her own debut album Soul Of A Woman in 1998. The lead single from the record was "Friend Of Mine", written by the singer along with Anthony Dent, Steve Jordan, and Jeffrey Walker from Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records crew. A remix of the song was made with R. Kelly and soul veteran Ronald Isley that took the song to new heights. In it, Price laments the infidelity of her man with her confidante, as R. Kelly plays the guy trying to explain himself and Isley as the godfather having none of that. With a subtle sample of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze" behind it, the "woman done wrong" trope was big in the 90's, and Price found herself with her first and biggest hit as a lead artist. The vocal interplay between the three singers made a more engaging record than the original...

"Friend Of Mine" became Price's first (and only) top-40 pop hit as a lead in August of 1998. The song was huge on urban radio, spending five weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#24), the UK (#25), and the Netherlands (#26). The Soul Of A Woman album, released as the song was cresting in August, reached #15 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the R&B Albums distillation, going on to move over a million copies. 

The second release from Soul Of A Woman was "Secret Love", another album track that was given a revamp for the single which featured rappers Jermaine Dupri and Da Brat. While the song rose to #34 on Billboard's R&B chart, and hit the British top-40 at #26, it missed the pop Hot 100, "bubbling under" at #112. However, not long after that, Kelly would go all the way to the top ten as a featured artist on Whitney Houston's "Heartbreak Hotel". 

Price returned in 2000 with her sophomore effort Mirror Mirror. The added exposure of supporting Whitney helped her come in at #5 on the Billboard 200, also selling over a million. However by then mainstream radio had evolved into the more segregated Swedish pop machine of boybands and diva princesses.. Nevertheless, the album spun off three top-20 R&B hits, with all three making the lower half of the pop Hot 100. The second of them, a remake of Shirley Murdock's 80's burner "As We Lay", did the best, making it to #12 on the R&B chart, #65 on the Hot 100, and getting her first Grammy nomination as a lead artist for Female R&B Vocal Performance in 2001, losing out to Toni Braxton for her "He Wasn't Man Enough" hit. Also, the title track "Mirror Mirror" was remixed to a dance floor filler, and climbed to #33 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list.

After a holiday release in 2001, Price released her third album Priceless two years later. The set reached the Billboard 200 top ten at #10. From the record the song "He Proposed" was nominated for a Traditional R&B Performance Grammy in 2004, which Aretha Franklin took home for her "Wonderful". 

Leaving Def Soul Records (which she was moved from Island in the big Universal merger), Kelly went the indie and the gospel route, putting out her first Christian album This Is Who I Am in 2006. But she returned to secular music in 2011 for her next set Kelly, which made the top-40 on the albums chart in America at #36. Lead single "Tired" made it to #82 on the R&B chart, and #26 on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio format, going on to score another Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal, which went to American Idol winner Fantasia for "Bittersweet". That was followed by "Not My Daddy" with the soul band Mint Condition, which rose to #22 at R&B, "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #122, and again was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Performance a year later (when the sexes were combined in the category), which Corinne Bailey Rae won for "Is This Love". The Kelly album was also up for Best R&B Album that year, criminally going to Chris Brown for her F.A.M.E. release.

Since then Price has released two more gospel albums, with Sing Pray Love Vol 1: Sing in 2014 going to #10 on the R&B Albums chart and #64 on the Billboard 200, and single "It's My Time" going to #4 on the Adult R&B radio chart, and #22 on the R&B Airplay list. (It even made my weekly countdown as well.) Kelly's most recent record, Grace, came out last month. 

(6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

This is the original version of "Friend Of Mine" with Price solo...

And Kelly performing live on a TV appearance...

and lastly, at the Apollo...

Up tomorrow: G-Funkers proclaim their excellence.