Songoftheday 5/3/21 - Girl Ive been wondering about me and you yeah, I got a secret place I wanna invite you to..

 

 

"Whatcha Gone Do?" - Link

from the album Sex Down (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

 

Today's song of the day comes from R&B singer Link, who grew up Lincoln Browder in Dallas, Texas. His big break first came as a songwriter, when a song he wrote with Darrell Allamby, "My Body", became a huge pop and R&B hit for the vocal "supergroup" LSG (Gerald Levert, Keith Sweat, and Johnny Gill) at the end of 1997. Link then got signed as a recording artist in his own right by Relativity Records, who normally specialized in rock and metal music like Joe Satriani, but had eventually usurped the rap label Ruthless Records, started by the late N.W.A. member Eazy-E. But Link was their first foray in a big way into the market, and Link's lead single "Whatcha Gone Do?" was meant to tap into the 90s booty-callin' R&B audiences of R. Kelly, Blackstreet, and of course LSG. The song was produced by Allamby, whom Link wrote it with along with Antoinette Roberson. The production is smooth melodic soul, but the lyrics went quite a bit farther, with the chorus asking if she wants him to "hit her with a 69", which I didn't know it was something you could "hit" with, and eventually ending with hitting from the back, which you know. The sound was rhythmically innocuous enough to pass programmers (much like Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me"), but somehow Link didn't have the swagger she did. But he got enough people on board to make this his first and biggest hit.. At least he's asking for consent, though...

"Whatcha Gone Do?" became Link's first and only top-40 pop hit in July of 1998. The song also rose to #15 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand at #32, and was a minor hit in the UK at #48. Link's debut album Sex Down was released in June of that year, and popped on to the Billboard 200 sales tally in America at #187, while reaching #46 on the R&B Albums list.

The second release from Sex Down would be the much more toned down mid-tempo ballad "I Don't Wanna See". However that got a more muted response in return, missing the top-40 on the R&B chart at #43, while not appearing on the pop chart at all. I guess Relativity figured their experiment had run its course, and Link didn't record anything else for the company. Instead he went back to songwriting, though eventually returning in 2008 for the indie release Creepin. 

(3/10)

Up tomorrow: Austin alt-rockers show a path.