Songoftheday 6/2/21 - So many homies gone trying to ball till they fall, now I'm left with nothing but old cards and a bunch of pictures on the wall...

 

 

"Goodbye To My Homies" - Master P featuring Silkk The Shocker, Sons of Funk, and Mo B. Dick

from the album MP da Last Don (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song of the day comes from rapper and music label executive Percy "Master P" Miller, who had landed this fourth top-40 pop hit (and third as a lead artist) in the summer of 1998 with his movie tie-in "I Got The Hook Up" featuring vocal group Sons of Funk. At the time that song was peaking, Master P released his seventh studio album MP da Last Don. The lead single was the reflective "Goodbye To My Homies", his second attempt for success at radio in mourning his passed friends, and especially his brother Kevin. This one lifted whole the melody from Boyz II Men's top ten hit "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday" which gave Christine Yarian writing credit, with rhymes from Miller, his brother Silkk The Shocker and cousin Mo. B. Dick with the Miller brothers given credit on the label. He brought back Sons Of Funk to sing the chorus as well. He was riding a wave, and the personal single sold like hotcakes again putting him back into the top-40 on both the pop and R&B chart for the last time...

"Goodbye To My Homies" returned Master P to the pop Top-40 as a lead solo artist for the fourth and final time in August of 1998. The song climbed to #38 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and also made it to #5 on their Rap Singles list. The two-disc MP da Last Don album, released in June of that year, became Miller's second and so far last #1 album on the Billboard 200, going on to move over two million copies (four times platinum since a double set). 

At the time this single was peaking on the pop chart, album track "Thinkin' 'Bout U" with Mia X popped on to Billboard's R&B Airplay radio list for a week at #73, and got its own music video. The proper follow-up retail single, "Hot Boys And Girls", featured Mia X and Silkk along with Kane & Abel as well as an up an coming rapper called Mystikal, but only managed to get to #87 on the R&B chart, missing the pop Hot 100 altogether. Although this would be Master P's last top-40 pop hit as a solo artist, he will return to the series in the group 504 Boyz.

As for his own career, despite saying Last Don would be his swan song, he returned a year later with Only God Can Judge Me. Although the album would spend a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales chart and move over a half million copies, lead single "Step To This" featuring D.I.G. missed the pop chart and barely scraped the R&B top-40 at #40, but did get to #4 on the Rap Singles list. Miller would start the new millennium with the gold album Ghetto Postage which got to #25 on the sales chart and landed another top-40 R&B hit that also topped the Rap Singles list with "Souljas" at #35. (He had much bigger success with 504 Boyz that year.) 

Trying to reinvent a "New No Limit", Master P did score a decent R&B hit with "Ooohhwee", but the album it came from, Game Face, was his first since his breakthrough to miss the Billboard 200 top-40 at #53. Switching to the successful "indie" distributor Koch, his next disc Good Side, Bad Side, another double-disc set, did better, nearly making the top ten at #11, while single "Them Jeans" scored his most recent top-40 R&B singles hit at #40, while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #115. That was followed by "Act A Fool", his last minor R&B hit at #72. A second album with Koch, Ghetto Bill, peaked at #39 on the Billboard 200.

Since then, Master P has released three more full-length albums, his latest being Empire, From the Hood To Hollywood in 2015. 

(4/10)

Up tomorrow: Canadian soul singer is down with it.