Songoftheday 7/6/21 - I got lyrics that wake up spirits, they told me how to make big hits and spend digits can you dig it?

 

 

"Pushin' Weight" - Ice Cube featuring Mr. Short Khop

from the album War & Peace, Vol. 1 (The War Disc) (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song of the day comes from rapper turned actor Ice Cube (aka O'Shea Jackson), whose fourth solo studio album after leaving the seminal rap collective N.W.A., Lethal Injection, scored a pair of top-40 pop hits with "You Know How We Do It"' and his single with funk master George Clinton, "Bop Gun (One Nation)", the latter reaching the mark in the fall of 1994. Jackson spent the next few years more involved with acting in films such as Dangerous Ground and Anaconda than music, only taking a detour for the collaborative album with rappers WC and Mack 10 as Westside Connection. That project also landed two top-40 pop hits with "Bow Down" and "Gangstas Make The World Go Round", the latter in the spring of 1997. A year later, Ice Cube re-emerged with the first of a two-record project titled War & Peace. The lead single from the "War Disc" that was released in 1997 was "Pushin' Weight", featuring rapper Lionel Hunt, who records under the moniker Mr. Short Khop. Written by Jackson and Hunt, the track is your basic boasting narrative, puffing up their chests and claiming how "hard" they are, making sure to insert the totally unnecessary homophobic slur in there. The production is actually pretty good; it's a shame to be wasted on such a linear and duplicitous track that's neutered by that f-word...

Nevertheless, "Pushin' Weight" became Ice Cube's sixth top-40 pop hit (and Mr. Short Khop's first and only), reaching its peak in January of 1999. In fact, it was one of the few single releases that hit the top-40 both before and after Billboard magazine changed its rules to allow radio-only hits to chart (which hampered many rap tunes). The song climbed to #12 on Billboard's R&B chart, and spent three weeks at #1 on their Rap Singles list. The first War & Peace volume, released in November of 1998, made it to #7 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. 

Despite the success of the single, the follow-up, a collaboration with neo-metal rock ban Korn on "Fuck Dying", stiffed, and there were no other singles until volume two arrived in 2000. As for Mr. Short Khop, it took until 2001 for his debut album, Da Khop Shop, to come to fruition, and while that disc went to #34 on the R&B albums list, single and G-Funk throwback "Dollaz, Drank, & Dank", only made it to #59 on the R&B singles list, though sticking around for 20 weeks. It sounded even more dated than the older "Pushin' Weight", and would be his last time on the charts.

(2/10)

Up tomorrow: Female vocal group fall down.