Songoftheday 7/9/21 - It's been three weeks since you've been looking for your friend, the one you let hit it and never called you again...

 

 

"Doo Wop (That Thing)" - Lauryn Hill

from the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 16

 

Today's song of the day comes from singer/rapper Lauryn Hill, who was a member of the seminal hip-hop trio Fugees with Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel. Their album The Score remains one of the cornerstone records of the genre, and it included their Grammy-winning cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" featuring Hill on lead vocals, which rose to #2 on the pop airplay chart in the summer of 1996. Lauryn also appeared as a featured singer on rapper Nas' breakthrough single "If I Ruled The World" that same summer.  But as quickly as they rose to fame, the group imploded, precipitated by the toxic romantic/professional relationship between Wyclef and Lauryn. With Fugees disbanding a year later, Hill temporarily withdrew from the spotlight, married son-of-Bob Rohan Marley, and had a child.

 

In 1998, Hill emerged with her debut solo album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. To promote the summer release, the hype track "Lost Ones", an alleged "diss track" on former bandmate/lover Wyclef, was promoted to radio, where it rose to #27 on Billboard magazine's R&B airplay chart without even being released as a single.  But the real big guns came with the first retail single release, "Doo Wop (That Thing)". Credit as being written, produced, and sung by Hill (although a settled lawsuit disputes that), the track combines the ruffness of rap with the sweetness of retro-soul complete with horn section and everything. Hill starts with a long round of rap verses about women who get with shady men who end up taking advantage, before the chorus kicks in with the "girl you better watch out" refrain to drive the point home. The swagger of the horns and the beat is surely reggae-inspired, and while it's squarely a hip-hop record, its got enough of the soul harmonies to make it accessible to mainstream pop radio as well, to a degree. She has a direct message to women with the line "Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem", while for the men the message is "How you gon' win when you ain't right within". The music video for the song elevates the track to an even higher level, with split-screen Lauryns representing the old-school and new-school components on it...

"Doo Wop (That Thing)" went all the way to the top of the American pop chart in November of 1998. The song spent three weeks at #2 on Billboard's R&B chart, stopped by Deborah Cox's record-setting "Nobody's Supposed To Be Here", which itself was kept at #2 by "Doo Wop". It also spent a month (four weeks) at #1 on the Rap Singles chart. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Iceland, and reached the top ten in Canada (#2), the UK (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Australia (#8), and Switzerland (#10). The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album, released in August of 1998, spent four non-consecutive weeks at #1, going on to sell over eight million copies (it's gone Diamond - 10 million - on the strength of streaming numbers). At the Grammy Awards in 1999, Hill was nominated ten times, including her writing of Aretha Franklin's "A Rose Is Still A Rose". She ended up winning Best New Artist, the Miseducation album took Album of the Year and Best R&B Album, and "Doo Wop" got Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Performance. "Lost Ones" was up for Best Rap Solo Performance, which went to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy With It", album cut "Nothing Even Matters" with D'Angelo was in for Best R&B Duo/Group Performance, which Brandy & Monica swiped for their unstoppable "The Boy Is Mine", and finally Lauryn's cover of the Four Season's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" got the nod for Best Pop Female Performance, which Celine Dion naturally took home for "My Heart Will Go On". Lauryn was also nominated for Non-Classical Producer of the Year, which Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls) won. Lauryn will be back to this series soon. 

(9/10)

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Here's Lauryn appearing live on the Billboard Awards in 1998...

Next up, in concert in Japan in 1999...

And lastly, on Austin City Limits in 2016...

Up tomorrow: R&B diva identifies a romance.