Songoftheday 9/6/21 - That's right my meat and potatoes come from my lyrical label, I throw my rhymes for No Limit like Jeff George throw for the Raiders...

 

 

"It Ain't My Fault 2" / "Somebody Like Me"- Silkk The Shocker featuring Mystikal/Mya

from the album Made Man (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

 

Today's song comes from rapper Vyshonn Miller, who records under the alias Silkk The Shocker, who got his start as part of the No Limit collective of artists led by brother Percy "Master P" Miller. Silkk's debut album, The Shocker, was released in 1996, and climbed to #49 on the Billboard 200 sales chart and #6 on the R&B Albums list in Billboard magazine. That same year, he featured on Master P's single "No More Tears", which went to #78 on the R&B Singles chart, and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #109, making his first chart appearance in the trade bible. The following year, his guest stint on P's "I Miss My Homies" placed both the brothers in the pop Top-40 for the first time. 

1998 brought Silkk to an even bigger audience, with two more top-40 pop hits with his brother, "Make Em' Say Uhhh!" and "Goodbye To My Homies", as well as guest jobs on Montell Jordan's top ten smash "Let's Ride" and Mya's "Movin' On" (the latter his first charting single without his brother). Also, Silkk released his sophomore solo effort Charge It 2 Da Game, which spent two weeks at #3 on the Billboard 200, and topped Billboard's R&B Albums list. The lead single from the set, "Just Be Straight With Me", an interpolation of the S.O.S. Band soul classic "Just Be Good To Me" featuring Master P, a pre-fame Destiny's Child, O'Dell, and Mo B. Dick, landed Silk his first lead-artist top-40 R&B hit at #36, and first Hot 100 entry at #57. 

Another track from the Charge It.. album, "It Ain't My Fault", wasn't released as a retail single, but had enough airplay on urban radio stations to make it to #20 on the R&B Airplay list. Based on the jazz nugget "It Ain't My Fault" by Smokey Johnson (written with Wardell Quezergue) from Miller's hometown of New Orleans, fellow No Limit rapper Mystikal joined Silkk on the record...

In 1999, Silkk The Shocker released his third disc Made Man, and in it he reinvented "It Ain't My Fault" with a remixed backdrop. Mystikal again features on the track, where he goes first and totally overshadows Silkk's verses, foreboding his own later success. With the "Did I do That?" (from the sitcom Family Matters) tagline stapled firmly on to the track, it was an improvement that gave the record a push that made it Silkk's biggest lead artist hit...

 

 "It Ain't My Fault 2" reached the American pop Top-40 in March of 1999. The single also landed up at #5 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart (better than any of Master P's lead singles), and #1 on their Rap Singles list. Silkk's Made Man album released in January of 1999, spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200, as well as the same on their R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies.

The song made it that high with help from sales of the 12" vinyl single, which was released with "Somebody Like Me" featuring Mya as the "A-Side". That track alone went to #43 on the R&B Singles chart, and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #112 (since "It Ain't My Fault 2" had the bigger airplay numbers, per the chart rules that song got all the sales points even though technically it was a "B-side" on that release). It's surprising, since Mya brings a much more radio-friendly presence to the record, but possibly because Silkk just isn't as strong as Mystikal is on the other...

 

 Silkk returned in 2000 with My World, My Way, which rose to #12 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the R&B Albums list. However, even though it placed three tracks on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, the biggest of them, "He Did That" with Master P and Mac, only got to #50, and none even came close to the pop Hot 100. Four years later, he came back with Based On A True Story, which stalled at #88 on the Billboard 200, and from it the single "We Like Them Girls" with Master P was his most recent R&B hit at #69. His most recent solo set, It Will All Make Sense Later, was released in 2018 to little notice. While Silkk The Shocker won't return as a solo or featured artist, he will be back in the series as a member of the 504 Boyz.

 

It Ain't My Fault 2: (3/10)         Somebody Like Me: (3/10)

Up tomorrow: Country singer has a sense of time.