Songoftheday 1/14/22 -Special girl, real good girl, biggest thing in my itty bitty world...
"Vivrant Thing" - Q-Tip
from the albums Violator: The Album and Amplified (both 1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song comes from hip-hop artist Q-Tip, who was born Jonathan Davis in New York, where he grew up in the 1970s. Q-Tip, along with childhood friends Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, formed the alternative rap group A Tribe Called Quest, who released five studio albums in the 1990s. A song off the third set Midnight Marauders, "Award Tour", nearly made the crossover Hot 100 top-40 at #47 in 1993. Also, Q-Tip appeared uncredited on Dee-Lite's top ten pop hit "Groove Is In The Heart" in 1990. Despite their success, with a #1 album Beats, Rhymes & Life in 1996, the trio split after sparring with their record company and each other.
By that time, Q-Tip converted to Islam, changing his name to Kamaal Ibn John Fareed. At the start of 1999, the rapper collaborated with singer and former Tony! Toni! Tone! member Raphael Saadiq on "Get Involved" from the soundtrack to the animated TV series The PJs. Released as a single, it made the top-40 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart at #21 while appearing on the Hot 100 pop tally at #67. Q-Tip laterally moved to Arista Records for his solo debut, Amplified, later that year. The lead single from the record was the bouncy club track "Vivrant Thing". Written by the rapper and co-producer James "J Dilla" Yancey, and interpolating the instrumental "I Wanna Stay" by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, giving Barry White a writing credit, and White's groove is what really propels this song along. On the surface a love track to his woman, Q-Tip slips in quite a bit of nuance here, with humble brags and props for "actin' like grownups" and not giving in to jealousy, plus the very real lines of "Plus we can hold a convo, or go to the movies, my crib, whatever yo" that are miles apart from the brand porn the genre would devolve into. All and all it's a track you can jam at the club to, as well as ride with your shorty with. The hi-tech music video also was a big plus. It first appeared on a compilation for his management company Violator in the summer, then as the lead on his own album in the late fall...
"Vivrant Thing" became Q-Tip's first and only top-40 pop hit as a lead solo artist in October of 1999. The song climbed to #7 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, and rose to #10 on their Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single went to #39 in the UK. The Violator compilation, released in August of that year, peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, while topping their R&B Albums list for a week and selling a half million copies. Q-Tip's own Amplified set, which came out that November, rose to #28 on the Billboard 200, and #4 on the R&B Albums list, also going on to sell over a half million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Vivrant Thing" was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance, which Eminem won for his breakthrough "My Name Is...".
The second and final single from Amplified, "Breathe And Stop", also rode on an infectious funky beat this time from Kool & The Gang's "N .T.". While the song became his third top-40 R&B hit at #21, the sparser groove wasn't as cool at mainstream pop stations, and it stalled at #71 on the Hot 100. It was a much bigger hit overseas, rising to #12 in the UK and #18 in Ireland.
The next few years saw Q-Tip in a state of flux, with a second album rejected by Arista, and after moving to DreamWorks Records, they folded before he could release anything. A one-off single with Motown, "For The Nasty" with rapper Busta Rhymes, was a minor hit on the R&B chart at #86 in 2005. The following year, Q-Tip provided the rap vocals on the club hit "Galvinize" from the Chemical Brothers", which went to #12 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart and won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. In 2008, the rapper emerged with his second solo effort The Renaissance on that label, which didn't include "For the Nasty", and neither of the single made a dent on the chart. Nevertheless, the album was his highest ranking on the Billboard 200 at #11 and #3 on R&B Albums, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2010, again losing to Eminem for his Relapse set.
Q-Tip's most recent solo set, Kamaal The Abstract, was released in 2009, which was his originally-planned followup to Amplified, now coming on the indie Battery label. The set got to #77 on the Billboard 200 and #32 on the R&B Albums list. In 2013, Q-Tip got together with former Black Eyed Peas singer turned pop diva Fergie and rapper Goonrock for "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got" from the soundtrack to the Baz Luhrmann re-imagining of The Great Gatsby. Though the song stopped at #77 on the American pop chart, it was a top ten hit in Germany. His most recent lead artist single, a cover of Elton John's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" with Demi Lovato, came out in 2018. Meanwhile, in 2016, Q-Tip reunited with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and using the late Phife Dawg's vocals released the Tribe Called Quest reunion album We Got It From Here...Thank U 4 Your Service.., which went to #1 on the Billboard 200 and the R&B albums chart. Q-Tip will be back, though, in a featured spot on a top-5 record real soon.
(8/10)
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Next up, at the Soul Train Music Awards in 2000....
and lastly, from a televised concert in 2008...
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