Songoftheday 1/25/22 - Man I remember when the ball dropped for 90, Now it's 9-9, ten years behind me...

 

 

"Will 2K" - Will Smith featuring K-Ci

from the album Willennium (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from rapper/actor Will Smith, who went all the way to #1 on the American pop chart in the summer of 1999 with the title track from the movie he starred in "Wild Wild West".  Later that year, Smith released his second "solo" album Willennium, and for the next single from it he took advantage of the zeitgeist around the turn of the century with "Will 2K". With K-Ci Hailey (of Jodeci/K-Ci & Jojo) singing the chorus, and grabbing the sample this time from the Clash's 1982 top ten hit "Rock The Casbah", Will goes all out to bring his "party like it's 1999" on. However, the thing is that Smith is trying to do a "movie song" without a movie. What made "Men In Black" and "Wild Wild West" work makes this sound like a total novelty song that's as stale as bread left out for New Year's Eve celebrations. It's no wonder the single tanked as soon as January 1st hit. He must've spent a mint on the music video, which has himself, K-Ci, Jazzy Jeff, and a bevy of celebrity friends of his going through multiple sets portraying multiple decades, which somehow includes 2222, which has him in a metal chastity belt for some reason...

Nevertheless, the name recognition and fanbase (for the moment) put "Will 2K" into Billboard magazine's Hot 100's top-40 for the last month of 1999. The song also climbed to #66 on the R&B Singles chart (urban radio knew better), and #14 on the Rhythmic radio format list. Internationally, the single did much better, going all the way to #2 in the UK, and making the top ten in Australia (#3), Hungary (#3), Norway (#4), Canada (#5), Spain (#5), New Zealand (#6), Finland (#10), and Denmark (#10). It also reached the top-40 in the Netherlands (#11), Ireland (#12), Belgium (#13W/#27F), Sweden (#16), Switzerland (#23), France (#32), and Germany (#40). At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Will 2K"'s big-budget clip was nominated for Best Short Form Video, losing out to the Foo Fighters' "Learn To Fly". 

The relative flopness of this must have taken the wind out of the promotion of the record, as the third single from Willennium, "Freakin' It", which cribbed Diana Ross' disco classic "Love Hangover", stalled all the way down at #99 on the Hot 100, only doing a little better on the R&B list at #77. It didn't help that the song was lecturing other rappers about cursing, albeit using nothing but a euphemism in the very title. It did have some overseas success, going to #2 in Belgium and #15 in the UK. It'll be some time, but Will will be back to the series.

(2/10)

Up tomorrow: Locomotive rockers greet the Old Dominion.