Songoftheday 2/12/22 - As the clock strikes twelve I'm sitting here wondering how the hell, did I let you leave and baby I know that I did my share...

 

 

"He Can't Love U" - Jagged Edge

from the album J.E. Heartbreak (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 13

 

Today's song comes from the R&B vocal group Jagged Edge, who landed their first pop crossover top-40 hit in the summer of 1998 with the song "Gotta Be".  A year later, brothers Brian and Brandon Casey along with Richard Wingo and Kyle Norman returned with their sophomore effort J.E. Heartbreak, no doubt inspired by their predecessors New Edition, who had a top-40 R&B hit with "N.E. Heartbreak" in 1989. The lead single from the set, "Keys To The Range", appeared in the Omar Epps movie In Too Deep, and featured their label head turned rapper Jermaine Dupri. Despite that exposure, and JD's involvement, the single stalled down at #55 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, missing the pop Hot 100 completely. It's a decent track, too, but maybe trying to hard to be like a Timbaland/Missy Elliott groove that people turned off. Shame. 

The second offering from the record got a better reception. "He Can't Love U", written by the Casey brothers with producer Bryan-Michael Cox, slows the pace down as the group delivers vocals with R. Kelly-like phrasing as they profess their superior romancing skills of course after the woman has broken up with them. Always after the fact. Meanwhile, the music video omits all that and just has each member's fictitious girlfriend surprise them on the road...

"He Can't Love U" became Jagged Edge's second top-40 crossover hit in January of 2000. The song was their first to reach the top ten on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, spending three weeks at #3, and #29 on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio list. The J.E. Heartbreak album, released in September of 1999, was also a success, their first top ten placing on the Billboard 200 at #8, while topping the R&B Albums list for a week, going on to sell over a million copies. Both Jagged Edge and the J.E. Heartbreak album will be back to the series.

(4/10)

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Here's Jagged Edge appearing on Live At The Apollo...

and lastly, for a televised concert for BET ...

Up tomorrow: Canadian singer is pretty laissez-faire.