Songoftheday 5/12/22 - First thing we need to do is find brand new fits for you, make sure that you look good make sure that I smell good...
"Dance Tonight" - Lucy Pearl
from the albums Lucy Pearl and Love & Basketball (Original Soundtrack) (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3
Today's song comes from the R&B "supergroup" Lucy Pearl, the coming together of Raphael Saadiq formerly of the group Tony! Toni! Tone'!, Dawn Robinson formerly of the group En Vogue, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad formerly of the rap group A Tribe Called Quest. Saadiq was last on the series with his doubled-sided hit with TTT from the summer of 1997 "Let's Get Down"/"Thinking Of You". Robinson has quit En Vogue after their big smash "Don't Let Go (Love)" in the beginning of that year, while Muhammad's Tribe Called Quest had an almost top-40 pop hit with "Award Tour". Pulled together for a one-album project, the newly-christened Lucy Pearl released their self-titled album in the spring of 2000. The lead single from the set was the retro sleek neo-soul of "Dance Tonight". Written by the trio and produced by Saadiq and Muhammad with Glenn Standridge and Bobby Ozuna Jr (aka "Jake & The Phatman"), the record is a party song, but one with finesse, one you can hear at a wine bar even if it mentions Bentleys and strippers. Both Saadiq and Robinson exude coolness on their respective verses, while in the music video, which includes scenes from the Omar Epps movie Love & Basketball in which the song appears, Muhammad mans the turntables and the music. In retrospect, it's definitely not flashy, more like background music, but good background music, and the trio scored their biggest hit on mainstream and urban radio...
"Dance Tonight" became Lucy Pearl's first and only top-40 pop hit in July of 2000. The song also climbed to #5 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart, and #11 on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio list, as well as #35 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic Airplay format. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Belgium (#4W/#10F), and reached the top 40 in Canada (#28) and the UK (#36). The Lucy Pearl album, released in May of that year, went to #26 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #3 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies. The Love & Basketball soundtrack, which came out in April, went to #45 on the Billboard 200 and #15 on the R&B Albums list.
Another new cut from the Love & Basketball soundtrack, "Soul Sista" by neo-soul singer Bilal, went to #71 on the pop Hot 100 and #18 on the R&B Singles chart.
Lucy Pearl's follow-up single, "Don't Mess With My Man", just missed the top-40 on the R&B chart at #41, while making the mark on Adult R&B at #36, but stayed clear of the pop Hot 100. Nevertheless, the song, which I feel is stronger, is their biggest streaming success to date. A third single, "You" featuring rappers Snoop Dogg and Ali's old bandmate Q-Tip, got to #64 on the R&B Singles chart in 2001. But by that time, Robinson had already been unceremoniously replaced by R&B singer Joi in the single and video.
The group as it was ended after that album, though in 2009 Robinson joined Saadiq on his solo album Ray Ray for the track "Rifle Love", which had "Lucy Pearl" listed in the billing as well as Tony Toni Tone, even though it was just Robinson and Dwayne Wiggins on the song. It managed to get to #36 on the Adult R&B radio chart.
(6/10)
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Here's Lucy Pearl performing "Dance Tonight" in concert in 2000...
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