Songoftheday 5/8/22 - Could've had it good now the love is gone, and went back to your hood with the 54-11's on...
"No More" - Ruff Endz
from the album Love Crimes (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 25
Today's song comes from the R&B duo Ruff Endz. David Chance and Dante Jordan came together in the mid-1990's, and were eventually signed to Epic Records, a pretty big deal since they weren't a big established act. Their debut single "No More" came out in the early summer of 2000. Written by producers Eddie "DJ Eddie" Farrell and Darren Lighty with Clifton Lighty and Balewa Muhammad, the song has them casting out a cheating lover much in the way that Oran "Juice" Jones threw out a woman in "The Rain" over a decade earlier. The production is really smooth - like almost "Return Of The Mack" smooth - and the music video which played out the plot of the song helped it become a remarkably big success on both the pop and R&B charts...
"No More" raced up to the top five on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in September of 2000. The song topped their R&B Singles chart for a week, and made it to #5 on their dance-oriented Rhythmic format list and #13 on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio chart. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the UK at #11. The duo's debut album, Love Crimes, was released in August of that year, and peaked at #52 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #19 on the R&B Albums list.
Despite that huge reception for their debut single, and being on such a major label like Epic, somehow the promotion of any follow-up was completely whiffed, and their second single "Where Does Love Go From Here" didn't appear on any of Billboard's radio or singles charts. Nevertheless, the pair wasn't let go and given a second try. Ruff Endz' sophomore effort, Someone To Love You, came out in the spring of 2002, after lead single "Cash, Money, Cars, Clothes" featuring rapper Memphis Bleek was a minor R&B hit at #69 the autumn before. And this is after Epic paid for them to film the music video in Brazil. The album did reach the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #27, and the top ten on the R&B Albums list at #8, but radio just wasn't biting the same as with "No More". Second single "Someone To Love You" did manage to do better, peaking at #12 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, spending a hefty 43 weeks on the list, but stalled right above the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 at #49, but on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio airplay list, the song spent twelve weeks at #1, staying on that chart for 62 weeks. A third single from the set, "Will You Be Mine", was a minor hit on that latter format at #36.
Finally let go from Epic, Chance and Jordan split for awhile, before reuniting in 2010 for the self-released album The Final Chapter. Since then they've released two more albums independently, the most recent being Rebirth in 2021.
(7/10)
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Here's the group performing "No More" on Live At The Apollo to promote the single...
Up tomorrow: This huge band scales it down.
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