Songoftheday 8/17/22 - On the cross town with the top down, sounds banging out the backstreet's alright...

 

 

"Could It Be" - Jaheim

from the album Ghetto Love (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from Jaheim Hoagland, who grew up in central New Jersey before being signed to the Warner Brothers label. Using just his first name, Jaheim released his debut album Ghetto Love in the spring of 2001.  The lead single from the record was the downtempo G-funk of "Could It Be". Written by producers Wesley Hogges, Kent Lawrence, and Eric Williams along with Clifton Lighty, Balewa Muhammad, the song uses a musical backdrop sample of Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.'s cover of the Dells' "Nothing Can Stop Me" from their 1976 album I Hope We Get To Love In Time, giving Tony Hester prime writing credit on the track. Jaheim has a woman in his ride macking on him, and he's pondering what's turning her on, whether it's the swag he has or his loving prowess (promising to send her back to her friends talking him up). The thing is, with this explicit flow usually done by a ton of rappers on the market, Jaheim can sang, with a vocal delivery that reminds me of Teddy Pendergrass. And that combination of street attitude with vocal gymnastics was something rather new in 2001, and people responded, giving the singer his first hit on his first try...

"Could It Be" became Jaheim's first top-40 crossover hit in March of 2001. The song spent a week at #2 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart. Internationally, the single climbed to #33 in the United Kingdom. The Ghetto Love album, released in March as the single was peaking, came in at #9 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. Both Jaheim and this album will be back to the series.

Editors note: Sometimes when I research these acts for this series you find out some crazy and horrible shit about them, and the period of 1999-2001 is rife with them. Recently, I mean during the pandemic recently, Jaheim was arrested for animal cruelty for keeping 15 dogs in horrid conditions in his New Jersey home, to the point of one dying from his neglect. The poor suffering pups was removed from his possession, and his case is still going through the justice system, but damn what a dickweasel.

That said, the score I'm giving below is for the record, not the man performing it. I know it feels like a cop-out, but if I hold true to my intention in the series, I feel I need to put that to the side, just as I've done for taintstains like R. Kelly and Kid Rock. "Could It Be" is a damn good record in itself, it's infuriating that the artist behind it turned out to be such a fuck-up (and he hasn't had an album in six years counting now) that we can write him off. There's redeemable crimes, but animal cruelty? Hell No.

(8/10)

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Here's Jaheim performing "Could It Be" at Live At The Apollo in 2001...

Up tomorrow: Speaking of artists that turned out to be douchebags, this future jingoistic "cowboy" is judging PDAs.