Songoftheday 8/2/22 - Hey there shorty I've been feeling you, like them jeans do feel me?

 

 

"Mamacita" - Public Announcement

from the album Don't Hold Back (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song is from the R&B vocal group Public Announcement, who after backing R. Kelly on his first album Born In The 90's, released their own album All Work, No Play in 1998, which spun off a top-40 pop and R&B hit in the spring of that year with "Body Bumpin' (Yippie-Yi-Yo)".  However a lack of a follow-up hit caused them to be dropped by A&M Records, with member Euclid Gray leaving shortly after. Earl Robinson (the only remaining singer from the R. Kelly era), Feloney Davis, and Glenn Wright recruited Ace Watkins, and put out an indie single "John Doe" on the Unohoo label that eventually would be picked up by RCA Records (the song made it to #82 on the R&B Singles chart in 1999). 

On Epic the quartet released their second album, Don't Hold Back. The lead single from the set was "Mamacita", written by Gramyco Collins and producer Travon Potts. In the song the guys try to pick up a series of chicks, first on the phone then in the club, name-checking Kelly's "Bump & Grind" and their own "Body Bumpin'" in the process. It seems pretty desperate in the need to hook up, all over a whimsical Latin-adjacent groove. Since that fit in with the current Latin explosion going on at pop radio, the track fit in and gave the group a comeback hit...

"Mamacita" became Public Announcement's second (and so far last) top-40 pop hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in January of 2001. The song climbed to #7 on their R&B Singles chart, while peaking at #22 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic radio format list. Internationally, the single was a minor hit in Germany at #76. The Don't Hold Back album, released in February of that year, made if to #89 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #30 on the R&B Albums list. A year later, the song appeared on the soundtrack to the Ice Cube movie All About The Benjamins; that album made it to #65 on the Billboard 200 and #12 on the R&B Albums list.

The second release from the album, "Man Ain't Supposed To Cry", written by Davis and the best of the bunch, climbed to #35 on the R&B Singles chart, while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #109. That was followed by a re-recorded version of "John Doe" featuring MZ Lelee, which went to #95 on the Hot 100 and #32 on the R&B Singles chart. But again they were let go by RCA.

 

Since then the group released one more album independently, When The Smoke Clears, in 2005. Robinson left the group after, with Davis, Watkins, and Wright (and for a time Mar-K Shaw) have been sporadically putting out singles, most recently "One" in 2020.  

(5/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the group performing "Mamacita" on Showtime At The Apollo...

Up tomorrow: Rapper wants himself slathered and covered.