Songoftheday 8/4/22 - Talk to me tell me where you were late last night? You told me with your friends hangin' out late last night...

 

 

"Stutter" - Joe featuring Mystikal

from the album My Name Is Joe (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 23

 

Today's song comes from neo-soul singer Joe (Thomas), who had scored a top ten pop and R&B hit in the summer of 2000 with his ballad "I Wanna Know", which also appeared in the movie The Wood. He also appeared on the BeBe Winans single "Coming Back Home" with Brian McKnight on BeBe's album Love & Freedom. The collab went to #61 on the R&B Singles chart, and was nominated for Best Duo/Group Vocal Performance at the 2001 Grammy Awards, losing to Destiny's Child's "Say My Name". The second single from Joe's third album, My Name Is Joe, was "Treat Her Like A Lady", co-written by Isaac Hayes. While the R. Kelly-style track spent 32 weeks on Billboard's R&B Singles chart with a high of #15, the song stalled down at #63 on the "pop" Hot 100. 

For the third release from the album, Joe and Jive Records chose the smooth, "Stutter", which was written by Ernest Dixon with producer Roy Hamilton. The album version flowed a little too much like "Treat Her Like A Lady", albeit with a smoother production, as Joe confronts a cheating lover...

That mix got a little attention, but what made the song take off was the remixed single edition, called the Double Take remix for its inclusion in the Eddie Griffin/Orlando Jones film, which no soundtrack came out for. The new take scraps the original backdrop for samples of rap collective The Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By" (a #52 pop/#28 R&B hit from 1993) which in turn sampled Quincy Jones' cover of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City" from 1973. The Pharcyde's record enhances the "stutter" in the plot, as Joe's increasing hostility over her lying. But instead of the innuendo on the original, this mix adds crazy-ass rapper Mystikal, who had just scored a pair of crossover hits with "Shake Ya Ass" and "Danger (Been So Long)". Mystikal wastes no time in telling her he was out watching her with hilarious lines like "I was the rapper you heard about strappin' up in the Waffle House" (which ended up actually happening to rapper Juvenile in 2016). He plays reverse wingman to Joe, summarily dismissing the woman. All and all the sped up tempo and choppy production help the flow of the song greatly, making the "Stutter" stand out from the same-same R&B music at the time. And since you could only buy the Double Take remix on the single, people grabbed it in droves, making it Joe's biggest hit as a lead artist (he hit #1 previously on Mariah Carey's "Thank God I Found You"). The music video plays out the deception and confrontation, with a Patty Duke-ish twist at the end...

"Stutter" became Joe's second #1 pop hit (and first as a lead) in February of 2001. The song topped Billboard's R&B Singles chart for five weeks, while on the radio it climbed to #3 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic airplay chart and got to #12 on Mainstream Top-40 stations, while on the older-skewing Adult R&B format (which favored the original) it just missed the top-10 at #11. Internationally, the single peaked at #7 in the United Kingdom, while making the top-40 in Germany (#12), Belgium (#13F), Switzerland (#14), the Netherlands (#18), and Australia (#19). 

Later that year, Joe returned with his next album Better Days. Despite the momentum from the two huge hits from My Name Is Joe, the album stalled at #32 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, selling just over a half million copies (as compared to My Name Is Joe's three million). Lead single "Let's Stay Home Tonight" was a modest R&B hit at #18, while stopping at #68 on the pop Hot 100 (even a try at a remix with rapper Petey Pablo didn't help) though it did decently on the Adult R&B format at #5, and made the British top-40 at #29. Follow-up "What If A Woman" topped the Adult R&B radio chart for two weeks and hit #21 at R&B and #63 on the pop Hot 100). Nevertheless, at the Grammy Awards in 2003, the single was nominated for Best Male R&B Vocal, losing to the more popular Usher for "U Don't Have To Call", while Better Days was up for Best R&B Album, which India.arie took home for Voyage To India. Also, his duet with Angie Stone originally from her Mahogany Soul album, "More Than A Woman" which hit #63 on the R&B chart., was nominated for the Best Duo/Group R&B Performance Grammy, which went to the "ringer" nod of Stevie Wonder and Take 6's live recording of Wonder's "Love's In Need Of Love Today". Another album in 2004, And Then..., made the Billboard 200 at #26 and went gold, but lead single "More & More" stalled under the Hot 100 top-40 at #48, and stopped at #15 at R&B and #4 at Adult R&B, though it gave him another British top-40 hit (in a two-fer with "Ride Wit U" featuring 50 Cent's rap "super"group G-Unit which was favored over there) at #12. Joe also appeared on G-Unit's single "Wanna Get To Know You", which will be making this series as Joe's final top-40 appearance.

Joe seemed to have a "comeback" with his 2007 album Ain't Nothin' Like Me, which came in at #2 on the Billboard 200, but ended up selling under a quarter million records. With lead single "If I Was Your Man", written by Swedish boyband vets Mikkel Eriksen and Tor Erik Hermansen, stalling at #19 on Billboard's R&B chart, and #84 on the pop Hot 100. At this point Joe left Jive, who he had been with since his second set in 1997.

Moving to Kedar Records, Joe returned with the single "E.R. (Emergency Room)" in 2008, which peaked at #32 on Billboard's R&B chart, but it would be his last to reach the top-40 there (it also got to #7 at Adult R&B stations). However he did still have a fanbase, proven by the string of four albums that debuted in the top ten on the Billboard 200 chart between 2008's Joe Thomas, New Man and 2013's Doubleback: Evolution of R&B. His most recent R&B Singles minor hit, "Dear Joe" from 2011's The Good Bad & The Ugly, came in at #74.

Since then, Joe has put out two more albums under his own Plaid Takeover label. The most recent, My Name Is Joe Thomas, arrived in 2016, and went to #17 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the R&B Albums list. The big single from the set, "So I Can Have You Back", spent a week at #1 on the Adult R&B radio chart. (It's a damn good song that deserved better.) As I mentioned before, Joe will be back to the series, but only in a supporting role. 

(7/10)

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Here's Joe performing "Stutter" on Top Of The Pops...

 Up tomorrow: This "hot" boyband thinks you're their all.