Robbed hit of the week 9/12/22 - Koffee Brown's "After Party"...

 

 

"After Party" - Koffee Brown

from the album Mars/Venus (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the duo Koffee Brown, who came together in Minneapolis. Falonte "Fonz" Moore and Vernell "Vee" Sales were signed to Arista Records, where they recorded their debut (and only) album Mars/Venus, which came out in the spring of 2001. The lead single from the set, "After Party", was written by a team of people, none being in the group - Teron Beal, Nathan Butler, Joel Campbell, Willieque Gilchrist, Allen Gordon, and Eritza Laues, with Kay Gee from Naughty By Nature producing. The vocal group Next, whose RL helped them get on Arista and just had a top ten pop hit with "Wifey", sign an uncredited backup on the record. They seem to be going for the Zhane's (not surprising, since KayGee produced them as well) laid-back lite-disco vibe in a mixed-gender duo version, and while it's a pleasant groove, it doesn't seem to raise itself from good back-up music to a retail store, though maybe I'm being a bit harsh, since this would be quite acceptable "after party" cool-down fare...

While "After Party" rose to #10 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart, the song stopped a handful of notches under the pop top-40 in March of 2001. The Mars/Venus album, released in March as the single was peaking, did make the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #32, while reaching #7 on the R&B Albums list.

A second single from the record, "Weekend Thing", which sampled Herb Alpert's jazz-disco track "Rotation",  stalled down at #71 on the R&B chart. The duo split after that one album. 

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Here's the pair appearing on BET...