Songoftheday 9/3/22 - Yo we got chicks in the living room getting it on, and they ain't leaving till 6 in the morning...

 

 

"Oochie Wally" - QB Finest featuring Nas and Bravehearts

from the album Nas & Ill Will Records Present QB's Finest (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 9

 

Today's song comes from New York rap icon Nas, who had landed a top-40 crossover pop hit in the beginning of 1996 with his single "Street Dreams". The following year, the rapper was featured on female vocal group Allure's top-40 pop hit "Head Over Heels", while he assembled a "supergroup" with himself, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Nature (the first three had all scored top-40 pop hits). While the record topped Billboard magazine's Billboard 200 and R&B Albums charts, the set failed to go gold (500,000 albums sold) and it's lead single, "Firm Biz" with former En Vogue member Dawn Robinson, stalled at #35 on the R&B Airplay monitor. It was more notable in sparking the feud between Nas and rapper Cormega, who was replaced in the group, than anything else.

Going back to his solo work, Nas returned in 1999 with his ambitious third studio album I Am..., which topped the albums chart for two weeks and sold two million copies. The set spun off two moderate R&B hits with "Hate Me Now" featuring Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs reaching #18 on Billboard's R&B chart and #62 on the pop Hot 100, though it climbed to #14 on the British Singles chart. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, that set was nominated for Best Rap Album, losing to Eminem's Slim Shady LP. A second album later that year, Nastradamus, got to #7 on the Billboard 200 and didn't go gold either, but did spawn a top-40 hit in the UK with "Nastradamus" at #24 (the song stalled at #92 on the Hot 100 and #27 on the R&B Singles chart in America). However, his profile was kept alive on the radio with guest spots on Missy Elliott's top-5 hit "Hot Boyz" and R. Kelly's top-40 single "Did You Ever Think".

For Nas' next project, the rapper put together another collaborative record under the auspices of his Columbia-distributed label Ill Will Records. Under the moniker QB's Finest, Nas & Ill Will Records Present QB's Finest was released in the late fall of 2000. Nas appeared on eight of the album's 17 tracks, including the lead single "Oochie Wally", which featured the Bravehearts, made up of Jabari "Jungle" Jones (Nas' younger brother), Mike "Wiz" Epps, and E. "Horse" Gray. A basic party record produced by Lamont "Ez Elpee" Porter, the track starts with the chorus sung by an uncredited Shelene Thomas as the guys trade verses hyping each other up. However getting to the second verse brings in the misogyny and sexual dominance to a tiring extreme which continues for the rest of the record. You can see why Nas decided to release this crass track as a collaborative effort than his loftier solo goals, but his fans responded well, sending him and his posse back into the pop top-40...

 

 "Oochie Wally" hit the Billboard Hot 100 top-40 in April of 2001. The song climbed to #11 on the R&B Singles chart, while peaking at #2 on Billboard's Rap Singles list. Internationally, the single went to #30 in the United Kingdom. The QB's Finest album, released in November of 2000, stopped short down at #53 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #10 on the R&B Albums list, though it did sell over a half million copies. 

As this was rising, the first "hype" track from the record, the diss of Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella "Da Bridge 2001", which was co-produced by Marley Marl and sported an all-star lineup of Nas, Capone, MC Shan, Mobb Deep, Nature, Tragedy Khadafi, Cormega, and Millenium Thug, was able to pop on to the R&B Singles chart for a week at #96 in March. Nas would go back to his solo work, and will be back to the series. As for the Bravehearts, who jettisoned "Horse", the remaining duo would release two albums together, with Bravehearts reaching #75 on the Billboard 200 and #20 on the R&B Albums chart in 2004. The single "Quick To Back Down" which featured Nas and Lil' Jon got to #48 on the R&B Singles chart at the end of the previous year. 

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Here's the group performing the single (with enough editing)  on a TV spot in 2000...

Up tomorrow: Singer-rapper from Brooklyn-Queens jumps around.