Robbed hit of the week 10/24/22 - Trick Daddy's "Take It To Da House"...

 

 

"Take It To Da House" - Trick Daddy featuring the SNS Express

from the album Thugs Are Us (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #50 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Maurice Young, a rapper who records under the moniker Trick Daddy.  He grew up on the mean streets of Miami, the son of a broken home that fell into dealing drugs and violence that led Young to be in prison by the time he was twenty years old. But seeing potential in his rapping skills, label head Ted Lucas signed Trick Daddy (at the time going by "Trick Daddy Dollars") to his Slip-N-Slide Records. His debut album, Based On A True Story, came out in 1997, with a couple cuts featuring rapper J.T. Money, who would himself make this series before Young did. The record made Billboard magazine's R&B Albums chart at #59. 

Dropping the "Dollars" from his alias, Trick Daddy returned a year later with his sophomore release www.thug.com. The record did much better, reaching the top-40 on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #30 while making the top ten on the R&B Albums list at #7, spending over a year on the latter and selling over a half-million copies. A big chunk of its success was due to the single "Nann" (originally "Nann Ni**a"), featuring label mate female rapper Trina, which hit the R&B Singles top-40 at #23 while placing on the Billboard Hot 100 at #62. It also climbed to #3 on the Rap Singles chart, his career high.

With that single and album doing well, Slip-N-Slide was able to transfer distribution from the indie Warlock Records to the big-league Atlantic for Trick Daddy's third disc Book Of Thugs: Chapter AK Verse 47. The set also made the Billboard 200 top-40 at #26, and the R&B Albums top ten at #8, and selling a half million as well. The single pulled from the record "Shut Up", which also featured Trina along with rapper Duece Poppito and C.O., landed his second top-40 R&B hit at #26, as well as getting on the Hot 100 at #83. 

For Trick Daddy's next record, Thugs Are Us, he took a turn away from the hardcore rap he was doing for a try at the mainstream with a party record aimed for the sports crowd, "Take It To Da House". Anchored by a sample of K.C. & The Sunshine Band's disco hit from Saturday Night Fever, "Boogie Shoes", the record featured most of the rest of the Slip-N-Slide roster, including Trina and C.O. along with Money Mark Diggla, JV, and producer Righteous Funk Boogie. The song recreated the inane Miami-bass dance records of the previous decade, delivered with an attitude that tips a hit to the No Limit New Orleans scene. The music video cues the sports them by having the rappers as basketball players (and Trina as their head cheerleader). It's a community effort, to the point where Trick Daddy almost seems like a guest on his own record, with Trina really the most memorable of the turns here...

While "Take It To Da House" scored a third R&B top-40 song at #23 as well as on the Rap Songs list at #20, the single stopped right at the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 in May of 2001. On the radio, the song hit #29 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #21 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay list, and #11 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. The Thugs Are Us album, released in March of that year, became Trick Daddy's first top ten set on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #4, as well as getting to #2 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies, his only album so far to do so. And his next album will break the top-40 pop threshold.

(3/10)

Here's the crew performing the song at the BET Awards show...