Songoftheday 10/31/22 - I wanna tell y'all about my ol' lady, sometimes I think she's really crazy...

 

 

"She's All I Got" - Jimmy Cozier

from the album Jimmy Cozier (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from R&B singer Jimmy Cozier, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, who sang back-up and wrote songs for other artists before getting signed to bigtime music executive Clive Davis' new label J Records. It was there that Cozier released his self-titled debut album in the summer of 2001. The lead single from the set was "She's All I Got", written and produced by Mike "City" Flowers, who at the time was having a good run of soul hits for artists like Carl Thomas and Sunshine Anderson.  The song has Jimmy talking about his apparently schizophrenic lover, who turns moods on a dime. He knows he should leave, but as the title says, he thinks there's no alternatives waiting out there for him. It's a very uncomfortable plotline to say the least, but the production from Mike City is so damn smooth, with chord changes that push the right buttons for me, while Cozier's rich voice belies his boyish looks. And by not oversinging it, he sells the concept better than most people could have with the material...

"She's All I Got" became Cozier's first and only hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart, landing in the top-40 in July of 2001. The song climbed to #4 on their R&B Singles list as well. The Jimmy Cozier album, released in July as the single was cresting, made it to #63 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and #15 on the R&B Albums chart. 

Despite the warm (but not hot) reception of the single, it was a surprise that the Latin-tinged follow-up single "So Much To Lose" stiffed, only being able to "bubble under" the R&B chart at #123. Aside from a featured spot on Alicia Keys' debut album on his co-write "Mr. Man", Jimmy faded from the public view, and on his own after J Records closed shop at the end of the 2000s. Since then, he has released two albums independently, most recently with Get Cozi in 2016. Concentrating more on writing, Cozier emerged in 2019 as a featured singer on DJ Salaam Remi's single "You Know That I Want You". Most recently, the singer released a new single, "Certified Problem", in 2020.

(6/10)

(click below to see the rest of the post)

As with many R&B singles at the turn of the millennium, "She's All I Got" sported an alternate mix aimed for the urban radio market. While the album bonus remix featured rapper Fabolous, the single version B-side had E-40, perhaps for label reasons...

Up tomorrow: Rock group keeps talking about the middle of things.