Songoftheday 3/10/23 - The way you really try to put it on a dawg, doin' it like ya never did before for me...
"Break Ya Neck" - Busta Rhymes
from the album Genesis (2001)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song comes from rapper Busta Rhymes, who scored a top ten crossover pop single on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the spring of 1999 with "What's It Gonna Be?" featuring Janet Jackson. A year later, Busta came back with the last studio album he owed Elektra Records, Anarchy. Although the album peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and topped the R&B Albums list for a week, selling over a million copies, it wasn't really promoted to radio well. The lead single "Get Out!!" only went to #35 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, while just "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #118. (Personally, I think it felt like he was trying to copy a Jay-Z sound.) That was followed by "Fire", which stalled at #67 on the R&B list, but at least was granted a Grammy nomination for Best Music Video, losing to the Foo Fighters for "Learn To Fly".
In the spring of 2001, Busta returned with a track that first appeared on the Violator Records compilation Violator 2.0, "What It Is", that featured Kelis on vocals. The Neptunes-produced song went to #20 on the R&B Singles chart, and brought Busta back to the Hot 100 at #63. It would also appear on the first release on his new label J Records, Genesis. The lead single from the record would be "Break Ya Neck", which was produced by Andre "Dr. Dre" Young and Scott Storch, who wrote it with Busta (under his legal name Trevor Smith) and Mike Elizondo with an interpolation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 1991 rock hit "Give It Away", giving the band writing credit as well. This time Dre gives Busta a backing track seemingly pulled from an Eminem record, though even he couldn't match Rhymes' machine gun delivery. It's a good thing this is just a party track meant to have him boast about the beats he delivers and how they cause whiplash. A slew of the biggest in the genre show up for the music video, including Dre, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Ice Cube, Ludacris, Cee-Lo Green and Big Gipp of Goodie Mob, and more. The hype and a return to form (and Clive Davis' machine) got Busta back into the top-40...
"Break Ya Neck" became Busta Rhymes' sixth top-40 hit (and fifth as a lead) on Billboard's Hot 100 in January of 2002, while getting to #10 on their R&B Song chart and #9 on the Rap Songs list. On the radio, the song went to #10 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, and #6 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#11), the Netherlands (#13), Australia (#13), Germany (#17), and Switzerland (#20). The Genesis album, released in November of 2001, crested at #7 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies.
Both Busta and the album will be back to the series.
(6/10)
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I'll be back Monday with a rap duo expanding their boundaries.
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