Songoftheday 3/28/23 - I can picture us in the living room, by the mantle piece and you're tellin' me you're lovin' me...

 

 

"Nothing In This World" - Keke Wyatt & Avant

from the album Soul Sista (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from R&B singer Keke Wyatt, who had grown up in Indianapolis before moving to Chicago to ramp up her music career. Still a teen, Wyatt had been doing writing and demo records behind the scenes, before being paired up with soul singer Avant for a remake of the Rene & Angela R&B classic "My First Love", which reached the top ten on Billboard magazine's R&B singles chart and top-40 on the Hot 100 pop list at the close of 2000. With that momentum she was properly signed to MCA Records (Avant's label) for her own music, and released her debut album Soul Sista in 2001. 

The first single from the record was "Used To Love". Despite being released on a CD single, the midtempo jam was criminally shunned by radio, and only made it to #65 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart in 2001.

For the follow-up, Wyatt reunited with Avant for the downtempo stomp of "Nothing In This World". Written by Avant with producer Steve "Stone" Huff, the song has the pair professing their love for each other. The record allows them each to vamp it up, with the production not getting in the way. With a Romeo and Juliet-themed video that segues into KeKe covering Patti LaBelle's "If Only You Knew", the song brought the pair back to the top-40 on the pop chart....

"Nothing In This World" became Keke's second top-40 crossover hit on the Hot 100, and Avant's third, in March of 2002, while climbing to #4 on the R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the single made it to #12 on the older-skewing Adult R&B list, and #35 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. The Soul Sista album, released in November of 2001, peaked at #33 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #5 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies.

 

A third single from the Soul Sista album, "I Don't Wanna", got to #38 on the Adult R&B radio chart. Despite the moderate success of the set, Soul Sista was Wyatt's sole release on MCA.

The next few years were quite tumultuous, finding Keke shifting through two labels (Cash Money and TVT) without having the albums recorded for each released. It was 2010 when Wyatt finally released a second album, this time on the indie Shanachie label, Who Knew, which made it to #35 on the R&B Albums chart, with the title track popping on to the Adult R&B radio list at #38. A second album on the label, Unbelievable the following year, saw her cover duet, this time "Saturday Love" with American Idol winner Ruben Studdard, which went to #31 on the Adult R&B chart. 

In 2012, Wyatt was cast in the reality show R&B Divas, which assembled female R&B singers from the recent past who were trying to revive their careers. At the same time, Keke once again had a duet with Avant, "You And I" from his self-titled album, which topped the Adult R&B radio chart for a week and spent 41 weeks on the list, and also got to #46 on the main R&B Singles chart and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #123. Keke put out a new EP, Ke' Ke' in 2014 on the Aratek label, which made the Billboard 200 for a week at #190, while getting to #25 on the R&B Albums list. Since then, she's put out two more albums on Aratek, most recently Keke Covers in 2017.

Avant will be back to the series.

(5/10)

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Here's a clip of Wyatt and Avant performing the song live...

Up tomorrow: This singing birdy makes a small error.