Songoftheday 5/2/23 - Yo I'm internationally known on the microphone, I got it all but I really need a wife at home...

 

 

"I Need A Girl (Part One)" - P. Diddy featuring Usher & Loon

from the album We Invented The Remix (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 19

 

Today's song comes from rapper, producer, and record company mogul Sean Combs, who had changed his recording alias from "Puff Daddy" to "P. Diddy" for his third album The Saga Continues, which spun off a top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in the autumn of 2001 with "Bad Boy For Life". He also was featured on hits from Faith Evans on "You Gets No Love" and Busta Rhymes on "Pass The Courvoisier Part II". The former also featured newcomer Chauncey Hawkins, who rapped under the moniker Loon. 

 

In the spring of 2002 Combs returned with a "remix" album billed to P. Diddy & The Bad Boy Family, much like his Saga album. However We Invented The Remix was truly a multi-artist affair, with other artists leading eight of the 14 tracks (including a version of Evans' "You Gets No Love"), with Combs sometimes not even being a featured rapper on the set. There were two versions of "I Need A Girl", dubbed Part One and Part Two, and both were released as singles. "I Need A Girl (Part One)" featured Loon, as well as Usher, whose momentum at the time was at its peak, scoring a pair of #1 pop hits from his 8701 album with "U Remind Me" and "U Got It Bad", as well as "U Don't Have To Call" which made it to #3. 

The song has Diddy starting on the first verse doing a little flexing but stating he wants to settle down with one lady and not one of his supposed many groupies. Usher reiterates that on the chorus, before Loon comes in with round two with pretty much the same monogamous platitudes. The interesting part comes in the third verse, which Diddy clearly admits he fucked things up with former girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, and details how much he lost in the breakup (though the line "You was more than my girl we was like brothers, all night we would play fight under covers" is a bit striking). It's that moment of honestly that makes this just a little more than an "I Need Love"-style rap record, and after some mediocre times catapulted Combs back into the top echelon of the charts...

"I Need A Girl (Part One)" spent a month in the runner-up position on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 starting in May of 2002, while taking a week at #2 on their R&B Songs chart and topping the Rap Singles list for a week. On the radio, the song peaked at #2 on the Mainstream Top-40, R&B Airplay, and Rhythmic format charts. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in the United Kingdom (#4), the Netherlands (#5), Australia (#5), Switzerland (#5), Denmark (#6),Germany (#8), France (#9), New Zealand (#9), and Belgium (#9 Wallonia/#12 Flanders). It also hit the top 40 in Norway (#13), Sweden (#17), Ireland (#25), and Austria (#32). The We Invented The Remix album, released in May of 2002 as the single was cresting, topped the Billboard 200 sales tally for a week, as well as the R&B Albums chart, going on to sell over a million copies. 

P. Diddy, Usher, and Loon will be back to the series, as well as Part Two of this song. 

(6/10)

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Here's Diddy, Usher, and Loon appearing on The Tonight Show...

Up tomorrow: Rock band discusses fleeting places.