Songoftheday 5/26/23 - Look mami I'm no good I'm so hood, clap at your soldiers sober then leave after it's over...

 

 

"Oh Boy" - Cam'ron featuring Juelz Santana

from the album Come Home With Me (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 18

 

Today's song comes from rapper Cameron Ezike Giles, who records under the nickname Cam'ron.  who grew up in Manhattan, New York, before pursuing a music career after childhood friend and rapper Mase hooked him up with the Notorious B.I.G., who in turn linked Cam'ron to Lance Rivera's Untertainment label. In 1998, after a promo single that never saw release, "Pull It" with DMX, got enough airplay to spend a couple of weeks on Billboard magazine's R&B Airplay chart, peaking at #66, the rapper released his debut single "357" a month later.  That song, which interpolated the theme from Miami Vice and also was in the movie Woo with Jada Pinkett, kind of stiffed, stalling at #88 on the R&B chart. That was quickly followed by "Horse & Carriage", which reunited Cam'ron with Mase on the track. The song caught fire on urban radio, but while the single peaked at #9 on the R&B chart, it stalled right under the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 at #41 in the summer of 1998. His second single, "Feels Good" with Usher (then one of the biggest stars in pop and R&B), was much better, and even more radio friendly, but stalled at #54 on the R&B chart and didn't make the pop Hot 100 altogether. Even so, Cam'ron's debut album Confessions Of Fire went to #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, selling over a half million copies. 

The rapper returned in 2000 with his second album on Epic Records, S.D.E. (for "Sports, Drugs, Entertainment"). The album entered the R&B Albums list at #2, and the Billboard 200 at #14, but it sold much, much less than his debut. The lead single from the record, the football theme song sampling "Let Me Know", only popped on to the Hot 100 for a couple weeks at #99, though it did make the R&B top-40 at #22, and went all the way to #2 on Billboard's Rap Songs list. After a stiffed follow-up, the third try, "What Means The World To You", which interpolates the Police's "Roxanne", did a little better on the Hot 100 at #83, and scored a second top-40 R&B hit at #30, but the failure to keep momentum caused Cam'ron and Epic to part ways. 

Cam'ron joined up with Jay-Z's powerful Roc-A-Fella Records organization, and with that labels set of producers like Kanye West and Justin "Just Blaze" Smith, he released his third disc Come Home With Me in the spring of 2002. The lead single from the set was "Oh Boy", which featured a member of his "posse", LaRon James, who goes under the moniker Juelz Santana. A fellow New Yorker, this would be Juelz' first high-profile single. The song was produced by Just Blaze, who wrote the track with Cam'ron and Santana using a prominent sample of 70's soul band Rose Royce's song "I'm Going Down", which Mary J. Blige had a huge hit with in the last decade, and gave Norman Whitfield writing credit. The lyrics are the usual bragging track with an equal measure of macking on girls, having a homie that'll have your back in crime, and threats of gun violence. There's no chorus per se, but rather the shrill squirrelled-up "boy" insert that permeates the track like percussion, which along with the production that has weird marimba sounds that make the single sound like a messed up slot machine in the end. But the beat was made for the clubs (specifically strip clubs), and with Jay-Z's brand push, "Oh Boy" became Cam'ron's first big mainstream success...

"Oh Boy" landed in Billboard's Hot 100 top ten in July of 2002, while spending five weeks at #1 on their R&B Singles chart and four atop their Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song went to #24 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, topped the Mainstream R&B chart for three weeks, and peaked at #2 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single became Cam'ron's second top-40 hit in the United Kingdom (after "Horse & Carriage") at #13. The Come Home With Me album, released in May of that year, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and topped the R&B Albums list for a week, going on to sell over a million copies.

Both Cam'ron and Juelz Santana will be back (together as well) to the series.

(2/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

Like many hip-hop records of the time, there was a special single remix of the track done with Cash Money Records rapper and exec Birdman, SOTD alumnus TQ, and Jim Jones, who was a part of Cam'ron's Diplomats posse. The song substituted the "boy" with "girl", thankfully nut squirreled up. Jay-Z was also supposed to be on it but his verse dissing fellow New Yorker Nas was yanked...

 

 (Birdman and Jones will eventually be in this series.)

At the end of 2002, Mariah Carey recorded an "answer song" to "Oh Boy" for her Charmbracelet album, and had Cam'ron on for a featured verse. Carey's "Boy (I Need You)", which also sampled "I'm Goin' Down", stalled down at #57 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, although it was a respectable moderate hit internationally, peaking at #17 in the United Kingdom, #19 in Spain, and #7 in Portugal...

Lastly, here's Cam'ron and Santana performing "Oh Boy" and his follow-up single "Hey Ma" for a VH1 show in 2002...

SOTD will be back Monday with a multi-hyphenate joining forces with a rap icon for some positivity.