Songoftheday 1/10/24 - And back up before the hive let the pump off, in the graveyard is where you get dumped off...

 

 

"The Jump Off" - Lil' Kim featuring Mr. Cheeks

from the album La Bella Mafia (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from rapper Lil' Kim (nee' Kimberly Jones), who's debut solo album Hard Core scored a pair of crossover top-40 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "No Time" with Puff Daddy and "Not Tonight" featuring Missy Elliott, Da Brat, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes from TLC, and Angie Martinez, with the latter reaching the pop top ten in the summer of 1997. With that momentum, Kim established her own vanity label on Atlantic Records, Queen Bee, where she released her sophomore solo effort The Notorious K.I.M. in 2000, after a small delay after tracks recorded were leaked online (it was a real problem back then especially in the rap genre). While the album initially sold strong, it ended up selling about half of what her debut did, even though it was her first to top the R&B Albums chart, as well as make the top ten on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #4. The lead single "No Matter What They Say", a clutter mess of a Latin rhythm pastiche, stalled at #60 on the Hot 100, though it was modestly better on the R&B Singles chart at #15. (It did score a top-40 hit in the United Kingdom at #35.)

But then Kim's profile got a boost from being one of the four artists on the remake of LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" with Christina Aguilera, Pink, and Mya from the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge. The single went all the way to #1 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 2001. Her appearance there was crucial in making her a known name on mainstream pop radio.

So when Kim re-emerged in 2003 with her third disc La Bella Mafia, she had a base of people who now first heard her in "Lady Marmalade". The lead single from the set, though, didn't pull much punches to blatantly grab for a mass audience, but rather was the party/boast track "The Jump Off". Written by the rapper with producer Tim "Timbaland" Mosley, the song features rapper Mr. Cheeks of the Lost Boyz, whose song "Jeeps, Lex Coups, Bimaz & Benz" is interpolated into the record, giving him writing credit. That song only made it to #67 on the Hot 100 back in 1995, but he had since reached the top-40 on his own with "Lights, Camera, Action", which peaked at #14 in the spring of 2002. The lyrics have the usual brand porn prevalent in aspiration rap, while sliding into lewdness describing her talents, which include "how... (she) can make a Sprite can disappear in.. (her) mouth". Classy. She name checks Timbaland a few times, then does the reverse Ludacris, boasting how she has trophy men all over the world. The production is a little harder that what we expect from Timbaland, It uses that marching band groove that the early 00's sported in droves, which at least brought some (possibly fake) brass to the party before the rote Diwali rhythm kicks in. It's not as bad as it could have been, but it's not an ear-grabber that it thought it was...

"The Jump Off" climbed to the top 20 on Billboard's Hot 100 in April of 2003, while rising to #8 on their R&B Singles chart and #7 on the Rap Songs list. On the radio, the song didn't make the mainstream Top-40 chart, but made it to #7 on the Mainstream R&B airplay list and #8 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#16), Italy (#20), and Belgium (#27 Flanders). The La Bella Mafia album, released in March of that year, came in at #5 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #4 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. 

Both Lil Kim and the La Bella Mafia album will be back to the series.

(5/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Kim and Cheeks appearing live on TV...

and lastly, Kim live on a stint for AOL in 2003...

Up tomorrow: A nepo baby rides the lite jazz wave to a truckload of Grammys.