Songoftheday 3/11/24 -So I'm outside of the club and you think I'm a punk, so I go to my loaded tech nine that's off in the trunk...

 

 

"Never Scared" - Bone Crusher featuring Killer Mike & T.I.

from the album AttenCHUN! (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from rapper Wayne Hardnett Jr, who records under the alias Bone Crusher. Hailing from Atlanta, Hardnett got the attention of producer/rapper/mogul Jermaine Dupri, who signed Bone Crusher on to his So So Def label on Columbia Records. His breakthrough single "Never Scared" came out in the spring of 2003, a couple weeks before his debut album AttenCHUN!. The track featured rappers Michael "Killer Mike" Render and Clifford "T.I." Harris, who share writing credit with Bone and producer Avery Johnson. Killer Mike had previously guested on fellow Atlantans Outkast's single "The Whole World" which made the Billboard magazine Hot 100 top-40 in the beginning of 2002. Earlier in the spring of the following year, Mike released his debut album Monster, which went to #10 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and spun off the single "A.D.I.D.A.S." featuring Outkast's Big Boi and associate Sleepy Brown, which went to #60 on the Hot 100, #42 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, and reached the top-40 in the United Kingdom at #22. As for T.I., who also came from the Atlanta hip-hop scene, he was at that time a relative unknown, first being signed to Arista Records, but after his debut album stalled at #98 on the Billboard 200 despite being pumped up with heavy hitters in the production side like the Neptunes and Jazze Pha, he was dumped from the label. (It's notable he sold in the 100-200K range, something today's artists would kill their family for.)

 

For "Never Scared",  Bone Crusher doesn't play it easy, handling getting thrown out of the club by threatening to grab armory out of his car. Killer Mike comes in and brags about naming his weapon after a girl and using it using quite sexual terms. T.I. rounds out the third verse with more threats of hospitalization, and by now it's getting tired. There's no way this was getting pop radio airplay, but there were enough sales of the single to propel the song up the Hot 100 and R&B charts, with a somewhat tamer "remix" featuring different rappers getting some play on urban stations. Johnson's production is an attack of noise, to anchor the marketing of violence that this was, but at least it's a catchy groove. The music video of the original track has Bone Crusher as some sort of King Kong menacing Atlanta in a comic book pastiche...

(BTW I cannot get out of my head that I think Bone Crusher is sing-rapping "Paw Patrol" in the chorus)

"Never Scared" became Bone Crusher's first and only hit to make Billboard's Hot 100 in June of 2003, while climbing to #8 on their R&B Singles chart and #6 on the Rap Songs list. On the radio, the song (mostly the remix) peaked at #5 on Billboard's Mainstream R&B Airplay chart and #23 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. The AttenCHUN! album, released in April of that year, peaked at #11 on  the Billboard 200 sales tally, and spent one week at #1 on their R&B Albums list.

A year later, Bone Crusher put out a single "Take Ya Clothes Off" featuring the Ying Yang Twins, which stalled down at #67 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, and he was summarily faded out of So So Def. He did manage to place back on the R&B Singles chart in 2005 as a guest on rapper Tango's single "Wobble & Shake It", which crested at #73.

 

Bone Crusher re-emerged in 2006 with his own label, Bone Crusher Music, and a new album, Release The Beast, which popped on to the R&B Albums list at #86. He released three more albums independently, most recently Planet Crusher in 2008. 

As for Killer Mike, along with being the frat-boys answer to hip-hop as part of Run The Jewels, has put out five more solo albums. His most recent, Michael, swept the rap categories at the Grammy Awards in 2024 (before getting arrested for assaulting a security guard). 

Out of the trio T.I., who was the least known, will surpass all three by miles and will be back to the series.

(2/10)

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A special remix for the single, called the "Takeover Mix", featured Cam'Ron, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes along with Bone Crusher...

And lastly, Bone Crusher at So So Def's 20th Anniversary concert in 2013...

Up tomorrow: An Alaskan singer has a hunch.