Songoftheday 4/10/24 - Lookin' at you from a distance, gettin' all of my attention...

 

 

"Love @ 1st Sight" - Mary J. Blige featuring Method Man

from the album Love & Life (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from R&B singer Mary J. Blige, who revived her mainstream career with her 2001 album No More Drama, which spun off three big hits with "Rainy Dayz", "No More Drama", and "Family Affair", the latter topping Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the late weeks of that year.  After releasing a remix album of that set called Dance For Me which went to #76 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, Mary put out her sixth album Love & Life, which was her first to be under Geffen Records, who took over from MCA Records at the end of that run. The record brought the singer back with producer/mogul/rapper/potential felon Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, who oversaw the record. 

The lead single from the record was "Love @ 1st Sight", which also was a reunion, this time with Wu-Tang rapper Method Man, with whom Mary had a #3  Hot 100 hit with "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By" in 1995. Not long after that Method Man joined with rapper Redman for the soundtrack hit "How High" which made the Hot 100 top-20 that autumn. "Love" sported nine co-writing credits, including Blige and Method Man (under his given name Clifford Smith), along with producers Combs, Mario Winans, and Steven Jordan, as well as the group A Tribe Called Quest (Kamaal "Q-Tip" Fareed, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor), whose song "Hot Sex" which slipped on to Billboard's R&B Singles chart at #99 in 1992 is sampled on the record. It's good to see that groove get its due to a wider audience, and while the lyrics are your basic falling in love track on Blige's part she sings the hell out of it, and Method Man's verse about how he's settling down in life is kind of notable in the scene. The production is punchy and bright, and I'm surprised it didn't get a better reception on mainstream radio like her "Family Affair" did, but the chaos at the label consolidation may have played a part here. The music video is slick and nicely choreographed and has Combs and Method Man as backups to Blige who's starring in this show...

"Love @ 1st Sight" reached the bottom half of the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in August of 2003, while peaking at #10 on the R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the single hit #9 on the Mainstream R&B airplay chart, #37 at the older-skewing Adult R&B station list, and #12 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in Denmark (#15), Italy (#16), the United Kingdom (#18), Sweden (#23), Switzerland (#23), New Zealand (#27), Australia (#32), Belgium (#34 Wallonia), Ireland (#34), and Germany (#36). The Love & Life album, which came out in August as the single was cresting, spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and two atop the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, the Love & Life album was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album, losing to Beyonce's unstoppable Dangerously In Love. 

This would be Method Man's last time on Billboard's Hot 100, though he had a few more minor hits on their R&B Singles list, with his guest role on Ashanti's "Still On It" in 2005, a #55 R&B hit, "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #115. 

As for Mary, both her and the Love & Life album will return to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's Blige and Method Man performing live on The Today Show promoting the album along with follow-up single "Ooh!" (which is a future SOTD)...

and lastly, by herself on the CD:UK TV music show...

Up tomorrow: It's always time for a cocktail with this pair.