Songoftheday 4/12/13 -Don't wanna sound full of myself or rude, but you ain't looking at no other dudes...
"Frontin'" - Pharrell Williams featuring Jay-Z
from the album The Neptunes Present...Clones (2003)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16
Today's song comes from singer/producer/songwriter/rapper Pharrell Williams, who grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he joined up with high school friend Chad Hugo to work on music. Initially making an act with Tim "Timbaland" Mosley and Magoo (who would go on their own to success), Pharrell and Chad formed the Neptunes, which was both a rap act in itself as well as a production/songwriting house. Their career really went into high gear at the end of the 1990s to the beginning of the new millennium. The Neptunes produced a string of high-profile singles, and with their clout set up shop as Star Trek Entertainment under the Arista Records umbrella. It was there they released what was jointly a compilation album and a cohesive studio album under the Neptunes moniker with Clones. The track list had a myriad of artists from Ludacris to Kelis to Snoop Dogg to new rock bands like the High Speed Scene. Pharrell and Chad's alter ego as N.E.R.D. had a cut, as well as Pharrell on another. The first single was a rework of the Clipse's "Hot Damn", a cut originally on the duo's Lord Willin' album as "Cot Damn", which added Ab-Liva and Roscoe P. Coldchain to the mix, and went to #58 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart.
For the follow-up Pharrell put out his own big contribution to the set, "Frontin'" which features A-list rapper Jay-Z, who Pharrell backed up on his top ten hit "Excuse Me Miss" in the spring of 2003. Written by Chad and Pharrell with Jay-Z (under his legal name Shawn Carter), the song starts off with a puffed-chest boast of "Don't wanna sound full of myself or rude but you ain't looking at no other dudes" but then goes on that he's putting on an act (a "front") and he only wants them (albeit unless she wants to share). And all the while he's doing this with the highest falsetto this side of Prince. The production is loose but lush, but in the end this is more a "vibe" record that anything lyrically substantial. Jay-Z's contribution is unobtrusive but not that striking, but the jazzy production is the best thing going here. The music video is in hindsight quite cringe considering what's happening to Sean Combs right now, as he blatantly shuffles women around in this house party of his...
"Frontin'" was Pharrell's first hit as a lead artist, reaching the top five on Billboard's Hot 100 in September of 2003, while spending six weeks at #1 on their R&B Singles chart and getting to #22 on the Rap Songs list (thanks to Jay-Z) . On the radio, the song peaked at #29 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, took a week at #1 on the Mainstream R&B list, #35 on the older-skewing Adult R&B station tally, #19 on the Dance Airplay chart, and #6 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single peaked at #6 in the United Kingdom, and reached the top 40 in Denmark (#12), Canada (#15 Sales), Ireland (#16), the Netherlands (#21), Switzerland (#23), Australia (#28), and Belgium (#33 Wallonia). The Clones album, released in August of that year, came in at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally as well as the R&B Album list, going on to sell over a half million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, the Neptunes won the award for non-classical producers of the year, while "Frontin'" was nominated for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, which he was also up for his featured role on Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful". They both lost to Jay-Z's other collab, future wifey Beyonce's "Crazy In Love".
The next single from the Clones record, "Popular Thug" from Kelis and Nas, stiffed, but the third, "Light Your Ass On Fire" by rapper Busta Rhymes with Pharrell, made the R&B top-40 at #23, while climbing to #58 on the Hot 100 (it was the best of the songs of the set). Snoop Dogg's cut on the album, "It Blows My Mind", was able to struggle to #68 on the R&B Singles chart.
Pharrell and Jay-Z will be back to the series.
(6/10)
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and lastly, at a festival in 2015...
Tomorrow I'll run down my top hits of this week, then on Monday SOTD will be back with a locomotive band summoning the skies.
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