Songoftheday 5/14/24 - CEO, you don't have to see ID, I'm young wild and strapped like Chi-Ali ...
"Stand Up" - Ludacris featuring Shawnna
from the album Chicken-N-Beer (2003)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 25
Today's song comes from rapper and actor Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, who had rode the momentum from his role in what would become one of the biggest non-comic film franchises in history, 2 Fast 2 Furious (replacing Ja Rule), back into the Billboard magazine Hot 100's Top-40 with "Act A Fool" from the movie in the summer of 2003. Later that year, Ludacris re-emerged with his fourth studio album (and third with Def Jam Records), Chicken-N-Beer. A hype track, "P-Poppin'" was released beforehand, but the crude song failed to get any traction or onto any charts. That record featured female rapper Shawnna, who was also featured on Ludacris' first top-40 hit "What's Your Fantasy" at the close of 2000. Shawnna was also on his next single, "Stand Up". Written and produced by Ludacris with a pre-fascist Kanye West, "Stand Up" is a bouncy club track that has Chris macking on the ladies at the club, throwing some crazy lines like "Watch out for the medallion, my diamonds are reckless, feels like a midget is hanging from my necklace". But the real pull is the repeated to death mantra of "When I move you move just like that", which is Shawnna's only input, but gets one in a trance on the dancefloor. The production is tight and original, and the thomping beat is perfect for that kind of track. With a music video from Dave Meyers that brought back the special effects and comedy in double helpings, and Ludacris found himself in the stratosphere...
"Stand Up" became Ludacris' first number one hit on Billboard's Hot 100 as a lead artist in December of 2003, while spending five weeks atop their R&B Singles chart and led the Rap Singles list for eight weeks. On the radio, the song hit #9 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, topped the Mainstream R&B list for four weeks, and took four weeks at #1 as well on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single hit #7 on the Canadian Airplay chart, and made the top-40 in New Zealand (#13), the United Kingdom (#14), Italy (#19), Switzerland (#22), and Australia (#30). The Chicken-N-Beer album, released in October of that year, topped the Billboard 200 sales tally in its first of 45 weeks on the chart, and took two atop the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, "Stand Up" was nominated for Best Male Rap Solo Performance, which went to Eminem for "Lose Yourself".
Both Ludacris and the album as well as Shawnna will be back to the series.
(7/10)
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Up tomorrow: Rock band is presently alone.
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