Songoftheday 5/15/24 - I'm lookin' in the mirror at this woman down and out, she's internally dyin' and knew this was not what love's all about...
"Rain On Me" - Ashanti
from the album Chapter II (2003)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song comes from R&B singer Ashanti, who had returned to the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the summer of 2003 with "Rock Wit U (Aww Baby)". The second single from her sophomore effort Chapter II was "Rain On Me". Like the former hit, the song was written by Ashanti with producers Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo and Andre "Chink Santana" Parker, using a prominent sample of the Isaac Hayes version of the pop classic "The Look Of Love" from his 1970 album To Be Continued, which gave Burt Bacharach and Hal David writing credit as well. The lyrics have Ashanti deep in despair over a failing relationship with a cheater. She's lost the will to live over the loss, but knows that she has given him too many chances already. The production puts to good use the sample, where the dramatic instrumentation is detached from the lyrical content from the original to provide minor-key realness to the new song. The 10 minute long extended version of the music video takes it even farther, casting Larenz Tate as not only the cheating partner but quite the abusive one, making this even more powerful, although the product placement from LidRock, a startup that placed CDs in fast food drink caps, is hella awkward...
"Rain On Me" became Ashanti's tenth single to reach the top ten on Billboard's Hot 100 (as either a lead or featured singer) in November of 2003, while spending a week at #2 on their R&B singles chart. On the radio, the song criminally missed the Mainstream Top-40 list, but went to #3 on the Mainstream R&B chart, #18 on the older-skewing Adult R&B station list, and #11 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, "Rain On Me" was nominated for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, losing to Beyonce for "Dangerously In Love 2".
Ashanti will be back to the series.
(9/10)
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There were two edited versions of the music video that cut parts of the dialogue out, this most truncated one got the most MTV time...
There was a remix done for Ashanti's Collectibles remix album in 2004 that added rappers Ja Rule, Charli Baltimore, and Hussein Fatal that removes the original concept and converts the song to a more aspirational track...
Ashanti performed the song at the American Music Awards...
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