Songoftheday 5/22/24 - I'm rolling down a lonely highway, asking God to please forgive me...

 

 

"Walked Outta Heaven" - Jagged Edge 

from the album Hard (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (five weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 22

 

Today's song comes from the R&B vocal group Jagged Edge, who scored their highest-charting hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in the early autumn of 2001 with "Where The Party At?". The following year, half the act, brothers Brandon and Brian Casey, appeared as featured singers on two more hits, "Don't Mess With My Man" with singer Nivea which made the top ten, and "Trade It All, Pt. 2" with rapper Fabolous. Two years later the Caseys along with Kyle Norman and Richard Wingo returned with their fourth studio album and first directly under the Columbia label (Jermaine Dupri's So So Def imprint had shifted to BMG at that point), Hard. The lead single from the record (which at the time was still on So So Def) was "Walked Outta Heaven". Written by the brothers with producer Bryan-Michael Cox, the song has them mourning the loss of a love they screwed up on, with Brian and Brandon taking a verse to confess how they regret everything. Wingo comes in for the bridge that leads to the chorus, but the production from Cox is dated and sterile, and the foursome seem disjointed together. But that was the sound of R&B at the time, and as vocal groups were being drowned out the market, people and radio got what they could take, and the Edge scored their last big hit...

"Walked Outta Heaven" rose to the top ten on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2003, while spending a week at #2 on their R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the song peaked at #2 on Billboard's Mainstream R&B chart, #15 on the older-skewing Adult R&B station list, and #5 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#13) and the United Kingdom (#21). The Hard album, released in October of that year, spent a week at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally (tying their last set for highest rank), while topping the R&B Albums chart for a week, going on to sell over a half million copies.

A second single from the record, "What's It Like" which featured Dupri, suffered from the So So Def/Columbia transition, and stopped at #32 on Billboard's R&B Chart and #85 on the Hot 100. (It got to #24 on the Mainstream R&B airplay chart and #31 on the Rhythmic format.) They also were tacked on the posthumous Notorious B.I.G. single "Nasty Girl", which went to #1 in the UK and just missed the top-40 on the Hot 100 at #44 and hit #20 on the R&B singles chart.

Jagged Edge came back in 2006 with an eponymous fifth effort, which came in at #4 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the R&B Albums list. However the singles from the set fell flat, with lead "So Amazing" which tried to grab on to the reggaeton trend with featured guest Volto stalling at #84 on the R&B Singles chart (though it made #27 on the Rhythmic format list). The follow-up, ballad "Good Luck Charm", did a little better, climbing to #13 on the R&B Singles chart and #73 on the Hot 100 (their most recent appearance). On the radio, the song made the top-40 on Mainstream R&B (#16) and Adult R&B (#34) formats. 

 

A Hits collection, which charted at #40 on the R&B Albums list, completed their stint with Columbia, and they reunited with Dupri's So So Def at its new home under Island Records. Their next release, the blatantly-titled Baby Making Project, came in the top ten on the Billboard 200 (#8) and R&B Albums (#3) charts, but spent only two months on the list. With the hopeful comeback hit "Put A Little Umph In It", which brought in Ashanti as the guest vocalist, stopping short at #49 on the R&B Singles chart and "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #113, they were scuttled on So So Def again. 

At this point the group went the indie route, starting their own imprint Five 81 which was distributed under the Slip-N-Slide label. After a single with Trina and Gucci Mane, "Tip Of My Tongue", reached #29 on the Mainstream R&B airplay list but stopped at #51 on the main R&B Singles chart, it wasn't even included in their seventh album The Remedy, which came out in the summer of 2011. Two singles were minor R&B hits, with "Baby" doing the best at #58, while getting to #17 on the Adult R&B radio chart. They reunited with Dupri and So So Def, with Jermaine producing their J.E. Heartbreak album in 2014, which attempted to recapture the nostalgia for the double-platinum sophomore album from their 2000 similarly named set. The record made the Billboard 200 top-40 at #28, and two songs from the record made the top-20 on the Adult R&B chart, "Hope" (#18) and "Love Come Down" (#19). 

Since then, they've released two more records under their Hard Case label independently, with their most recent, A Jagged Love Story, arriving in 2020. In 2019, their most recent chart appearance came as featured guests on currently-incarcerating rapper Tory Lanez on his single "The Trade", which took a single week at #48 on the R&B Songs list and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #101. 

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A remix of the track was done with rapper Scarface that used a Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway sample...

and lastly, the foursome performed the hit on Dick Clark's Rocking New Year's Eve show in 2003...

Up tomorrow: The future felon gets to high-footin'.