Songoftheday 6/20/24 - Now what goes up must come down, but we ain't coming down it be them same old clowns...

 

 

"Wat Da Hook Gon Be" - Murphy Lee featuring Jermaine Dupri

from the album Murphy's Law (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 13

 

Today's song comes from rapper Murphy Lee, who grew up as Torhi Harper in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. He was a part of the collective St. Lunatics, which included Nelly, who shot to fame as a solo artist but didn't forget his friends. In 2001 the group released an album together, Free City, which capitalized on Nelly's success and went to #1 on Billboard magazine's R&B Albums chart and #3 on the all-genre Billboard 200 in 2001, going on to sell over a million copies. However the single from the record, "Midwest Swing", just missed the R&B Singles top-40 at #41.  When Nelly released his sophomore album Nellyville a year later, he included a track, "Air Force Ones", that featured Murphy as well as Ali and Kyjuan from the act, and the song ended up a single which went to #3 on the Hot 100. In the summer of 2003, Murphy Lee got equal billing with heavier hitters Nelly and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs for the track "Shake Ya Tailfeather", which originally was featured in the movie and on the soundtrack to Bad Boys II. That single had him enjoying the #1 spot on the Hot 100 for four weeks, and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Duo/Group Performance. It would eventually also be placed strategically on Lee's debut solo album Murphy's Law on Nelly's Fo' Reel vanity imprint on Universal Records. 

Murphy's next single would be "Wat Da Hook Gon Be", which he co-wrote with producer and credited feature on the record, Jermaine Dupri, who had taken more of a back seat in the past year, last appearing in the Hot 100 top-40 in the spring of 2002 with his collab with Ludacris, "Welcome To Atlanta". (James Phillips also contributed to the song.) The lyrics have Lee bragging about his success and a threat to anyone questioning his rap rep, with the usually awkward boasting from a relative newcomer claiming way more financial success than he probably had. Jermaine only comes in at the "chorus", which is just a comedy bit about the title, in which they declare they don't need a hook but just Dupri's beats and Lee's flow. Plucky, but that's what gets ahead in the hip-hop world as long as you can sell it. And Murphy is about as adept as his boss is in riding Dupri's genuinely foottapping beat, which compared to today's drugged-out auto-tuned selections seems like pure poetry. And Lee definitely knows where his fame comes from, name-checking the Country Grammar rapper and having him appear right at the start of the music video...

"Wat Da Hook Gon Be" climbed to the top-20 on Billboard's Hot 100 in November of 2003, and just missed the top ten on their R&B Singles chart at #11 but did make it on the Rap Songs list at #6. The Murphy's Law album, released in September of that year, hit #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #5 on the R&B Albums chart, going on to sell over a half million copies.

Despite the decent reception for "Wat Da Hook...", Lee's follow-up single "Luv Me Baby", which featured Sleepy Brown (the singer on Outkast's #1 "The Way You Move") and producer Jazze Pha, stalled down at #54 on the R&B Singles chart, and only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #119. He pretty much faded from the forefront after that, sporadically releasing singles and an album, You See Me, nominally on Derrty Records in 2009. 

(6/10)

Here's a fan recording of Lee in concert...

Up tomorrow: A not-so-immature singer goes out for the night.