Almost hit of the week 08/11/24 - Bow Wow's "My Baby"...

 

 

"My Baby" - Bow Wow featuring Jagged Edge

from the album Unleashed (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #42

 

This week's "almost hit" comes from rapper/actor Shad "Bow Wow" Moss, who shed his young boy persona, removed the "Lil" from his original moniker, and returned to the top-20 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "Let's Get Down" in the autumn of 2003. The second single from the Unleashed album geared more to a romantic slant with "My Baby". Written by the rapper with producer Jermaine "JD" Dupri, Johnta Austin, Ryan Bowser, Rahman Griffin, and Antoine Macon, the lyrics have him proposing to be the "rebound" for his friends affection and trying to get her to break up with her cheating boyfriend. The R&B vocal group Jagged Edge, who just returned to the top ten on the Hot 100 at the close of 2003 with "Walked Outta Heaven", provides the literal and proverbial "chorus" backdrop to these pleas. She's apparently not acquiesing, so he gets bitter with "So the next time hurt you again, you already knew where you should've be and that's with me". But the result is better than the swarmy posturing of "Let's Get Down", and Jagged Edge bring a gravitas to the affair in anchoring the record with the chorus. The music video pretty much follows the lyric script....

 

 While "My Baby" climbed to #17 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, it stalled a couple notches short of the top-40 on the all-genre Hot 100 in January of 2004. On the radio, the song rose to #21 on the Mainstream R&B airplay chart and #24 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. 

(4/10)

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Here's Bow Wow and Jagged Edge performing live on New Year's Eve 2004...