Songoftheday 10/08/24 - Leather in the summer silk in the winter, this is such an art where do I begin-a?
"I Can't Wait" - Sleepy Brown featuring Outkast
from the albums Barbershop 2: Back In Business (Original Soundtrack) (2004) and Mr. Brown (2006)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song comes from R&B producer/singer/songwriter Patrick "Sleepy" Brown, whose father Jimmy Brown was the lead singer of the funk band Brick, which topped the R&B Singles chart for a month and reached #3 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "Dazz" in 1977. Sleepy grew up in Atlanta, and became ensconced in the music scene there as well, becoming part of the seminal 90s R&B production/songwriting team Organized Noize. With them Brown wrote "Waterfalls" for TLC which hit #1 in 1995. Also, they started aligning with local rappers who would go big in Ludacris and Outkast. It was with the latter that Brown was featured on another #1 he would co-write, "The Way You Move" from Outkast's Grammy-winning album Speakerboxx/The Love Below.
To return the favor, Andre 3000 and Big Boi "guested" on Sleepy Brown's first hit as a lead artist, "I Can't Wait", which arrived on the soundtrack to the movie Barbershop 2: Back In Business. Written by Brown with the pair along with Organized Noize comrades Ray Murray and Rico Wade, as well as Brendon Bennett, it seems like Sleepy is a backup singer on his own record, with Andre leading the record with a long verse and Big Boi pulling up the rear, as they spill out poetic and entertaining albeit hard to nail down a theme rhymes, will Brown cooing to his woman about spending the night. It's nicely produced (as should be from Organized Noize, though it's clearly a mood-setter on a soundtrack kind of song, but at least a quality one. The music video has all kinds of characters plus the rappers and Brown in a made-up blaxploitation movie...
"I Can't Wait" slipped into the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in March of 2004, while climbing to #18 on their R&B Singles chart. The Barbershop 2 soundtrack had two singles released before Sleepy's with Mary J. Blige and the film's co-star Eve in "Not Today", which went to #48 on the Hot 100, and R&B singer Keyshia Cole's first hit "Never", which placed at #71 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. Released in February of 2004, the soundtrack peaked at #18 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #8 on the R&B Albums list.
Unfortunately for Sleepy's momentum, it would be two years before he would release his own major-label debut Mr. Brown, which came out in 2006 on Big Boi's Purple Ribbon label. A new single from the set, "Margarita" with Big Boi and Pharrell Williams, only climbed to #64 on the R&B Singles chart and #70 in the United Kingdom. The album which did include "I Can't Wait" as a coda at the end, spent three weeks on the Billboard 200 sales tally, with a high of #53.
After this, Brown faded into the backdrop, only re-emerging in 2021 with a collaborative album with Big Boi, The Big Sleepover, in 2021, which got surprisingly little notice (compared to Andre 3000's own solo set). He released a new single, "High Rise" with Snoop Dogg, in August of 2004.
(5/10)
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Up tomorrow: American Idol runner-up is playing cards.
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