Songoftheday 11/19/24 -What'd you hear this time? Go on and speak your mind...

 

 

"Talk About Our Love" - Brandy featuring Kanye West

from the album Aphrodisiac (2004)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song comes from R&B singer and actress Brandy, whose third album Full Moon had spun off a pair of hit singles that made the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "What About Us?" and "Full Moon".  In 2004 she returned with her fourth release on Atlantic Records, Aphrodisiac, after a turbulent period where she was romantically involved with a producer from Full Moon, had a child, and broke up to just start dating a basketball player. Her original work with that producer baby daddy was tossed, and Atlantic set her up with a bevy of producers for the new set. Two songs with Tim "Timbaland" Mosley were set to be released, but after leaks were scuttled in lieu of another song, "Talk About Our Love", which featured the producer on the track, Kanye West. The song samples the late 70s obscure nugget "Gilly Hines" from the New York funk band Mandrill, giving its members writing credit along with Kanye and Harold Lilly. The lyrics have Brandy singing about a love with a man that her friends and family disapprove of. She proclaims that they're staying with them no matter (a bad choice, as history time and time again proves). The sweet spot of the song is the lush chorus, which is layered vocally and has just the right key changes to keep my ears perked. Kanye, still in his preppy-rapper phase after four big hits of his own including the concurrent hit "Jesus Walks", waits until the end to throw down his side of the story. The production is nice, but it just makes me yearn for what a full Timbaland would've done, as he broke away once this was chosen by the label execs. The music video places the pair with an ever-present chorus of critical friends and family...

"Talk About Our Love" returned Brandy to the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in June of 2004, while peaking at #18 on their R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart. On the radio, the song got ignored by pop radio for the most part, but rose to #13 on Billboard's Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop airplay chart and #32 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. The remixes of the track, done by Albert Cabrerea abd Bill Hamel among others, helped it climb to #13 on the Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the single was a success in Britain, making it to #6, while reaching the top-40 in the Netherlands (#25), Ireland (#27), Australia (#28), and Italy (#36). The Aphrodisiac album, released in June as the single was cresting, came in at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #4 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2005, Aphrodisiac was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album, losing to Usher's unstoppable Confessions disc. 

The second single from the album was one of the Timbaland cuts, "Who Is She 2 U", which missed the top-40 on the R&B Singles chart at #43, while stopping at #85 on the Hot 100. That was followed by another Timbaland production, title track "Aphrodisiac", which was passed over in the States, but was a decent hit in the UK (#11), Ireland (#22), France (#25), Australia (#31), and Switzerland (#36). 

Both Brandy and Kanye West will (separately) be back to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's Brandy performing the song live with a band on The Today Show promoting the album...

For BET, she brought Kanye on to assist...

Up tomorrow: Country rock duo ponders single-dom.