Songoftheday 12/2/24 - I don't give a f*** about your faults or mishappens, we from the Bronx, New York things happen...

 
"Lean Back" - Terror Squad
from the album True Story (2004)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 27
 
Today's song comes from the Terror Squad, a hip-hop collective put together by rappers Jose "Fat Joe" Cartagena and Christopher "Big Punisher" Rios in New York City in the mid-1990s. with a backup of rappers they released a collaborative album Terror Squad: The Album on Atlantic Records in 1995, which came out in 1999, a year after Big Pun had a top-40 hit with "Still Not A Player". The self-titled set went to #22 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and #4 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, but it was more from the names involved - radio gave it a pass. Joe and Pun went back to their solo careers, but while Big Pun was readying his next set, he passed away in 2000. Joe, though, went on to see his own career break, with his fourth album Jealous Ones Still Envy a year later spinning of two top-40 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "We Thuggin'" and "What's Luv?", which hit #2 in the spring of 2002. He followed that a year later with Loyalty, whose two singles were modest R&B hits that missed the Hot 100 top-40, with "All I Need" stalling at #56 on the latter list. That single featured Terror Squad members Tony Sunshine and Armageddon. Joe did get a boost that year as a featured rapper on Latin-pop star Thalia's top-40 hit "I Want You".

In 2004 Fat Joe reunited with Sunshine and Armageddon as well as rapper Prospect and brought in New Yorker Reminisce "Remy Ma" Smith for a female voice for the outfit for their second set True Story on SRC Records under the Universal umbrella. (Big Pun was inserted on one of the tracks of the record.) The lead single from the set was the instructional dance club track "Lean Back", which was listed on the single to feature Fat Joe (under the hilarious alias "Joey Crack") and Remy Ma. Written by the pair with producer Scott Storch, the track provides a dance that even the laziest or self-conscious of guys and gals can do, only involving throwing your shoulder to the side and, well, lean back. But before that, which they playfully call the "Rockaway" (for the section of Queens), he boasted about his battle scars, while Remy Ma flaunts their VIP status. And this is over Storch's signature belly-dance-ready musical backdrop, which is slow enough so even the biggest of the big can manage to do dat dance. The music video has Joe throwing a private party, with a hilarious cutaway with rapper Lil' Jon coming to call...
 

 
"Lean Back" went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August of 2004, while topping their R&B/Hip-Hop chart for seven weeks, and spending twelve weeks at #1 on the Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song peaked at #13 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, and topped the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Iinternationally, the single climbed to #5 in Denmark, and reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#11), Canada (#12 airplay), the Netherlands (#14), the United Kingdom (#24), Italy (#25), Switzerland (#28), Ireland (#40), Belgium (#40 Flanders). The True Story album, released in July of that year, came in at #7 on the Billboard 200, and spent a week at #1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. At the Grammy Awards in 2005, "Lean Back" was nominated for Best Duo/Group Rap Performance, losing out to the Black Eyed Peas' sanitized pop song "Let's Get It Started". 

In the same week "Lean Back" entered the R&B charts, a "hype track" from the album, "Yeah Yeah Yeah" also entered, spending two months on the list with a high of #75. The proper second single from the set, "Take Me Home", tried to bring in the rest of the crew with "chipmunked" samples that forecast the current state of the genre. The single climbed to #21 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, and stopped at #62 on the Hot 100. 

The group was meant to carry on, even adding future SOTD DJ Khaled to the mix, but they wouldn't release anything else under the moniker. But both Joe and Remy will be back to the series, with the pair eventually reuniting together as well. 

(6/10)

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Joe and Remy appeared on the Howard Stern radio show in 2004...


Next up, at an MTV awards show...


Up tomorrow: Country star is fatalistic.

 

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