Twostepcublog

    " In My Life " - Juvenile featuring Mannie Fresh from the album Juve The Great (2003) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #46 (two weeks)   This week's "robbed hit" comes from rapper Terius " Juvenile " Gray, who had landed a top-40 crossover hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the late fall of 1999 with " Back That Azz Up " from his third album (and first majorly distributed) 400 Degreez . Very soon later, he released his follow-up album on Cash Money/Universal Records, Tha G-Code , which topped Billboard 's R&B Albums chart and hit #10 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies (still a fourth of what 400 Degreez sold). But the main single from the project, " U Understand ", was only a modest R&B hit at #27, while stalling at #83 on the Hot 100. That was followed in 2001 with Project English , which came in at #2 on both the Billboard 200 and R&B Albums lists, but only cleared jus...

    " 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 "...

    " Hell Yeah " - Montgomery Gentry from the album My Town (2002) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45   This week's "robbed hit" comes from the country music duo Montgomery Gentry , whose third album on Columbia Nashville Records, My Town , saw its lead single and title track slip into the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the autumn of 2002, while the follow-up, " Speed ", just missed the mark at #45 while both reaching #5 on the Country Songs airplay list.  The third and final single from the record was back to their boisterous side with "Hell Yeah". Written by Jeffrey Steele and Craig Wiseman, The lyrics spit out a Scrabble board of buzzwords that were getting assimilated into the "redneck culture" canon though with a bit more wordy flourish than most of the ilk in describing a well-weathered old guy at a bar. However that didn't keep from totally cringe lines like " He's proud he took for his right wing s...

    " Clap Back " - Ja Rule from the album Blood In My Eye (2003)  Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44 This week's "almost hit" comes from rapper Ja Rule , whose fourth album on Murder Inc. Records, The Last Temptation , had landed a #2 hit with the single " Mesmerize " in the beginning of 2003. But that album was rife with issues with lead single "Thug Lovin'", a supposed high-profile duet with Bobby Brown, stiffing and the record on a whole getting a better reception overseas espectially in the United Kingdom than at home. Also, his hitmaking prowess, powered by collabs with Jennifer Lopez and Ashanti (the latter featuring on "Mesmerize") getting overshadowed by newcomers Eminem and 50 Cent. That was compounded by the Murder Inc business getting raided by the feds for money laundering around the time "Mesmerize" was climbing the chart. In response to accusations of him getting "soft", Ja Rule released Blood In Th...

    " Bad Boy This Bad Boy That " - Bad Boy's Da Band from the album Too Hot for TV (2003) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #50 (two weeks) This week's "almost hit" (I can't in good conscience say it was robbed ) comes from a reality show that was the collaboration between MTV (which already was swaying away from the music video business) and record label Bad Boy, run by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. It was marketed as the "second reiteration" of Making The Band , in which the first produced the boyband O-Town, which did end up scoring a pair of top ten hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in 2000-2001. (That version had Lou Pearlman as the studio exec mentor, but his story did not end well.)    This version started in the fall of 2002, with Diddy forming what would be "Da Band" by the end of the second "season". The original 40,000 claimed auditioners were pared to four men and two women, with one of each sex being the s...

    " Like A Pimp " - David Banner featuring Lil' Flip from the album Mississippi: The Album (2003) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48 (two weeks)   This week's "almost hit" comes from rapper David Banner , who grew up as Lavell Crump in Mississippi. After assuming the moniker taken from the name of the Incredible Hulk , Banner released a studio album, Them Firewater Boyz Vol. 1 and a mixtape Da Undaground, Vol. 1 on Big Face records. With local buzz acquired, Banner signed with Universal affiliate SRC Records, where he released his debut major label set Mississippi: The Album . The lead single was a revamp of the "bonus cut" on Da Undaground , "Like A Pimp". Using a sample of UGK's " Take It Off ", giving Chad "Pimp C" Butler and Bernie "Bun B" Freeman writing credit along with Banner, the track is a quite misogynistic look at pimps and hookers, with brags about his harem does for him. The new version featu...