Started from the Bottom: Week of 2/14/2004

Like most music enthusiasts, I love the Billboard charts - and like most music writers, I am constantly trying to think of different ways to look at and talk about pop music. In that spirit, I present a regular free feature called Started from the Bottom, where I take a look at a random Hot 100 chart's lowest 10 entries. Are they classic hits on the way down? Future classics just starting their run? Forgotten fun that never reached the highest heights? Come and take a look with me!

Hot 100 date: February 14, 2004

At the top: 20 years ago this week, OutKast scores the Hot 100's 900th chart-topper with "The Way You Move," the Big Boi and Sleepy Brown-led banger off the duo's double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. (It finally dislodges the other single, André 3000's "Hey Ya!" - a nine-week No. 1.) The next songs to peak are hot on OutKast's heels. "Slow Jamz," by Twista feat. Kanye West and Jamie Foxx, will reach the top in a week and currently sits between "The Way You Move" and "Hey Ya!"; just under it is Usher feat. Lil Jon & Ludacris with "Yeah!" which stays at No. 1 from the 28th to mid-May.

100. Mary J. Blige feat. Eve, "Not Today" (previously peaked at No. 41)

This bottom 10 is mostly songs that never made Top 40, and it's unfortunately not hard to hear why. A Mary J. Blige vocal/Dr. Dre production pairing was novel enough for the soundtrack to Barbershop 2, but it never really gets going. Mary (just nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last weekend) doesn't let loose enough, and Dre's hook sounds like an imitation of ABBA's "Mamma Mia" or a very specific score cue from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.

99. Ginuwine, "Love You More" (previously peaked at No. 78)

The fourth single from Ginuwine's The Senior - the first, "Stingy," was released a year before the album even came out on, I swear to God, the Barbershop soundtrack - is a fairly standard romantic ballad with a keyboard sound I would describe as "glurpy." People used to make this kind of sound on our chorus teacher's keyboard by using that pitch bend wheel, then they'd get yelled at for playing around with equipment the school was never going to replace.

98. Too $hort feat. Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, "Shake That Monkey" (previously peaked at No. 84)

There were far better Lil Jon productions on this Hot 100 - not only "Yeah!" but the immortal Ying Yang Twins team-up "Get Low," which was dropping through the Top 40 after peaking at No. 2 - but I do at least have to give wild props to Too $hort, whose Married to the Game was his 12th album for Jive Records; they first released an LP of his in 1987. Think about that for a second: there is literally no one who rapped in the late '80s on the charts at this time. In fact, other than Sarah McLachlan and one of those poppy Santana tracks, I don't think there's anyone else on this chart who debuted before 1990. And Too $hort's next studio album, in 2006, was a Top 20 - his fourth. That's staying power, even if the song is whatever.

97. Beenie Man feat. Ms. Thing, "Dude" (current chart peak)

"Dude" will become the biggest song in this bottom 10, eventually peaking at No. 26. Beenie Man was pretty intriguing for his time, getting some dancehall to this white suburbanite's ears before Sean Paul (thanks, The Box!) - so it kinda sucks that he's a pretty unrepentant anti-gay artist.

96. Montgomery Gentry, "Hell Yeah" (re-entry; previously peaked at No. 45)

Inoffensive proto-bro-country from when things were really starting to cook for the duo: "Hell Yeah" was their third straight Top 5 country song, and managed to peak on that survey after some six months. It made a little cameo here, probably as a by-product of a single from their next album, "If You Ever Stop Loving Me," being released a few weeks prior. (That song would become their first country No. 1.)

95. Mýa, "Fallen" (previously peaked at No. 51)

Despite great harmonies and being an upbeat track overall, "Fallen" fell far short of Mýa's last single, the hit "My Love is Like...Wo," and that was kind of it for her presence on the pop charts. Still, this is probably the song I like most of the bottom 10.

94. Big Tymers feat. R. Kelly, "Gangster Girl" (previously peaked at No. 85)

Welp, one's gotta do one's best to separate the hypnotic power of this tune from the disgraced sex trafficker who makes up a good one third of the track (its hook and the first verse). The MVP here is Mannie Fresh, who works blue and eye-poppingly funny.

93. Bow Wow feat. Jagged Edge, "My Baby" (previously peaked at No. 42)

As someone who remembers Lil Bow Wow's goofy run of prepubescent pop-rap hits ("Bounce with Me," "Bow Wow (That's My Name)"), this was a surprising breath of fresh air. Over a slinky Jermaine Dupri hook and buttressed by Jagged Edge's dulcet harmonies, Bow Wow goes for lite LL Cool J "Hey Lover" vibes, rhyming to a prospective lover in an abusive relationship. Not at all what I was expecting from the guy who gave us "Fresh Azimis" and a supporting role in the Fast & Furious movie that nearly stopped the series dead.

92. Jo Dee Messina, "I Wish" (previously peaked at No. 75)

This second single from Jo Dee's greatest hits album (a moderate Top 20 on the country survey) wouldn't sound out of place in a Faith Hill set, which is spiritually not a surprise: Messina's albums of country material, to this point, were produced by Hill's longtime beau Tim McGraw and his creative partner Byron Gallimore. Faith would probably not have hit three key changes, though.

91. Puddle of Mudd, "Away from Me" (previously peaked at No. 72)

God help me, by the last run of choruses I was almost singing along. This post-grunge era is not without its charms, although I would sooner queue up "Blurry" (I'm only human) or, God help me, the kinda-funny "She Hates Me." But I'm not going to punch down, as Puddle of Mudd have kept it together long enough to notch Top 10 mainstream rock hits into 2019 - all this despite a distressingly detailed "legal issues and controversies" Wikipedia tab for frontman Wes Scantlin.