Started from the Bottom: Week of 7/17/1993
Forgotten rap songs aplenty and a few pop gems on this bottom 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
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 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 favorites just starting their run? Forgotten fun that never reached the highest heights? Come and take a look with me!
Hot 100 date: July 17, 1993
At the top: It's a soulful summer on the pop charts - most of this issue's Top 10, including the whole Top 5, can be classified as R&B (SWV's "Weak," in its second week on top, displaced Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes" after eight weeks - it's currently at No. 4) or hip-hop (Tag Team's "Whoomp! (There It Is)," H-Town's "Knockin' Da Boots," Dr. Dre's "Dre Day"). The rest are dance hits (Robin S.' "Show Me Love"), adult-contemporary pop (Rod Stewart's cover of Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately," Exposé's "I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me") and British guys doing reggae (UB40's rendition of "Can't Help Falling in Love," which will become the next week's chart-topper and stay there until September).
YBT's turntablist, DJ Skribble, later became a fixture of the New York club and radio scene - a regular presence on WKTU-FM and even events for MTV.
- Young Black Teenagers, "Tap the Bottle" (previously peaked at No. 55)
You know how conservative idiots and irony-poisoned left-leaners like to say "you can't do [insert thing] here anymore, because of woke"? I think this one case is genuinely true. Young Black Teenagers were a rap group who were young, but not Black (three white guys and a Latino person) or teenagers. Nonetheless, they had the the blessing and encouragement of Public Enemy and in-house production team The Bomb Squad, who signed them to Hank Shocklee's SOUL label. (Their first album featured a weird shot at Madonna for cribbing a P.E. drum sample; fellow Bomb Squad members Keith Shocklee and Gary G-Wiz produced the bulk of their second, where "Tap the Bottle" comes from, although this track was produced by P.E. turntablist Terminator X.) As it stands, this fleet-lipped cut could have been a lot more embarrassing, although it certainly wouldn't play out the same way today.
Do you think it felt silly to request this on the radio? "I'd like to hear 'Do Da What.'"
- 1 of the Girls, "Do Da What" (previously peaked at No. 74)
Another confusingly-named group shepherded by a much more famous figure, 1 of the Girls was a vocal quartet who'd been discovered by the late '80s/'90s soul legend Gerald LeVert. Fellow LeVert member Marc Gordon was also a producer on "Do Da What," an off-kilter track with weirdly sexual that sounds like an unholy union of TLC and Kris Kross - at least, before the "Genius of Love" sample kicks in during the bridge.
Despite my sleuthing, I am unable to determine why exactly Vanilla Ice gets a featuring credit AND has this video uploaded to his YouTube channel despite seemingly making a brief, wordless cameo in the clip.
- Rodney O & Joe Cooley, "U Don't Hear Me Tho'" (previously peaked at No. 93)
An intriguing hip-hop duo that briefly flirted with mainstream success, Rodney O & Joe Cooley came up in the same West Coast scene of the late '80s, but perplexingly became more popular in the Southeast, resulting in an intriguing combination of Miami bass and L.A. electro (the duo were originally signed to Egyptian Lover's label, and he executive produced the brazenly-titled F__k New York) with some G-funk braggadocio in the lyrics.
The killer cratedigger sample on this track is "Ffun" by Con Funk Shun. Worth getting stuck in your head!
- Rodney O & Joe Cooley, "Humps for the Blvd." (previously peaked at No. 84)
Just how brief was Rodney O & Joe Cooley's moment in the sun? Their only other Billboard Hot 100 hit was sliding down the charts the same week "U Don't Hear Me Tho'" was peaking! Easily better than the follow-up, though it sounds less like a Miami bass track and more like a late '80s rap track with a bouncier cadence.
Hi-Five kept the train going after "Unconditional Love" with another soundtrack song that later appeared on the 1993 album Faithful. "Never Should've Let You Go" was featured in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit and became their fourth and final Top 40 hit.
- Hi-Five, "Unconditional Love" (chart debut)
Having enjoyed the highest highs (1991 chart-topper "I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)") and the lowest lows (a revolving door of group membership set on by legal issues and physical injuries), Hi-Five caught some headwinds from this track when it featured on the soundtrack to Menace II Society. But the combination of rhythm and romance wasn't anything New Edition and/or Jam & Lewis hadn't done better, and this would only climb three spots higher on the big board.
Songs like "Deeper" make you wonder what a woman had to do to get real attention in hip-hop at the time.
- Boss, "Deeper" (previously peaked at No. 65)
An intriguing figure in the post-Dr. Dre boom, Lichelle Laws was a Detroit-raised emcee who signed to the short-lived Def Jam West, a gangsta imprint of the legendary rap label. Her edgy rhymes and unique positioning as a woman in the game were unfairly dulled after a Wall Street Journal article "exposed" her middle-class upbringings, something she never hid. Def Jef, who produced "Deeper," continued to work with her even after she'd been dropped, attempting to sell her to A&R reps to little avail. She died earlier this year after years of battling kidney disease.
Man, remember MTV2? Their whole deal was, around the turn of the millennium as MTV expanded into regular non-video programming, to just do what classic MTV did - nothing but videos. In doing so, they cleared a lot of stuff out of their archives, which is why a video like this has an MTV2 bug. (I remember Positive K's "I Got a Man" for the same reason.)
- G-Wiz, "Teddy Bear" (previously peaked at No. 87)
Not to be confused with Gary G-Wiz of The Bomb Squad, this hip-hop trio combined street-style production with smooth vocals. Not much was heard from them afterward, likely due in part to being signed to Scotti Bros. Records, who in the '90s were one of the least competent labels for anyone not named "Weird Al" Yankovic.
Country radio didn't sleep on this: "Tell Me Why" peaked on that chart at No. 3.
- Wynonna, "Tell Me Why" (previously peaked at No. 77)
Wynonna Judd was only a few years into her solo career after she and her mother Naomi ended their work as country duo The Judds. Essentially, this was the closest thing Wynonna had to a crossover hit, and it's not hard to hear why(y-y-y). Written by Karla Bonoff (who recorded it first in 1988), it's as much a straight-ahead pop/rock number as it's a twangy one. A terrific under-the-radar find!
As the thumbnail and the double take-inducing film clips might suggest, this was released on the soundtrack to The Meteor Man, a feel-good superhero film starring, written and directed by Robert Townsend, one of the more consequential Black filmmakers of the late 20th century (Hollywood Shuffle, Eddie Murphy Raw).
- Shanice, "It's for You" (chart debut)
You couldn't yet count out Shanice, who scored a pair of Top 5s the two years prior with "I Love Your Smile" and the Beverly Hills, 90210 cut "Saving Forever for You." The perpetually perky soul singer acquits herself nicely on this track, co-written and produced by members of the new jack swing combo Portrait (whose sole Top 40 pop hit sampled Michael Jackson, possibly explaining the Jacksonian vibes in the chords). It would perform modestly, making it to No. 57, and she'd have another Top 20 with 1999's "When I Close My Eyes" before becoming a well-utilized session singer.
As with just about all his videos in this era, George didn't appear in the video, but I think one of the train lines I take to go into Manhattan does, as do a lot of fake images of familiar brands (consumerism, baby!).
- George Michael, "Killer/Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" (current chart peak)
OK, but if you've yearned for an artist you remember well, this bottom 10 concludes with a real gem from the late, great George Michael. The EP Five Live mixed solo performances from a Wembley Stadium gig in 1991 with performances at the same venue a year later as part of the Freddie Mercury tribute concert - where his cover of "Somebody to Love" was maybe the highlight of the night, and one of the great what-ifs imagining the singer taking Freddie's place as Queen's frontman. This incredible mash-up of Adamski's "Killer" (which introduced the world to the voice of Seal) and The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" opened the 1991 show and most of the nights on that idiosyncratic tour, which found Yog eschewing most of his previous decade of hits in favor of covers that meant a lot to him. While it wouldn't get higher than No. 69 on the Hot 100 (nice), it was also the second live cover from this tour to end up on the charts - the first being his terrific duet with Elton John on "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me."