Rap started to make its impact on the world of mainstream pop music in the late 80s. Little by little, bands and acts that had already become stars in the hip hop arena began to work their way higher and higher up the US pop charts.
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These four hallowed acts enjoyed Top 40 crossover success just one time in their careers. And here are the outstanding songs that they used to make it happen.
“Me Myself And I” by De La Soul
De La Soul offered a more playful, slightly psychedelic alternative to the hardcore, boom-bap rap acts of the era. Their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising showed off their musicality, as the beats, samples, and off-kilter skits made the LP a winner even before you considered the effortless flow of Posdnuos and Trugoy The Dove. “Me Myself And I” featured a trippy yet propulsive rhythm, courtesy of a classic Funkadelic sample. The two MCs spend the majority of the song gently chiding the media for trying to categorize their sound. With a hilarious video that presented the trio (also including DJ Maseo) as high school losers, “Me Myself And I” put the band at No. 34 in 1989, their lone Top 40 hit.
“Pop Goes The Weasel” by 3rd Bass
3rd Bass enjoyed success out of the gate with their debut LP The Cactus Album in 1999, which featured instant classics like “The Gas Face” and “Wordz Of Wisdom”. They established themselves at around the same time that Vanilla Ice shot up the pop charts. Ice courted controversy by not immediately awarding songwriting credit to Queen and David Bowie for the “Under Pressure” sample at the foundation of “Ice Ice Baby”. MC Serch and Pete Nice laid down a vicious diss track of Ice’s actions on “Pop Goes The Weasel”. Low-hanging fruit for sure, but they did a pretty thorough job of knocking it off the vine. The samples of Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, and The Who helped make it accessible enough for the pop charts, peaking at No. 29 in 1991.
“Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot
The Pacific Northwest’s favorite rapper, Sir Mix-A-Lot established his hip-hop bona fides with a pair of well-received albums in the late 80s. A few singles from those records found a home on MTV. But it wasn’t like Mix, née Anthony Ray, seemed a likely candidate for crossover success. Three years later, he returned with an album featuring Rick Rubin, who understood the way for rappers to get to the pop charts, as one of the producers. “Baby Got Back” certainly caused its share of controversy at the time, as some heard it as just another song objectifying women. But others felt this rap classic paid loving tribute to body types that were somewhat forgotten in pop culture. In any case, Mix’s fast-talking approach had everyone listening, and he found himself with a pop No. 1 in 1992.
“Give It Up” by Public Enemy
No rap act enjoyed a better reputation with critics than Public Enemy. Unsurprisingly, the rap group’s fearless, fiery approach scared away programmers at pop radio. As a result, none of the singles released from their milestone albums of the late 80s and early 90s managed to get to the Top 40, not even the seminal “Fight The Power”. In 1991, “Can’t Truss It” came close, topping out at No. 50. That set the table for the lead single from the 1993 album Muse Sick-N-Hour Message. “Give It Up” is a little less musically dense than some of their classics, allowing for a clearer listen to Chuck D’s inventive lyrics, “mad rhymes for mad times,” as he characterizes them. A No. 33 ranking for “Give It Up” remains PE’s only journey to the Top 40.
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