On this day (November 24) in 2001, Toby Keith topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart with “I Wanna Talk About Me.” The song, which combined a rap cadence with a contemporary country arrangement, stayed at No. 1 for five consecutive weeks. However, the song wasn’t originally intended for Keith. Instead, songwriter Bobby Braddock penned it for Blake Shelton.
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Braddock originally pitched the song to Shelton, who had recently released his debut album. However, his record label believed that the combination of country and rap was too risky for a new artist. Fortunately, Keith had already established himself as a force within the genre. Moreover, some of his previous cuts made him the perfect artist to record the song.
[RELATED: On This Day in 1999, Toby Keith Released the No. 1 Hit That Terrified His Record Label]
Keith had featured spoken-word verses in “Getcha Some” in 1998. Additionally, the brash lyrics made it a great companion for the Oklahoma native’s previous hit, “How Do You Like Me Now.” However, the A&R person who worked with Keith at the time hated the song and immediately rejected it. So, Braddock took the song directly to James Stroud, president of Dreamworks Nashville. His immediate reaction was “That’s a damn hit,” according to Songfacts.
How Bobby Braddock’s Frustration Became a Hit for Toby Keith
In “I Wanna Talk About Me,” Toby Keith raps about how he can’t get a word in during a conversation with his partner. Bobby Braddock wrote the song after he experienced a similar issue.
“There were two inspirations for that song,” Braddock said. “One was a very good friend of mine’s assistant had been fired, so her workload doubled. Whenever I talked to her on the phone, that was all she’d talk about,” he recalled. “I’d try to talk to her about something else, and she’d just keep going back to that. I played [the song] for her over the phone, and she didn’t say anything. The next day, she called and said, ‘Did you write that song about me?’ I said that’s right.”
Blake Shelton was the other inspiration for the song. Braddock recalled that, at the time, Shelton was “going around doing this really raunchy little rap song he made up.” He added, “To hear him in his Oklahoma white boy accent doing a rap song was pretty hilarious.”
Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
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