After reading about Debbie Allen's album over at The Isle of Failed Pop Stars (an album my mom owns, by the way), it's due time for my own installment of sitcom stars who occasionally dabbled in pop music.
When I was a little kid...this was like, early, early 90s...I remember Jasmine Guy was all over The Box. She had three big songs: "Try Me," "Just Want to Hold You" and the above "Another Like My Lover." My mom actually taped videos from the Box a lot, and while I was going through some old tapes I found a video with "Try Me" on it.
"Another Like My Lover" (#9 R&B/#66 Hot 100) and "Try Me" (#14 R&B) came out at the height of the New Jack Swing era, as you can tell by the beats. And of course "Just Want to Hold You" (#27 R&B/#34 Hot 100) was the obligatory ballad. Still, with New Jack beats and an already established reputation playing Whitley on "A Different World" (where she sang on quite a few episodes), it's weird how she never became a bigger star in the music world.
The same thing happened with Tisha Campbell, who was already an established singer/actress who released who self-titled album a year after the premiere of "Martin," which is hands down one of the best sitcoms of the 90s. (My mom also has this one...) I remember seeing this on the Box as well, and as a grown-up I snicker at the lyric "no one-minute brotha/I need an overtime lover." Again, with a big voice, New Jack Swing beat and even a little reggae toward the end, Tisha saw little success as this song didn't even chart. Her album only hit #37 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart.
Like Jasmine, Tisha got a chance to display her vocal chops before releasing music, as in "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Heart and Soul," a short-lived sitcom starring Morris Day that came on NBC. If you've never heard of it, that's OK, but my mom had a near-obsessive habit with her VCR and taped a lot of things, including this sitcom where Morris played a record company exec and Tisha as his protege. (There were actually clips of this on YouTube but they were pulled! IMDB doesn't even have a proper listing for it! But the show wasn't that funny anyway...)
Of course we can't forget about Jasmine and Tisha sharing the spotlight in "School Daze," one of my top 10 favorite movies with an amazing soundtrack, including this gem "Be Alone Tonight":
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Somethin' for the People
I forgot how hilarious this video was in the beginning...
The two female singers (Trina and Tamara) I'll get to in a later post, but let's focus on the short-lived trio Somethin' For the People, who hit it big with "My Love is the Shhh!" They had two more singles before this - "You Want this Party Started," "Can You Feel Me" and "With You" in 1996, but a year and a sophomore album later, "Shhh!" hit #2 R&B/#4 Hot 100 and it seemed they were headed for bigger things. Unfortunately, a second single "All I Do" peaked at #15 R&B/#47 Hot 100, and their last outing "Bitch With No Man" off their third album only made it to #39 R&B. I KNOW there's a video for "Bitch With No Man" because I remember seeing it on one of those public access channels (don't laugh) back in the day! But I couldn't find it anywhere.
At the 3:05 mark at "Shhh!", I remember having debates about whether he was singing "My love is the, your love is the shiiiiiiit" without radio or TV blocking it out. It's still a mystery to this day.
What set Somethin' For the People apart was that they weren't a cookie-cutter boy band and they actually wrote and produced their own songs. But I guess their lyrics were a bit on the raw side, and maybe a bit too gimmicky for long-term success.
How to make a comeback:
I found MySpace pages for each of the members Sauce, Cat Daddy and Fuzzy (his is private), and it looks like at least two of them have stuck to producing for other artists. However, it wouldn't hurt if they got back together as a trio again!
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