"A Bay Bay" by Hurricane Chris

Song 1:

“A Bay Bay” by Hurricane Chris

Peak: 7

Year: 2007

Year End Position: 56

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/1

Chronological Songs by Artist: 1/1

Video?: Yes

Wikipedia?:  Yes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bay_Bay

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://genius.com/Hurricane-chris-a-bay-bay-lyrics

I have to be honest that this song was not at the top of the list of songs that I thought I’d be leading off with on this blog.  Part of the reason is because grammatically it doesn’t seem to fit.  Normally, introductory articles like “A”, “An” and “The” aren’t considered when alphabetizing.  However, this is an exception because in this case, “A” is not being used as an article, it’s used as a slang shorthand for “Hey”.  Since I am not accounting for slang when I alphabetize, here we are.

I looked up Hurricane Chris, since I want to do him justice here.  Part of the reason for that is that this is the one and only time we are going to hear from Hurricane Chris in this whole blog.  I am going to call him a one-hit wonder for that reason.  It’s not that he never had any other hits; it’s just that this is the only one that ever hit the top 20.  More accurately, this is the only time he got as high as #50 on the Hot 100.

Chris’s real name is Chris Dooley, Jr. from Shreveport, LA and according to Wikipedia, he goes by “Hurricane Chris” because of his ability to rap fast, twisting words “like a hurricane had just blown through”.

The song itself is probably not for everyone.  It’s a rap song that hits a lot of common themes.  There are references to how much money Chris has, how many people are in his crew, what kind of gun he has, how many jewels he has, and how drunk he can get in the club.

I don’t typically like songs like this one, but I can appreciate that it probably plays pretty well in the club.  I think part of the appeal of the song is that there is a voice that comes in and out of the song that sounds a little like an actual baby.  That’s kind of cute.  My favorite stat about this song is that the title is sung 67 times.  That’s a lot.  I give Hurricane Chris a lot of credit for driving that point home.  I can envision people at the club singing the hook without knowing any other lyrics. 

I also like the “chirp” signal midway through the song.  I think that kind of dates the song to 2007 as 2-way paging with the “chirp” was all the rage at that time, but has since fallen out of style.

All in all, I wouldn’t call this one of my all time favorites, but I think there will be a lot worse songs than this one in the blog.  That’s not because I don’t like rap songs, or songs for the club.  I do like songs like that.  I think of them similar to country music or oil painting.  They’re not really my main point of interest, but I can appreciate a good work.  This one isn’t bad on that score.  We’ll get into some of my pet peeves that rap songs often trammel in later.  This one avoids most of them.  For one, you can understand the lyrics, which I always appreciate.

Part of the fun of doing this blog is revisiting songs like this one.  It’s not a song that would typically come up in my playlist, but this gives me an opportunity to revisit this song for a little while.  Good times….