Song 17:
"Addictive” by Truth Hurts & Rakim
Peak: 9
Year: 2002
Year end position: 40
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/1
Chronological Songs by Artist: 1/1
Video?: Yes
Spotify?: No
I’m not sure if a lot of you pay
attention to the little blurb that I put at the beginning of the post that has
links to websites and various other statistics about the song, but today’s is
different than any other we’ve had so far. The main difference is that
this is the first song we’ve had that is unavailable on Spotify. As of
today, Spotify has almost all of the songs that we will go over on this blog,
with a few big exceptions. The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Bob Seger and
George Harrison don’t have any of their songs on Spotify (unless they are on a
soundtrack somewhere). Truth Hurts seems like a strange addition to that
esteemed list and we will get to why later this post.
Something that may not be immediately
clear based on the name Truth Hurts is that this is not a band or a vocal
group, but is a female solo singer. Her real name is Shari Watson from
St. Louis. I couldn’t find anything explaining why she goes by the name
Truth Hurts. It’s also a little strange in that the name she goes by is a
complete sentence (albeit poorly worded). From what I could find, she was
a guest singer on a few songs for acts on Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label before
“Addictive” hit it big. She managed to tour on the strength of this song
for a little while, but was unable to capitalize on its success with any
subsequent hits.
One feature of this song that we
haven’t seen on any other songs so far (but is extremely prevalent nowadays) is
the addition of the featured rapper in the song. For years and years,
songs would have some kind of instrumental bridge between verses. Usually
that was a guitar solo of some kind. “Addictive” has the same song
structure as most of the other songs, but where there would normally be some
kind of instrumentation, there is a rap by Rakim. For the purposes of my
blog, I am only considering the first name listed on the song as getting credit
for the song (sorry Rakim). She’s not the first act to do this chronologically,
but it’s the first we have seen in any of the songs in this blog so I felt it
was worth mentioning since it marks a little change in song structure.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to enjoy
that different song structure on any kind of listening device. As I mentioned
earlier, Spotify doesn’t have this song, and you can’t buy it on iTunes
either. When I looked for Truth Hurts on iTunes, you can buy the rest of
her album, but not “Addictive”. If you are familiar with the song, it’s
hard to miss the Indian voice and rhythm going on. It turns out that the
track that Truth Hurts is singing over is a song called “Thoda Resham Lagta
Hai”. If you listen closely, you can make out that is what the Indian
lady is singing in the background of the song. The song was from a 1981
Bollywood movie by Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar. You can find a clip of
this song on YouTube if you look for it. If you do, you will quickly
notice that it bears a striking similarity to “Addictive”. Apparently,
the copyright owners made this connection as well since they slapped Universal
(the parent company of Aftermath) with a cease and desist order and a $500M
lawsuit since they never obtained the rights to the original song.
Ouch…. That’s why you can’t buy a copy of the song anymore. Luckily
for us, you can still watch the video if you want to hear the song today.
Just don’t expect it to be on any new playlists anywhere.
This is the 3rd and last
song that has an addict in the title. All three have a different take on
the “person as addict” theme. In “Addicted” by Saving Abel, the singer is
the addict. In “Addicted to Love”, the audience is the addict. Both
of those used the verb tense “Addicted” to describe some kind of action.
“Addictive” uses the adjective form of the word. Truth Hurts is
describing a man as having a quality that makes him addictive (presumably to
Truth Hurts). In fact, the song is mostly about the qualities that Truth
Hurts finds about her man that she finds so addictive. I counted at least
20 things that Truth Hurts lists that make her feel addicted to this guy.
I particularly like “Returns my pages” as a positive. It helps ground the
song firmly in 2002. I can’t totally make out if Rakim is supposed to be
the object of the song since he opens the rap verse with “Anything you need
baby ask your man”, which makes me think he’s not talking about himself.
The rest of the verse seems like he is referring to himself. Maybe he’s
using the third person in that first line. That would be a total rapper
move. I think that’s the theory I’m keeping.
I really like this song. It does
something that I normally loathe, which is not really changing a song when they
sample it, but just singing over it. However, I think part of the reason
I hate that is because I almost always know the original song (and usually like
it better than the remade version). In this case, I had never heard the
original before, so it seemed fresh to me. It also was not like any other
song that I had heard on the radio before or really since (you know, until “Jai
Ho”). That’s too bad. I think the Indian rhythms are just exotic
enough to be interesting. Good luck getting a copy though….
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