Tag Archives: b.o.b

#1202: Big Boi ft. B.o.B & Wavves – Shoes for Running

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Thinking about how to approach today’s song, I questioned for a moment, “How did I actually come to know this one?” Thankfully, I laid the backstory out in the first post I wrote for a song from Big Boi’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors way, way back in this blog’s early days. It’s been more than a decade since that LP was released. It doesn’t get talked about all that much. I remember it wasn’t that widely praised when it first came out too. I’m sure Wikipedia has sources to reviews of the time. I want to say I recall one in particular that put a highlight on the numerous collaborations with indie acts on there. Whether it was spun in a negative or positive way, that’s where you lose me. But one track on there which comes under that collaborative label is ‘Shoes for Running’, the 11th number in the running, featuring B.o.B and Nathan Williams of indie rock band Wavves.

Again I’m speaking more than a decade on, but when I inadvertently found the album on Spotify and played through it that first time, ‘Shoes for Running’ was one of the few on there that stuck out to me. The instrumental, produced by Williams, is quite cheerful and upbeat in nature. People are whistling and a group of children are included in the proceedings. But it runs against the downbeat lyrical content that focuses on the inevitability of death and the poor revolting against the rich. The track has a catchy chorus, one that I witnessed people slating on various YouTube comments and other forum-like places, but to me it was always good. B.o.B might be an artist whose relevance was left behind in the 2010s, but he had his time and he does a fine job on his verse here. And well, I don’t have to say much about Big Boi because we all know. For the longest time I thought B.o.B was singing the verse before the final chorus. I found out it’s Big Boi just recently. The guy could sing too, jack of all trades.

Well, I don’t have much else to say about the tune itself. I can tell you that this’ll be the last track from Vicious Lies… that I’ll be writing about on here. I revisited it relatively recently, and found it was very enjoyable to listen to. I think the dominance of features by indie acts over other hip-hop artists is what may have turned some people away. There’s also the very obvious attempt at the radio-hit song with ‘Mama Told Me’ with Kelly Rowland. You could probably miss me with that one. But all in all, Big Boi doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. Fine hooks in every tracks. I wouldn’t say it beats Sir Lucious Left Foot…. But I think its due time that people at least gave Vicious Lies… another go if it’s been a while.

#921: Big Boi ft. B.o.B & Joi – Night Night

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Who would wanna go back to 2010? In some ways I wouldn’t mind, in others the answer would be a big nope. But it wasn’t such a bad time to be alive. I think there was some optimism going into what was a new decade. Plus there was all the new music to look forward to. That year saw the release of Big Boi’s debut album, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, his first since OutKast fizzled out about four years prior. Had it not been overshadowed by My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a few months later, it was probably bound to go down as the greatest hip-hop album of that year. It’s an album where Big Boi’s flexing on almost every track, telling the listener how good he is at his craft, how other rappers should just stop when they come up against him. No surprise he does it here on the album’s 12th track, ‘Night Night’.

My first experience with the track would have been in 2010 when a friend of mine from school told me I’d be into it. He was always obsessed with finding the newest hip-hop/R&B music, and he knew I was into that stuff to, so just passed on the word. Went to YouTube and ‘Night Night’ was there, but was uploaded with a higher pitch so it could get past copyright laws. You could get away with that back in those days. In fact, it was very similar to this. So for a few years I thought that’s how the song was recorded. But even then I thought the track sounded good. B.o.B came in clutch on the hook. This was when it was cool to listen to B.o.B, before he went on about how he believed the world was flat and had beef with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The instrumental slapped, still does I believe, carried by that driving rhythm and those horn-like synthesizers. The general gist of the entire track is that Big Boi’s going to put his competition to sleep with his bars and flows, hence the song title. Not in the way that they’ll be bored. More in the stunned-into-submission-that-they-lie-down-and-never-try-again kind of way.

It wasn’t for a couple years that I listened to the album in full and was surprised by how it really sounded. GCSEs and exams got in the way. Either way, the song still holds up as it did 12 years ago. I use Spotify, do with that information what you will, and I’m really surprised to see that the track has the least amount of listens on the album. Even less than the minute and a half intro song that starts it off. I’ve always thought the track was potentially single worthy. I can only put it down to the skit at the beginning. Probably should have been tacked onto the end of the preceding song. It lasts only ten seconds though. I guess people don’t have the patience anymore.