Smooth (singer)
Juanita Stokes (born 1972), currently known as Needa S. (formerly Smooth), is an American singer and rapper. She is the daughter of actress Irene Stokes and younger sister of music executive Chris Stokes (record producer), Chris Stokes. Career Stokes began her career as MC Smooth, signing a record deal with the independent label Crush Music in 1990. She released her debut single "Smooth & Legit" that year, which peaked at #11 on the U.S. Rap chart. Her debut album ''Smooth & Legit'' followed on April 27, 1990 (peaking at #72 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart) and was produced by her brother Chris Stokes and Arabian Prince. Two singles "You Gotta Be Real" and "Where is the Money?" followed but did not garner much airplay. Three years later, she signed a major label deal with Jive Records and began work on her sophomore album, dropping the MC from her moniker. Her first single under the new deal, "Female Mac" garnered some airplay, and it was soon followed by the release of her second ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reality (Smooth Album)
''Reality'' is the fourth album by the American R&B singer Smooth. It was released on March 10, 1998, through Perspective Records, and contained production from Chris Stokes and the production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. It was her first album for Perspective. ''Reality'' peaked at No. 48 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. It peaked at No. 32 on the Top Heatseekers. The album contained Smooth's biggest hit, "Strawberries", which peaked at No. 49 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and No. 17 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks. Critical reception AllMusic wrote that "while the songwriting isn't always compelling, the producers give Smooth a rich instrumental backdrop that allows her to emphasize her charisma, and the result is her best record to date." Track listing #"Strawberries" (Lance Alexander, Tony Tolbert, Juanita Stokes)– 5:39 #"Don't Sleep" (Chris Stokes, Douglas Coleman, Juanita Stokes, Herbert Crawford) – 4:29 #"We Funk too Quick" (Juanita Stokes, Brion James ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hot Rap Songs
Hot Rap Songs (formerly known as Hot Rap Tracks and Hot Rap Singles) is a chart released weekly by '' Billboard'' in the United States. It lists the 25 most popular hip-hop/rap songs, calculated weekly by airplay on rhythmic and urban radio stations and sales in hip hop-focused or exclusive markets. Streaming data and digital downloads were added to the methodology of determining chart rankings in 2012. From 1989 through 2001, it was based on how much the single sold in that given week. The song with the most weeks at number one is "Old Town Road", with a total of 20 weeks. Chart statistics and other facts Artists with the most number-one singles Note: Rihanna is a featured artist on all her number-one singles. Artists with the most consecutive weeks at number one *25 weeks – Lil Wayne ("Lollipop", " A Milli") *20 weeks – Drake ("I'm On One", "Headlines"); T-Pain (" Good Life", "Low"); T.I. ("Whatever You Like", " Live Your Life") *19 weeks – 50 Cent ("Candy Shop", "H ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart ranks the most popular R&B and hip hop songs in the United States and is published weekly by '' Billboard''. Rankings are based on a measure of radio airplay, sales data, and streaming activity. The chart had 100 positions but was shortened to 50 positions in October 2012. The chart is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, rock and roll, soul, and funk, it is today dominated by contemporary R&B and hip hop. Since its inception, the chart has changed its name many times in order to accurately reflect the industry at the time. History Beginning in 1942, ''Billboard'' published a chart of bestselling black music, first as the Harlem Hit Parade, then as Race Records. Then in 1949, ''Billboard'' began publishing a Rhythm and Blues chart, which entered "R&B" into mainstream lexicon. These three charts were consolid ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Music Download
A music download (commonly referred to as a digital download) is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyrighted material without permission or legal payment. According to a Nielsen report, downloadable music accounted for 55.9 percent of all music sales in the US in 2012."All music sales" refers to albums plus track equivalent albums. A track equivalent album equates to 10 tracks. By the beginning of 2011, Apple's iTunes Store alone made 1.1 billion of revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year. Music downloads are typically encoded with modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) audio data compression, particularly the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format used by iTunes as well as the MP3 audio coding format. Online music store Paid downloads are sometimes encoded with d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge and reel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Compact Disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in October 1982 in Japan and branded as ''Compact Disc Digital Audio, Digital Audio Compact Disc''. The format was later adapted (as CD-ROM) for general-purpose data storage. Several other formats were further derived, including write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), Photo CD, Picture CD, Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-i) and Enhanced Music CD. Standard CDs have a diameter of and are designed to hold up to 74 minutes of uncompressed stereo digital audio or about 650 mebibyte, MiB of data. Capacity is routinely extended to 80 minutes and 700 mebibyte, MiB by arranging data more closely on the same sized disc. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from ; t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Top Heatseekers
Top Heatseekers are "Breaking and Entering" music charts issued weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine. The Heatseekers Albums and the Heatseekers Songs charts were introduced by ''Billboard'' in 1991 with the purpose of highlighting the sales by new and developing musical recording artists. Albums and songs appearing on Top Heatseekers may also concurrently appear on the ''Billboard'' 200 or ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Albums chart The Heatseekers Albums chart contains 25 positions that are ranked by Nielsen SoundScan sales data, and charts album titles from "new or developing acts" as determined by the acts' historical chart performance. Once an artist/act has had an album place in the top 100 of the ''Billboard'' Top 200, or in the top 10 of any of the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Country Albums, Latin Albums, Christian Albums, or Gospel Albums charts, the album and later works no longer qualify for tracking on Heatseeker Albums. This definition means that some artists can still qualify as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine that ranks R&B and hip hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, 1965 in an effort by the magazine to further expand into the field of rhythm and blues music. It then went through several name changes, being known as Soul LPs in the 1970s and Top Black Albums in the 1980s, before returning to the R&B identification in 1990 and affixing a hip hop designation in 1999 to reflect the latter's growing sales and relationship to R&B during the decade. From 1965 through 2009, the chart was compiled based on reported sales at a core panel of stores with a "higher-than-average volume" of R&B and/or hip-hop album sales to monitor buying trends of the African-American community. This panel included more independent and smaller chain stores compared to the high percentage of mass merchants that account fo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yo-Yo (rapper)
Yolanda Whitaker, also known as Yo-Yo (born August 4, 1971) is an American rapper and actress. Much of Yo-Yo's music advocates female empowerment. She is the protégé of gangsta rapper Ice Cube. Yo-Yo has dubbed her crew the IBWC, Intelligent Black Woman's Coalition. Career Music Yo-Yo first appeared as a guest on Ice Cube's 1990 debut studio album ''AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted'' on the track "It's a Man's World". Cube returned the favor by appearing on "You Can't Play with My Yo-Yo", on Yo-Yo's 1991 debut album, ''Make Way for the Motherlode''. Each of the videos for the singles from the album were directed by Okuwah Garrett of Power Films. Her follow-up album released in 1992, ''Black Pearl'', was well received by critics,Abdul-Adil, Jaleel (August 1, 1993), "Yo Yo and MC Lyte Turn Tables on Male Rappers", ''Chicago Sun-Times'', p. 9 partly because of its focus on positive messages and uplifting themes that heavily contrasted with the popular gangsta rap style at the time. Des ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lil Mama
Niatia Jessica Kirkland (born October 4, 1989), better known by her stage name Lil Mama, is an American rapper, singer, actress and television presenter from Brooklyn, New York and Harlem, New York. She experienced top 10 ''Billboard'' placements at seventeen with her debut album '' VYP (Voice of the Young People)'' (2008) which debuted at #25 on the Billboard 200. The album spawned her four major singles including her staple song and dance anthem "Lip Gloss", earning her two Teen Choice Awards and Monster Single of the Year nominations at the MTV VMA's. Lil Mama gained further attention in Pop music after a collaboration with Avril Lavigne, for the remix of her hit single "Girlfriend". Lil Mama took a hiatus from music after success of her hit single "Hustler Girl" to stay focused on serving as a judge for total of seven seasons on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew at the age of nineteen from 2008–2012, which made her one of the youngest judges on any competitive television s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monie Love
Simone Johnson or Simone Gooden (born 2 July 1970), better known by her stage name Monie Love, is a British rapper, actress and radio personality from London. Best known for her singles during the late–1980s through the 1990s, Monie Love currently serves as a radio personality for urban adult contemporary station KISS 104.1 WALR-FM in Atlanta, Georgia. Love is a two-time Grammy Award nominee, making her the first British female hip hop artist to hold that distinction. Career Music Love's debut album, '' Down to Earth'', was released on 6 November 1990. It spawned the singles "Monie in the Middle" (a track dealing with a woman's right to determine what she wants out of a relationship) and "It's a Shame (My Sister)" (which sampled the (Detroit) Spinners' "It's a Shame", written for the band by the US musician Stevie Wonder). It also featured house-music vocalist and then-labelmate Ultra Naté. The album reached No. 26 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Love also appears on th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |