The Roots - You Got Me

"But sometimes relationships get ill. No doubt."

Album: Things Fall Apart [4th album]
Recorded: Greenwich Village, New York
Genre: Hip Hop, Conscious Hip Hop
Album Release: February 23rd 1999
Single Release: January 25th 1999 [lead single]
Length: 4.19
Producer: Scott Storch & Grand Wizzards
Cuts: Scratch
Beatbox: Rahzel
Vocalist: Black Thought, Eve, Erykah Badu
Label: MCA Records

Music Video


Live version ft Jill Scott


Live version ft Erykah Badu & Jill Scott

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (albums): #7
France (albums): #9
Germany (albums): #11
Holland (albums): #4
US (albums): Certified platinum on April 22nd 2013
US (albums): #4
Spotify = 155,000,000 +
YouTube Music = 80,000,000 +
Grammy Award Winner 2000: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
Grammy Awards Nominee 2000: Best Rap Album

Credits

Bass, guitar, drums, keyboards, piano, viola, violin

Details

• The beat is an original composition, recorded using live instruments. It doesn't feature any samples, except for a vocal from another Roots track.
• 'You Got Me' was originally a Jill Scott song. Scott Storch had produced it for her but his former bandmates in The Roots were so impressed that they wanted it for themselves. Storch eventually agreed. Jill Scott was then supposed to sing the hook on The Roots track and even recorded it, but at the last minute, the label insisted she be replaced with Erykah Badu as they thought she would help the track commercial performance. Badu's debut album, 1997's Baduizm, had reached #2 in the US.
  
  Jill, who had been relegated to the hook before been dropped from the track entirely, was understandably disappointed. The track would go on to win a Grammy award. Jill was given a songwriting credit so her career definetly received a boost but one can only imagine what would've happended if her version would have won the Grammy. Maybe we'd be seeing Jill Scott's name up in lights instead of Beyonce's. Maybe Jill Scott would have married Jigga Man and be tipped to run for the oval office after a sufficient period of adjusting the public's expectations to her new found political ambitions? We can only speculate. Of course, it's always possible that the track would have under performed. Ultimately, Jill Scott and Badu don't harbor any noticeable ill will as they have performed the song together multiple times (see video 3 above).
  
• Jill's version would be performed live because she went on tour with the band. Badu's version was featured on MTV in heavy rotation. So both versions found a way to rise to prominence at roughly the same time. For every 10 people that absent mindedly heard the Badu version, playing somewhere in the background as they argued about what to watch next, there was one enraptured fan at a live show listening intently to Jill. So in a weird way it kind of evened itself out.
  
• Things fall apart is a phrase that's first known use is in W'B. Yeates' poem 'The Second Coming' (1919). 
• In the albums liner notes the lady rapper Eve is listed by her former name Eve of Destruction.
• The music video features a cameo from the rapper Common, who was known to be in a relationship with Badu near the time of release.
  

Artwork