NEW YORK (By Melissa Victor/ Virgin Records) - With the smash single "
Ms. New Booty" continuing its rise through the top ten of three airplay formats and surging in legitimate downloaded sales, "THE CHARM," the third album by BUBBA SPARXXX, hits the streets as one of the year's most talked about releases.
"Ms. New Booty" is Bubba's first-ever Top 10 hit in the national Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, moving strongly from No. 13 to No. 9 this week. In radio play, the track is Top 10 in Billboard Radio Monitor's R&B Hip-Hop airplay chart; Top 5 in Mediabase's Rhythmic crossover chart; Top 10 in Mediabase's Urban airplay chart, and still rising in all of them. (Bubba Sparxxx joins Virgin labelmates Dem Franchize Boyz in the pop Top 10.)
Strong radio and video play have driven major digital sales: "Ms. New Booty," a No. 1 video on iTunes, is currently the No. 8 most-downloaded song on iTunes overall daily list of Top Songs; in the Hip-Hop/Rap mini-store, it hit No. 1 in the week of March 27. The video clip is also No. 1 on the popular website community myspace.com.
At the same time, the seven-week online contest which invited fans to upload digital shots of their own backsides at msnewbooty.com, has resulted in untold gigabytes of cyberbooty, with six weekly winners now highlighted alongside the final week's most highly-rated shots. Voting closed the day of album release. The contest winner will be offered a part in the video of the next Bubba Sparxxx single, "Heat It Up."
The video clip of "Ms. New Booty" premiered on BET Network's "106th & Park" countdown show, and has maintained a top 15 most-streamed level in the online crossover bellwether Yahoo! Music website for several weeks. It was also MTV Jams' "Jam of the Week" in early February. The creative five-minute video intersperses performance and dance with a hilarious subplot that portrays Bubba as a TV home-shopping pitchman and door-to-door salesman for a new miracle product guaranteed to improve life for homemakers everywhere. Bubba completed a week-long series of promotional appearances in conjunction with the notorious "Girls Gone Wild" video/DVD franchise, coinciding with mid-March spring break.
The rural Georgia rapper made his original debut on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in 2001 at No. 3 with "Dark Days, Bright Nights." His second album, 2003's critically acclaimed "Deliverance," debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard Top 200 albums.
Bubba's "THE CHARM" includes tracks produced by the top-line hip-hop production talents who have worked with Bubba since his first album project, including Timbaland, producer of his first hit single, "Ugly," and Organized Noize Productions, celebrated breakthrough producers for OutKast and TLC, among others.
In addition to the great response first single "Ms. New Booty" has received, The New York Times, in a front-page Arts section feature, called "THE CHARM" a "consistent and engrossing CD where the emphasis is squarely on the sharply written verses." Rolling Stone Magazine singled out the album track "Ain't Life Grand" as a "truly great song" -- an "introspective gem," with a "unique [rhythm] track." XXL Magazine also praised "The Otherside," calling it "a rich collaboration with Petey Pablo that exemplifies Bubba at his best with articulate verses, a catchy, singsongy hook and a funky but distinctly countrified beat."
Purple Ribbon label head and OutKast member Big Boi has also produced for the album, as have Heatmakers (Brooke Valentine, Cam'Ron, Lil' Flip, the Diplomats); Mr. DJ & Slimm Jim (the latter a programmer on the Outkast album "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below"); and Basement Beats.
