Hootie & The Blowfish were one of those bands that I always wound up buying records from, but couldn’t figure out *why* I bought them. Because, let’s face it, Hootie’s material was pretty forgettable (in an enjoyable bar-band kind of way). A greatest hits album from those guys is generally all you need.
I must admit that I was quite intrigued when I found out that Darius Rucker, the band’s lead singer, was releasing a solo album. I was even more intrigued when I found that he was abandoning Hootie’s generic rock/pop sound to embrace a funkier, more soulful vibe.
The album that resulted, 2002’s “Back To Then”, wasn’t a superb album. Hootie sounded a little at sea sharing mic space with the likes of Lil’ Mo and Snoop Dogg (who will apparently rap on *anyone”‘s album. However, there are a couple of songs on the album that soar enough to make it worth a purchase-especially nowadays, when you can probably find it dirt cheap.
I’d known for a while that there was a video for “Exodus”, the album’s second single and my favorite track on the album by a fairly wide margin. I couldn’t find it anywhere, until the song popped into my head last night and I decided to check (again) on Youtube. Check the video out. You might be surprised at how good the song is.
For the record, I think that’s Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (AKA Fancy from the Jamie Foxx Show) in the video, and Musiq Soulchild and Kenna (who’s gonna get a spot on his own in this blog soon) sing background vocals. The video, if I’m not mistaken, was shot in South Africa. What a beautiful song. Of course, after this album flopped, darius went back to Hootie and THEN started making shitty Burger King commercials.
