The One-Hit Wonders – The 2000s Part 11.

Although I didn’t plan to feature many non-UK acts in these series, I did wonder if there were any more American singers in the urban genre that I liked, and as there were plenty of them on the chart in the early-2000s, I thought that I might as well pick one. I have chosen this one because beyond her only hit, it turns out that she has had a rather varied career.

Kandi Burruss started out as a member of the group Xscape, and then went on to launch a solo career. In November 2000, “Don’t Think I’m Not” was released, and this reached no. 9, to become her first and only Top Ten hit in the UK (earning her a Top Of The Pops appearance), doing even better than in America where this reached no. 24. This was taken from the first of her two solo albums. And according to the video, when Kandi was at home, she liked to play boxing computer game Ready 2 Rumble.

Now to go on a diversion for a moment, because when I think back to this one now, I always get this mixed up with something else. Not long after the success of “Don’t Think I’m Not”, “Heard It All Before” was a hit for Sunshine Anderson, another briefly popular American female urban singer. This caught my attention, partly because for a long time I thought the lyrics were “packing my shoulder“, which always made me wonder how such a thing was possible, when it was probably “patting my shoulder” all along.

I know this is coming too close to being like those “have you ever misheard a lyric?” features that have been done by every other radio presenter ever, maybe I should’ve sent this one in because it was so amusing and I could’ve won a t-shirt or something. I can only hope that her shoulder’s been unpacked and is all better now. For a long time I’ve felt that I’ve needed a new pair of ears. Oh right, maybe I should get back to the career of Kandi.

She has also had plenty of success as a songwriter, including being on the team behind big hits for the likes of Destiny’s Child (“Bills Bills Bills”) and TLC (“No Scrubs”), and she has also won a Grammy for this. And in more recent years, Kandi has appeared in various TV shows and films, and she also won the third series of the American version of The Masked Singer, which has got to be a bigger honour than a Grammy I imagine.