Lyfe Jennings – Must Be Nice

An anomaly in the R&B genre, Lyfe Jennings has distinguished himself as a self-produced singer and guitarist who mixes love songs with astute social insights, insight into everyday life and romance, and candid meditations on his own challenges. With albums like Lyfe 268-192 (2004), the gold-certified The Phoenix (2006), and Lyfe Change (2008), Jennings has reached the high levels of the R&B/hip-hop chart every two or three years since making his breakthrough at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. 777 (2019), his third album of the 2010s, was supposed to be his last word.

Baduizm
Born Chester Jermaine Jennings, Lyfe Jennings is a native of Toledo, Ohio. As a small child, he sang in the choir at his church, and by the time he was in his early teens, he was part of a family group called the Dotsons. He served ten years in prison on an arson conviction. He composed and performed music throughout his period, particularly drawing inspiration from Erykah Badu’s Baduizm as a songwriter. Shortly after his release in 2002, Jennings performed live for the first time, recorded a demo, and participated in Amateur Night at the Apollo. As he strode to the mike with his acoustic guitar, the notoriously cruel crowd of the Harlem theater preemptively jeered Jennings, but the performer’s genuine grit and honesty won them over for a five-night run that saw him sell copies of his demo and spark interest throughout the music industry.

After being approached by other companies, he signed with Columbia and made his official Lyfe 268-192 debut in August 2004. The self-produced album, which was named in part after his prison number, peaked at number seven on the R&B/hip-hop chart, reached number 39 on the Billboard 200, and gave rise to three charting singles, including the platinum-certified Top 40 pop song “Must Be Nice.” Jennings’s song “Greedy,” in which he sang about being sought by the authorities for unpaid child support, perfectly encapsulated his personal experiences.

Jennings was paired with the likes of Three 6 Mafia, Project Pat, and Young Buck for The Phoenix. The singer’s debut featured no guest verses, therefore these collaborations were undoubtedly planned to increase her appeal to rap listeners. However, the most popular song was a duet with fellow singer LaLa Brown. “S.E.X.” was Jennings’ second Top 40 success and the number one song on the R&B/hip-hop chart. It is a ballad about the sexual pressures teenage girls face. It propelled August 2006’s The Phoenix to the top of the Billboard 200. By year’s end, both the single and its parent release had earned gold certification. As Jennings worked on his third record, he looked for additional producing partners. Lyfe Change was a number four Billboard 200 hit when it was released in April 2008; however, its success was primarily attributed to “Never Never Land,” a number eighteen R&B/hip-hop single that Jennings wrote and produced. Wyclef Jean, Troop’s Steve Russell, and the Underdogs all contributed to the album.

I Continue to Trust
2009 was the year Jennings planned to release his next album, which was formerly tentatively called Sooner or Later. Rather, in August 2010, he made a comeback on Asylum/Warner Bros. with I Still Believe, a set that featured minor contributions from Troy Taylor, Bryan-Michael Cox, and Anthony Hamilton, with a portion of the production burden handled by T-Minus. Jennings intended for it to be his last album as the lead singer, citing duties to his family. Despite being his third consecutive album to debut in the Top Ten of the Billboard 200, Lucid—recorded for the Mass Appeal label following a second spell in prison—followed it in October 2013. The minor radio hits “Busy” and “Statistics” helped the album get into the R&B/hip-hop Top Ten, despite its lower profile and absence of well-known studio collaborators. This demonstrated that Jennings still had a lot to say from the viewpoint of the average person. The musician maintained his consistent output pace in June 2015 with the release of Relativity, the ninth R&B/hip-hop single Tree of Lyfe. He released 777 in August 2019, which was declared to be his final album.