Bigg Robb

Daddy B. Nice's #45 ranked Southern Soul Artist

"Good Lovin' Will Make U Cry (Remix)"

Bigg Robb

Composed by Carl Marshall, Robert "Bigg Robb" Smith, & Bart "Sure 2 B" Thomas

July 24, 2021: "I Did My Time" is now the 11th-ranked southern soul single...

...and Bigg Robb is the #11-ranked southern soul artist on Daddy B Nice's new Top-100 Chart---The New Generation. Click here.

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February 1, 2014: NEW ARTIST GUIDE ALERT!


Bigg Robb is now the #10-ranking Southern Soul artist on Daddy B. Nice's new 21st Century Top 100 Countdown.

See the chart, which encompasses a fifteen-year period in southern soul music.

Go to Daddy B. Nice's new 21st-Century Artist Guide to Bigg Robb.

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See "Tidbits" below for the latest updates and commentary on Bigg Robb, including a spirited exchange between Robb and Daddy B.

To automatically link to Bigg Robb's charted radio singles, awards, CD's and other references, go to "Bigg Robb" in Daddy B. Nice's Comprehensive Index.

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Daddy B. Nice's Original Critique

I came across Bigg Robb on the pre-YouTube Internet long before I heard his songs, which is not the way to fall in love with someone's music. I must have sampled some of the funk Robb was into pretty exclusively at the time (this was the early years of the new century), and dismissed it as of little relevance to the Southern Soul scene. And, having checked this potential Southern Soul guy out--somebody I maybe should have known about but didn't--I waved good-bye to the Internet Bigg Robb with the vague feeling I'd done my duty.

Bigg Robb was never played on the core Southern Soul stations of central Mississippi and bordering regions in those days. In fact, I think I first heard an actual Bigg Robb song (which one I can't remember) on a Mobile, Alabama radio station, and when I did it only confirmed my conviction of Bigg Robb's other-than-Southern-Soulness, because Mobile had always been a particularly Southern Soul-resistant market: they loved their funk.

Then, when Bigg Robb's remix of Mel Waiters' "Hole In The Wall" hit the scene, I was appalled. I called it a "chainsaw-funk-massacre" of the Southern Soul classic. It did not "work" for me. Everything original and charming about "Hole In The Wall," everything that made it a breakthrough for this emerging Southern Soul genre--the rock-and-roll directness, the jocular vocal, the easy-going, mid-tempo beat--was deleted and made to fit this generic, heard-a-thousands-times-before funk format. I couldn't believe Mel Waiters gave it his seal of approval. The true test I put the song to was this: Would "Hole In The Wall" have become a breakthrough hit in its funk version? The answer was a resounding "No!"

(In the interests of "equal time," Bigg Robb told your Daddy B. Nice that the maxi-single of his remix of Mel Waiter's "Hole In The Wall" has sold some 45,000 copies, an astounding number if true. For a lively dialogue between Bigg Robb and Daddy B. Nice on the subject of the "Hole In The Wall" remix, see the "Tidbits" section of this Artist Guide.)

Mel Waiters wasn't the only Southern Soul artist flirting with funk at the time. J. Blackfoot of all people was, too, and your Daddy B. Nice just put it down to the diversions and digressions all artists' careers inevitably take on their winding path to the future.

Time passed. I didn't hear much about Bigg Robb or his music, not even enough to know the Problem Solvas were his group. And, having never found good Southern Soul music down on the Gulf coast--Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, where Bigg Robb was gaining his first tentative foothold--Robb faded from my view at the very time he was marshalling his creative forces to conquer the world of Southern Soul.

Meanwhile, your Daddy B. Nice was trying to make Southern Soul music and musicians famous, and in my travels I kept hearing about a new Southern Soul deejay, "Chico," who I "just had to meet" and who just happened to have a small but growing Internet Southern Soul station based out of--you guessed it--Mobile, Alabama.

Chico was an early and big proponent of Bigg Robb. Indeed, even as Chico and I became friends and fellow drum majors for the Southern Soul parade, he (Chico) was playing music by Bigg Robb that I didn't realize was Bigg Robb's: songs like "Keep On Steppin,'" "I Miss You," "Honey Love" and "Man Next Door."

These songs were in the "tweener"-classics tradition of Dennis Edwards' "Don't Look Any Further," Montel Jordan's "This Is How We Do It," SWV's "Right Here (Human Nature)" and R. Kelly's "When A Woman's Fed Up" and "Step In The Name Of Love"--in other words, not ultra-purist Southern Soul but solid, mainline soul that every self-respecting Southern Soul fan loves just as much.

(Interestingly, T. K. Soul also had a really good funk-synth-soul song, "We Be Slidin'", out around this time that I never associated with T. K. Soul. It could have been a Bigg Robb song for all I knew. It was in the same hybrid funk/Southern Soul vein that Bigg Robb was mining.)

By this time Bigg Robb had taken his music and especially his producing to another level, enlisting lead singers and full-blown arrangements that explored wildly different musical territories. But, not being a lead singer and therefore not having a discernible vocal identity, Bigg Robb's work was anonymous unless the deejay explained the song title and artist.

The breakthrough came in 2007. 8 Tracks N 45's, Bigg Robb's most accomplished work to date, had appeared late in 2006. I can still remember ultra-traditional Southern Soul deejays like WMPR's Outlaw and Ragman introducing him for the first time that year. "He's headed to. . . . (such and such place). That guy's named B-I-G-G, R-O-B-B."

What had happened was one of the more remarkable transformations in contemporary Southern Soul history. A Cameo-Parliament-Funkadelic disciple from Ohio had experienced a Mississippi epiphany, absorbing the major Southern Soul R&B influences and travelling 180 degrees from that pivotal moment when Robb first encountered Mel Waiters and the underground Southern Soul scene. Here it's illustrative to go back in time:

"We were doing a show in Greenwood, Mississippi" (in the early years of the decade) Bigg Robb told Blues Critic in 2007) "and that's the first time I met Mel Waiters. I was in the dressing room and wondering who was it on the stage killing 'em like that? He was the star of the show! And they said, 'That's Mel Waiters.'"

That meeting with one of contemporary Southern Soul's undisputed masters, Mel Waiters, was one of those turnstile-type moments in an artist's career. Bigg Robb soon went to school on the King of Southern Soul, Johnnie Taylor, putting out a "Slide On"-themed CD in 2002.

Robb also found the funkiest song in the Johnnie Taylor repertoire--a song with a druggy ambience reminiscent of mid-period Sly Stone: "Good Love." And I give Robb great credit for being smart enough to recognize the song was his artistic "bridge" over the abyss to Southern Soul heaven.

The first time I heard "Big Man Love," kind of a "Good Love (Bigg Robb Remix)," I knew Bigg Robb had succeeded. All the best elements (and none of the worst) of funk were present: a bass line like a mule kick, a classic sample, a technically-perfect, synth-laced arrangement and production. And, on top of that--the magic ingredient, as it were--Bigg Robb's brilliant, over-the-top monologue on the virtues of big men versus skinny men.

Now I'm a tall skinny man. I have trouble finding clothes, too--just like those big men. But I have to admit that Bigg Robb's rant on "skinny guys" and praise of "big guys" is the funniest thing I've ever heard on the subject. He sums up:

"Now the ladies, they've found out that
A big man will pay your bills.
A big man will run his fingers through your hair and massage that new growth.
And a big man will make love to you all night long,
Even help you take care of the kids you made with one of those skinny guys."

And yet, "Big Man Love" wasn't even the best track on 8 Tracks N 45's. That distinction went to the song, "I Thought She Was At Home," a soulful (thanks especially to singer Big Woo) Bigg Robb extravaganza that in both musical artistry and verbal genius was impossible not to listen to.

The story ("same old story," chitlin' circuit R&B insiders might say) was that of a husband and wife being unfaithful to one another in the same motel, only it was no longer the "Holiday Inn," site of so many of these Southern Soul tales: Bigg Robb updated it to the "Hampton Inn," and it's surprising how just that little tweak, that little effect, within a myriad of others, lent a certain timely poignancy to the song.

While Robb had always rapped, it had never taken place within the quality of music and quality of execution evident in these brash new songs. If "Big Man Love" was the first indisputably Southern Soul-type song which perfectly captured Bigg Robb's genius for monologue, "I Thought She Was At Home's" street-wise confessional was an absolute tour de force.

With Big Woo wailing on the melody, Robb amped up the energy by rapping over the bass and drums, his leisurely, finely-detailed account of the pitfalls of betrayal as good in a new-generation way as the mesmerizing Bobby Rush at his best--
his narration as reassuringly confident and real as Mt. Rushmore-sized Latimore on the classic, "Let's Straighten It Out."

Then came "Good Lovin' Will Make U Cry," Robb's masterpiece, the centerpiece of his 2007 sampler: Blues, Soul & Old School. A scant five-plus years after meeting Mel Waiters, Robb had reached the pinnacle of Southern Soul music, artistically speaking. Instead of bending soul to fit funk, he was bending funk to make soul.

Now thoroughly conversant with the genre, Bigg Robb drew upon all of the rap and funk and soul production knowledge he'd accumulated in twenty-some years in the music businesss and poured it like an old-time alchemist into the Southern Soul vehicle. From its majestic, Ray Charles-in-his-country-phase prologue to its dramatic monologue section and its aria-like synthesizer verse and chorus, the song oozed confidence, musicality and brilliance.

Where Robb's remix of "Hole In The Wall" in the early days had depleted it, Robb's remix of Carl Marshall's "Good Lovin'" completely transformed it, dwarfing the Marshall original. It was the Southern Soul equivalent of Phil Spector constructing a "wall-of-sound" around an early Buddy Holly song (although that never happened).

In spite of its inherent soulfulness, Marshall's original version of "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry" dragged a little, sounding a little limp at times. Robb changed all that, electrifying it with the energy of a thousand lightning storms.

And the Bob Dylan-like Marshall, although a great Southern Soul songwriter and arranger/producer, did not have the vocal chops to slam a song out of the park on vocal talent alone. Robb, while showcasing the Carl Marshall vocal that had made it all possible (and enhancing that vocal by surrounding it with a state-of-the-art arrangement and production techniques), enlarged on it beyond anything anyone had a right to expect.

The monologue that Robb begins after the traditional part (Marshall's part) of the song is over starts extremely casually (again, very much like Bobby Rush), but it sucks you in like quicksand.

Then the synthesizer-vocal takes over, and it is a flight to Southern Soul heaven. It is bliss--one of the finest moments in contemporary R&B.

And the fact that Bigg Robb did it his way should be inspiration to any musician in greater R&B who suspects Southern Soul music is just a marginal, back-water, insider's medium. On the contrary, Southern Soul music is just begging for the kind of adaptive originality Bigg Robb finally and consummately brought to it.

And the great thing about Robb's ascendance up the Southern Soul charts from Bigg Robb's personal standpoint--he is an artist, after all, who could easily go into hiphop again or adult/urban--is that it succeeded. He has wood-cut his name and identity into the Southern Soul tree.

--Daddy B. Nice

About Bigg Robb

Robert Smith (Bigg Robb) was born in 1967, the "summer of love," in the humid, sizzling, 12th of July heat of Cincinnati, Ohio. In the eighties Robert became a long-running Cincinnati deejay ("Sugar Daddy From Cincinnati," playing commercial R&B, rap and hiphop), a position from which he secured interviews with Bootsy Collins (of Funkadelic) and Roger Troutman (of Zapp). In an interview with Blues Critic's Dylann DeAnna in 2007, Bigg Robb described the importance of these two masters of eighties' funk on his life:

"Bootsy Collins came to the radio station and did an interview with me at 6 in the morning and people swarmed to the radio station for this interview with Bootsy. And Bootsy came looking like you've always seen him look. Star glasses, spikes, the clothes and, dude, I was stunned! That was the moment. The defining point and I knew I wanted to be an entertainer. Whatever Bootsy does that's what I wanted to do. Be an entertainer! Then I saw Roger and once I saw Roger perform I was, like, "It's a wrap! I'm going to be up in this music thang!".

Collins and Troutman had recording studios in the Cincinnati-Dayton, Ohio area in the eighties and nineties, and Troutman in particular became Bigg Robb's mentor--Robb working as valet, personal assistant and eventually studio mate. (Roger Troutman was shot to death by his brother Larry in a Cain & Abel-style murder/suicide on April 25, 1999).

By the time Roger Troutman died, Bigg Robb had a rap album and other hiphop studio work under his belt. Robb had joined Zapp, playing mainline synth-funk, and on a tour date in Greenwood, Mississippi he met Mel Waiters, whom he admits he had never heard of.

Robb's remix of the Southern Soul master's "Hole In The Wall" (a perennial Top 10 Daddy B. Nice's Southern Soul Singles 90's-00's) marked Bigg Robb's entry into the world of chitlin' circuit, Southern Soul-styled music.

However, the Southern Soul influence wasn't apparent right away. Robb's first albums (both those under the name Bigg Robb and those under the name Da Problem Solvas) were very much in the northern-funk style of George Clinton and Bootsy Collins.

But there were pronounced affinities to Southern Soul music as well. "Grown Folks music," which became the title of Robb's first CD, was one such connection, because it played to the Southern Soul fans' exhaustion with hiphop-dominated, contemporary youth culture.

Another theme in common with the traditional Southern R&B fans (and one which became the title of his second LP) was Robb's fascination with "big" in general and "big women" in particular (usually spelled "bigg" in Bigg Robb's world). Bigg Robb's first signature single was "The Big Woman Song," memorialized in the The Big Woman CD in 2003.

Both were were largely funk-rapping concoctions, with Robb playing "master of ceremonies" to a musical format that varied greatly in quality from song to song. Witty, flamboyant, and a charismatic speaker, Robb was nevertheless not a "lead singer."

As a matter of fact, the occasions on which Robb's talents really shone were collaborations with lead singers: "I Miss You" w/ Mama Big, "Guajira" with Don Cisco and "Big Robb's House Party" with Karen Brown.

So Robb took the "next" step, putting together a band called Da Problem Solvas (not to be confused with the Problem Solvaz, a Sourthern rap quartet), with its three principals being Robb, longtime collaborator/co-writer Bart "Sure 2 B Thomas (see song credits for "Good Lovin'" above) and lead singer Big Woo, whom they picked up from a Toledo, Ohio-based band.

Da Problem Solvas' Every Woman Deserves To Be Satisfied arrived in 2004, and it marked another milestone for the hard-working, "driven" performer/producer.

And yet, there was a relative hiatus of a couple of years (a Christmas album, a Hurrican Katrina album, and other-artist projects) before Bigg Robb returned to form with a vengeance on 8 Tracks N 45's in 2006.

This eighteen-track, funk-slash-Southern Soul, "Beatles White Album"-styled near-masterpiece of a CD featured a roster of artists executing a big-tent, three-ring-circus musical agenda that dwarfed anything seen before on the chitlin' circuit.

Robb brought in talent from the Gap Band, the Ohio Players and seemingly anywhere else he could get his hands on it. Bigg Robb repeated the formula in 2007's Blues, Soul and Old School , crossing the line into "compilation" album territory by even presenting full-fledged guest-artist songs such as Pat Cooley's popular Southern Soul hit, "Older Woman, Younger Man."

The jewel of the album, however, was Robb's collaboration with Carl Marshall on Marshall's already-established Southern Soul hit, "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry."

In awarding Bigg Robb the first annual "Daddy" Award (2007) for Southern Soul Producer of the Year (and #3-ranked Southern Soul Song of the year), Daddy B. Nice wrote :

"Good Lovin' Will Make U Cry" (Remix)------------Bigg Robb w/ Carl Marshall

"For the first time ever, the technical edge and clarity of hiphop and funk were fused seamlessly and naturally with Southern Soul, serving notice that a new and masterful Southern Soul producer had come of age."

Blues, Soul & Old School became one of the best-selling CD's in Southern Soul rhythm and blues history, and was still selling well as of this writing, July 2008.

Bigg Robb, who tours widely and frequently, remains based in Ohio.

Bigg Robb Discography:

2002 Grown Folks Muzic (Over 25 Sound)

2003 The Bigg Woman CD (Over 25 Sound)

2004 Every Woman Deserves To Be Satisfied (Da Problem Solvas) (Over 25 Sound)

2004 Merry Christmas From The Bigg Man (Over 25 Sound)

2005 Southern Soul Cares (Over 25 Sound/Robb Music)

2006 8 Tracks N 45's (Robb Music)

2007 Blues, Soul and Old School (Over 25 Sound)

2007 Best Of Da Problem Solvas (Robb Music)

Tidbits

1. July 19, 2008. Bigg Robb, perhaps more than other artist in recent memory, has devoted himself to dance floor jams, and none more so than the "Slide" songs derived from Johnnie Taylor's "Slide On" mixes of the late nineties.

Fans who are currently enamored of Bigg Robb's excellent and best-selling CD, Blues Soul And Old School will find a similarly enjoyable compilation in Robb's lesser-known package of "slide" songs from 2002: Slide On.

Here you'll find dance jams you've heard before on Southern Soul radio over the years, probably wondering where they came from and where you could find them. Among the stand-out, upbeat tracks are Pete Frazier's "Majestic Slide," Mel Waiters "Got My Whiskey (Remix)," and Marcia Griffith's "Electric Boogie," not to mention the King's (Johnnie Taylor's) original "Slide On." DBN.

2. July 2, 2008. In early 2008 Bigg Robb and Daddy B. Nice had a lively and friendly difference of opinion on the merits of his first venture into Southern Soul: the Bigg Robb remix of Mel Waiters' "Hole In The Wall." In awarding Bigg Robb #3 Southern Soul Song of the Year (2007) and #1 "Daddy" Award for Best Producer/Arranger of the Year, Daddy B. Nice had written:

"For a guy whose first foray into chitlin' circuit R&B a few years ago was quite frankly a chainsaw-funk-massacre of Mel Waiter's "Hole In The Wall," Bigg Robb sure got his Southern Soul baccalaureate in record time.

With "Good Lovin' (Bigg Robb Remix)," for the first time ever, the technical edge and clarity of hiphop and funk were fused seamlessly and naturally with Southern Soul (Carl Marshall's contemporary classic), serving notice that a new and masterful Southern Soul producer had come of age."

Here is the exchange that followed between Bigg Robb and Daddy B. Nice:

RE: BIGG ROBB:
THANK YOU FOR THE "DADDY" AWARD, BUT WHAT DOES CHAINSAW FUNK MASSACRE MEAN?

daddybnice

thank you for the award

i dont know what chainsawfunk massacre of hole in the wall means?
please advise is that good or bad

happy new year from the the man that wrote
1.grown n sexy
older woman younger man
i thought she was at work
good lovin remix
down south shuffle
keep on swingin
im ready 2 party
mamas song

and 35 more last year

smile

bigg robb



Daddy B Nice replies:

Robb,

That's bad.

What I'm trying to say is that you went from the outhouse (Hole in the Wall remix) to the penthouse (Good Lovin' remix) in the space of a few years. (Smile) .

In fact, "Hole In The Wall" was one of the reasons I didn't get "with" you when you first started out: I just couldn't stand it!

And I've watched you get better and better (Keep On Steppin--better) (Big Man Love--even better) (I Thought She Was At Home--even better) until you just knocked me off my feet with "Good Lovin'". (That's good!! That's magnificent!! You may not even realize how good it is!!)

So don't be disappointed by the qualification. You're not a true Southern Soul Star (ask Sir Charles or T.K) until you get "beat up" by Daddy B. Nice a little! Now you can be sure you've "arrived".

Daddy


BIGG ROBB RESPONDS:

daddy!

LOL!

hole in the wall the remix is a classic and you know it!
i can see you dancin to it in a dark room so no body can c u

i understand you dont want your fellow "true blues" enthusiast to know u like it

smile

no i understand evrybody like's what they like i think the sales for the remix are about 45,000 for the maxi single now!

thats more units than anybody sells any more

on another note thank you so very much 4 your support and for actually listening to the music and lyrics

the line that you picked as "line of the year" from i thought she was at home even i had forgot how poignant and real it is just hadnt listened to the song in a awhile .

thanks so much for helping spread the word about bigg robb and the over 25 sound
because of folks like you we get a lil closer everyday to the goal line

god bless
keep on swingin

Bigg Robb

(Note: Daddy B. Nice wrote:

The best line from a song in 2007 was the pithy couplet from the cheater in Bigg Robb's "I Thought She Was At Home," upon seeing his wife with another guy in the lobby of the Hampton Inn:

"And I never thought she would do to me,
What I thought I would never do to her."

DBN

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3.
May 23, 2009: New CD Alert: Jerri Curl Muzik (Over 25 Sounds)

Bargain-Priced Jerri Curl Muzik

4.

April 24, 2010: NEW ALBUM ALERT:

Grown Folks Gospel: Songs Of Encouragement

See Daddy B. Nice's #1 "Breaking" Southern Soul Single: April 2010---"Everybody Makes Mistakes"

5.

January 6, 2011: NEW ALBUM ALERT:

Bargain-Priced Soul Prescription CD

Comparison-Priced Soul Prescription CD

Recommended Singles: "The Crying Zone," "Let It Go," "Backtracking"

See Daddy B. Nice's Breaking Southern Soul Singles for January 2011: Bigg Robb's "Let It Go" and "Back Tracking"

See Daddy B. Nice's #1 'Breaking' Southern Soul Single for May 2011: REMIX OUR LOVE.

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6.

October 22, 2012: NEW ALBUM ALERT: JUKE JOINT MUSIC

Sample Or Buy Bigg Robb's Juke Joint Music CD, Mp3's.

Daddy B. Nice Recommended Singles: "Sugar Shack" (featuring Ms. Jackson), "Young Folks Love The Blues"...

Daddy B. Nice notes: ...But this is just the tip of the iceberg. JUKE JOINT MUSIC is a compilation similar to BLUES SOUL & OLD SCHOOL, filled with marquee cameo singles (i.e. Klass Band, L. J. Echols) and prior primo Bigg Robb singles (i.e. "The Crying Zone," "Young Folks Love The Blues)". Eighteen (!) full tracks.

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If You Liked. . . You'll Love

If you loved the country soul of Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You," you'll find the 21st-century equivalent in Bigg Robb's masterful remix of Carl Marshall's "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry."

Honorary "B" Side

"I Thought She Was At Home w/ Da Problem Solvas"

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