Remembering B.o.B.'s Debut "Nothin' on You"
On March 9, 2010, B.o.B released the video for the first single from his debut album, B.o.B. Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray, a track which found him collaborating with a young vocalist on the rise - a kid by the name of Bruno Mars.
Actually, even though he???d yet to have any success on the charts as a vocalist, Bruno had already found a limited degree of fame when he was only six years old, thanks to his Elvis impression. Seriously: in 1992, not only did he have a small part in Honeymoon in Vegas, but he also appeared on MTV, where he was interviewed by Pauly Shore, and The Arsenio Hall Show, where he did his act in some sort of competition against the Dancing Grannies. (The judges deemed it to be a tie.)
11 years later, Mars moved from his home in Hawaii to pursue a recording career in Los Angeles, signing a deal with Motown Records, and while he never actually managed to release anything for the label, it ultimately led him to sign a music publishing deal with Westside Independent in 2005. The following year, he met Aaron Bay-Schuck, who became his A&R manager at Atlantic Records, although it would take another three years for him to sign a deal with the label. He did, however, start to produce and write songs for other artists, including Brandy, Flo Rida, Sean Kingston, and Adam Levine, among others.
It was Bruno???s performance on ???Nothin??? on You,??? however, that really caused people to start taking notice of him as a vocalist.
The video for the song was directed by Ethan Lader and featured animation by George Rausch. Filmed in L.A., it???s filled with cutout animation and performance footage, and it was greeted with enough enthusiasm to earn a nomination for Video of the Year at the 2010 BET Awards.
As for the song itself, ???Nothin??? on You??? was nothin??? short of a stone-cold smash, climbing to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 as well as the U.K. Singles chart, causing people to start asking, ???Say, who???s this Bruno Mars character, anyway???? And the next thing you know, he???s exploded like a...well, you know.
Read More: Bruno Mars' Road to Silk Sonic
