Next — "Too Close"
The greatest innuendo-hiding-in-plain-sight of 90s radio: a bouncy R&B smash unmistakably about dancing too close ("you're making it hard for me") that daytime radio played all year without blinking. It spent five weeks at #1 and finished as Billboard's #1 single of 1998.
Next formed in Minneapolis in 1992: Robert "R.L." Huggar and brothers Terry "T-Low" Brown and Raphael "Tweety" Brown. Kay Gee of Naughty by Nature signed the trio to Divine Mill, his imprint under Arista, and their debut album Rated Next arrived September 30, 1997, led by the single "Butta Love." "Too Close" followed as the second single on January 27, 1998 — produced by Kay Gee over a sample of Kurtis Blow's 1979 "Christmas Rappin'," a bouncing club groove with a chorus that was unmistakably about grinding on a dancefloor and its physical consequences.
That was the whole joke, and everyone was in on it except, apparently, radio programmers: "you're making it hard for me" rode morning shows, school dances, and grocery-store speakers for the entire year. The song spent five non-consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, topped the R&B chart, went platinum, and finished as Billboard's year-end #1 single of 1998 — the biggest hit of the year, hiding its punchline in plain sight. Rated Next eventually climbed to 2× platinum on its back.
Next scored another R&B #1 with "Wifey" in 2000, but "Too Close" is the one everybody remembers — the song a whole generation slow-grinded to at homecoming before realizing, years later, exactly what it was about.
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