Once the label cut ties, it was over for Mista: destined to be one of those one-hit wonder troupes that get eulogized in the YouTube comments section. Bobby dipped back home to Atlanta to play baseball and enroll at Clark Atlanta University, laying down vocals in the studio at night. Years later, because Atlanta is Atlanta, his demos found the ear of a red-hot Ludacris, who signed Bobby, under the name Bobby Valentino, to his Disturbing Tha Peace imprint for a couple of bands and a chain, which in the rapper world is like getting a pair of socks for Christmas.
Luda didn’t have much invested in Bobby, so Bobby had to rustle up an album on his own. He was searching for producers to record with when he remembered he had a good thing going with Tim & Bob before their time was cut short. In the years since, the duo had been working as production mercenaries, racking up plaques with era-defining jams like Tamia’s Hot 97 staple “So Into You” and Sisqó’s unhinged singalong “Thong Song.” Like a private eye, Bobby went out to Los Angeles to hunt them down. One day, without any notice, he pulled up to Tim’s doorstep in Topanga Canyon with the scraps he had been messing around with. Eventually Bobby moved in and their lives became a blur of strip club nights, workouts, and studio time as they pieced together the fragments of his debut album, Disturbing Tha Peace Presents Bobby Valentino.
Recorded near the end of these sessions, “Slow Down,” Bobby’s debut single, is one of the great begging-ass songs of 2000s R&B. It’s a love-at-first-sight story about Bobby spotting a girl with a butterfly tattoo, a bellybutton piercing, and a fat butt who makes him fall so hard that he starts throwing Hail Mary pick-up lines: “I saw you walking, down on Melrose/You looked like an angel, straight out of Heaven, girl,” he croons like he’s living in a dream. He’s practically got drool rolling down his chin, ogling her body like the teen boys in Porky’s. Out of context, it’s awkward and silly and a little creepy (“I was blown away by your sexiness/Now all I have to do is catch up to you”) but the out-of-time Tim & Bob beat turns the mood into something more magical.
In the high-budget CD era, Tim & Bob were used to label meddling, but since they’d put up nearly all of the money for Bobby’s new music, they got the kind of creative freedom they were rarely afforded. One particular inspiration was the S.O.S Band’s “Even When You Sleep,” which has this psychedelic extended intro—guitar riffs out of a mirage; hushed flexatone effects—that gives the entire track the feel of a hallucination. “Slow Down” isn’t far off from that; Tim’s pitched-up sample of the dramatic strings from Hans Zimmer’s The Last Samurai soundtrack, combined with Bob’s gentle guitar plucks, sound straight out of a fairytale. The beat builds without drums for only a little more than 10 seconds, but I barely ever notice the brevity because the feeling of intense infatuation makes time stop.
