Released January 23, 1999 Label LaFace | Recorded 1998 | |
Genre R&B
hip hop soul
trip hop Length 4:39 (re-edited album version)
5:25 (original clean version)
5:39 (original explicit version) Writer(s) James Harris III, Terry Lewis
Tony "Prof-T" Tolbert
Tionne Watkins
Lisa Lopes
Marshall L. Martin
Giorgio Moroder
Pete Belotte
Donna Summer
Morris Dickerson *Charles Miller *Sylvester Allen *Harold Brown *Howard Scott *Lee Oskar *Leroy Jordan | ||
"I'm Good at Being Bad" is a song recorded by American girl group TLC for their third album, FanMail. The track was inspired by Janet Jackson's song "What About" on her 1997 studio album, The Velvet Rope, which both shared producer duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Contents
The song was released as a promotional single from the album around the time "No Scrubs" was sent to radio. Despite not ever receiving an official airplay or commercial release, the song peaked within the top 40 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart. Left Eye's rap section of the song was included in the uncut version of the "Unpretty" music video.
Composition
The song original title was "Bitch Like Me". The song along with "Silly Ho" were said to crank up the "raunch level" for the girls with the lyrics insist they want "a 10-inch or bigger / A lick-it-from-the-back-type nigga [sic]."
Release
The initial pressings of FanMail featured a borrowed lyrics from Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" in "I'm Good at Being Bad", sung by T-Boz. The interpolation was removed on later pressings of the explicit version. The removal of the interpolation shortened the song by exactly one minute from 5:39 to 4:39. The interpolation was never removed from the clean version, although the clean version did remove the last fourteen seconds of the original (which repeats the words "with a bitch like me, nigga what?"), shortening it from 5:39 to 5:25. When the song played on several urban and urban AC radio stations, the words "witch" and "playa" are included in the clean version, replacing the curse words.