Artists whose career high point was on someone else's track

[Video Game Fan 2000]

If anyone says the Battle of Evermore I'll punch the screen so hard the pope'll feel it.

[thecuriousorange]

Nate Dogg on Area Codes.

Although with the exception of Regulate most of his most famous work was guesting.

I thought that one was Warren G feat. Nate Dogg.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ah you're right, thought it was 'and'.

[willbo]

what about the guy on Taylor Swift's "me"?

[who cares]

The Artful Dodger on Craig David's seminal Bo' Selecta. Prior to that I don't think he'd had a hit since You've Got to Pick a Pocket Or Two, back in the early Victorian era.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

That Quincy Jones bossa nova track they always use to signify 1960s on Austin Power and the like? Rahsaan Roland Kirk on flute.

Bit of a fuck my hat realisation for me when I found out. It's no Serenade for a Cuckoo though. Hope the big man got paid enough for it be a career peak.

[Joe Oakes]

A couple of Wu-related ones spring to mind. Killah Priest's most famous verse was on GZA's 4th Chamber, same for Cappadonna on Ghostface's Winter Warz.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Ghostface on Cuban Linx. All of it but Criminology in particular.

[Art Bear]

No, it's Primitive Painters.

My five year old daughter's favourite song. I nearly ran off the road when she started singing along with Liz one day.

Hot take: the This Mortal Coil version of "Song to the Siren" isn't a patch on the original version on TB's Starsailor.

[phantom_power]

Watching the TOTP repeats just now and Shara Nelson really should have been huge, not just a feature artist on a couple of Massive Attack songs. She has an amazing voice and real stage presence. What happened?

[SpiderChrist]

In 2011, DJ Pete Tong obtained a restraining order against Nelson following her 12 month community order and community service sentence for harassment of Tong and his wife.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shara_Nelson

[batwings]

Rick Wakeman on David Bowie's Life On Mars
Jools Holland on The The's Uncertain Smile.

[buttgammon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shara_Nelson

What the fuck?

Ms Nelson, whose group's biggest hit was the 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy", had claimed that she was his wife and subjected him to nuisance calls, a court heard.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The Artful Dodger on Craig David's seminal Bo' Selecta. Prior to that I don't think he'd had a hit since You've Got to Pick a Pocket Or Two, back in the early Victorian era.

Movin' too Fast was the banger.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Please Don't Turn Me On was decent as well.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

Jools Holland on The The's Uncertain Smile.

Also on Alternative TV's 'Viva La Rock And Roll' and 'Alternatives'

[buzby]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shara_Nelson

Although she was clearly unwell and obviously needed some form of help, Nelson's side of the story was never reported by the media at the time, so we will never know the full story. Bob Stanley was one of the few people at the time who was publically sympathetic to her in an article he wrote for the Guardian (she worked with Saint Etienne after splitting with Massive Attack).

I'm not sure Unfinished Sympathy counts as a 'someone else's record' either, as at the time of the recording of Blue Lines, Nelson was a member of The Wild Bunch collective, not a guest vocalist (she sang vocals on their first record in 1985, a cover of The Look Of Love). She wrote the words and vocal melody too. She left at the start of the recording of Protection due to a change in the dynamics of the group.

Ironically, when Pete Tong started doing his Ibiza Classics 'orchestral dance hits' tours with the Heritage Orchestra in 2017, one of the songs they covered was Unfinished Sympathy. Massive Attack hit out at him at him over his use of it. It's especially rum as on the recorded version that's available on streaming services he somehow had the gall to credit himself as co-composer alongside Nelson and the rest of the group.

[McChesney Duntz]

No, it's Primitive Painters.

I was gonna say.

[confettiinmyhair]

Mr Hudson on Jay-Z's Young Forever