(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Singles: #17: Cassie – Me & U (2006)

What’s that saying? “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts?” It certainly applies to music as well. Once in a while, we come across a song which is the result of a fantastic set of circumstances coming together—the forces of the universe conspiring or the planets aligning. The best example of it in the zeroes is Cassie and her masterful whole of minor parts, “Me & U”.

Cassie never was really perceived as a particularly exceptional talent. She had an ok voice but not one so unique that you could pick it from a lineup. One thing going for her was she was tremendously gorgeous, being a former model and all. In a perfect world, talent should surpass aesthetic beauty in any event; but one who says that it’s not an important component in achieving success in pop culture is being naïve. It certainly made her videos an enjoyable watch. Nevertheless, pretty face and all, there’s not much to make you too inclined to try to discover more about her. Especially not when she had already given us “Me & U,” a song so wonderful that you really couldn’t possibly care less what else she had to offer.

It comes to no surprise that the success of this single is not even all Cassie’s to take credit for—a great percentage of it has to go to producer Ryan Leslie. He discovered Cassie, and having regarded her the focal point of his NextSelection music label, he insured prosperity on her breakout by providing her with one of the most fantastic beats of the decade to work with on her debut single. Witnessed on his adequately successful solo singles (“Diamond Girl”, “Addiction”, and “Gibberish”), Leslie was a first-rate songwriter and an outstanding producer, but there was something not there—a star quality perhaps, or the ability to sell a hook. Since Cassie was probably his most definite ticket to chart success, he went all-in on her by giving her “Me & U” to carry.

This beat was so magnificent that you’d have to be a total dud to mess it up. Copying most Timbaland and Danja-influenced hits that governed the charts around the time of its release, “Me & U” was centered around a minimal, synth-encumbered hook. But unlike the aforementioned Timbo beats that was planned to sound gritty, this was sounded intimate. It was more soothing than vivifying, more wispy than intense. “Me & U” feels mysterious, private, a little bit eerie, and bewilderingly spellbinding. Make the song instrumental and it could almost work as a late-90’s Boards of Canada or Aphex Twin song.

But Cassie, as clueless as she seems, can’t be totally disregarded either. Leslie accompanied the beat with the perfect set of words, a come-on song that economizes the seduction a little bit, a song composed to communicate the moment before the hook-u. Cassie utters the song quietly and without emotion, which is just the sort of underplaying that such a gentle-sounding love song requires, even though it doesn’t really show off her vocal prowess. “I think I wanna make a move,” she sings it a way that sounds tremendously personal, more like a confessional in a diary entry than a line she says to her girls in a club before she grinds with some guy on the dance floor.

I don’t know if you can technically call Cassie a one-hit wonder—she’s had pretty good and passably hits like “Long Way 2 Go” and “Official Girl”. Sad to say that the only thing we’ve heard from Cassie recently is a leak of a bunch of her stolen naked pictures in the net, and news of her shaving half her head. She definitely never had a successor single as jaw dropping as “Me & U”. With songs like this though, you don’t question the artist’s inability to follow it up, but you marvel at how lucky they were able to put it together in the first place. I don’t know whether it was the act of God or the concordance of all humanity that was responsible for it, but for a few months in 2006, “Me & U” made Cassie a goddess.