‘Nothin on You’ continues to find new listeners 16 years after its release.
It’s been 16 years since Bruno Mars jumped on this R&B banger as a featured performer, and its popularity is exploding as the internet rediscovers the song all over again.
“Nothin’ on You” was a song by rapper B.o.B and Mars, who sang the hook. The tune was released in 2009 and was featured on the rapper’s debut album B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray.
The retro tune is currently ranked in the Top 20 of the TikTok Music Charts, and new listeners are rediscovering its feel-good beat and positivity toward women. As a result, the track is exploding across playlists on the social media site.
Music fans are calling “Nothin’ on You” deeply relatable. Many TikTokers feature the tune in videos to showcase their romantic relationships, while others perform their own versions to grab a moment in the spotlight.
Additionally, the tune’s YouTube page is flooded with commentary from fans who miss this type of positive music. One wrote, “This generation’s nostalgia for the past decade is already beginning.”
A second penned, “Sometimes nostalgia hits hard, [this song is] a timeless masterpiece forever.” A third YouTube user concluded, “There’s a weird nostalgia that songs like this bring. It makes you want to go back… not to relive everything all over again necessarily, but to feel that feeling of everything’s going to be alright again. Simpler times.”
Initially, “Nothin’ on You” was written for Lupe Fiasco. B.o.B later recorded the track, and Mars was brought in to sing the hook.
Mars wrote the song with Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine (as part of The Smeezingtons). He and Levine played all the instruments along with bass player Brody Brown (per the Bruno Mars Fandom Page).
In 2013, Mars told Rolling Stone that the song’s unforgettable bridge was inspired by one of Prince‘s most romantic songs, “Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” He told MTV News, “me and Phil always had that hook.”
“So one day our other partner — the Silent Bob of the Smeezingtons — Ari, he walked into the studio and said he programmed some drums,” he continued. “It had this old-school hip-hop beat. I said, ‘Gimme the piano,’ and that was the first thing I started playing. Magically, that melody worked with the track.”
Mars quickly went from being a featured player on songs like “Nothin’ on You” to songs like Travie McCoy‘s “Billionaire,” Lil Wayne‘s “Mirror”, Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa‘s “Young, Wild & Free” to hitting the top of the Billboard Charts with “Just the Way You Are” from his debut album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans.
Bruno Mars’ most recent hit was a collaboration with Lady Gaga, “Die With a Smile.” The song spent three weeks at the number one spot on the Billboard charts in 2005.
B.o.B. continues to make music independently.