The 2000s File Feature
That's What I'm Looking For
That's What I'm Looking For: Da Brat's Brash Return to the Hot 100 The Baddest Female in Rap When Da Brat arrived in 1994 as the first female solo rap artist…
01 The Story
That's What I'm Looking For: Da Brat's Brash Return to the Hot 100
The Baddest Female in Rap
When Da Brat arrived in 1994 as the first female solo rap artist to go platinum in the United States, she did so with a swagger that most of her contemporaries, male or female, couldn't match. Her debut Funkdafied, produced under the guidance of Jermaine Dupri and the So So Def Recordings banner, established her as a lyricist of genuine force: quick, clever, and possessed of a charisma that translated immediately through the speakers. By 2000, the landscape had shifted considerably. The second half of the 1990s had produced a new generation of female hip-hop voices, and Da Brat had been somewhat quieter commercially after her 1996 album Anuthatantrum. "That's What I'm Looking For," the lead single from her third album Unrestricted, was her statement of continued relevance.
The track debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at position 93 on February 26, 2000, climbing steadily through the spring. It reached its peak of 56 on April 15, 2000, spending 18 weeks on the chart. Those numbers reflect a solid presence in the Hot 100's upper mid-range, a position that the rapper built through consistent urban radio airplay and the loyalty of an audience that had followed her from the mid-1990s.
The So So Def Sound in 2000
Jermaine Dupri's production aesthetic had evolved through the late 1990s into a streamlined, bass-heavy bounce sound that still carried his signature layering of samples and live instrumentation. "That's What I'm Looking For" slots comfortably into that aesthetic, built for the kind of radio and club play that So So Def tracks consistently achieved in the Atlanta-influenced urban contemporary market. The production provides Da Brat with exactly the kind of platform she performs best on: a track with momentum and pocket, enough space for the vocal performance to lead without getting buried.
Da Brat's delivery on the track is characteristically assured. She had spent years developing a flow that prioritized personality over technical display, a choice that sometimes led critics to underestimate her but consistently connected with listeners who prized distinctiveness over virtuosity. Her voice on record carries a roughness that was unusual in the polished urban contemporary market of 2000, and "That's What I'm Looking For" lets that roughness do its work without trying to smooth it out.
Context Within Unrestricted
Unrestricted represented a slightly more mature Da Brat, one navigating a changed commercial landscape without abandoning the core persona that had made her career. The album included collaborations with several prominent artists and demonstrated a range that her earlier work had only suggested. As the lead single, "That's What I'm Looking For" carried the responsibility of reasserting her chart presence after several years of relative absence from the Hot 100, and it accomplished that task with competence and confidence.
The Lil' Kim era, the Missy Elliott era, the eve of Nicki Minaj: the space for female hip-hop voices on mainstream charts in 2000 was real but competitive, and each of those voices brought a distinct identity. Da Brat's identity had always been built on a certain kind of unself-conscious cool, a refusal to perform femininity in the way commercial pressures often demanded of female rappers. That identity remained intact on this track, which was part of its appeal to the audience that claimed her as their own.
Radio Play and Urban Chart Performance
The song's Hot 100 performance was supplemented by strong showing on urban and rap-specific charts, where Da Brat's core audience was more concentrated. Radio play in the urban format sustained the song through the spring with a consistency that reflected genuine demand rather than passive chart momentum. Urban R&B radio in 2000 was one of the most powerful promotional mechanisms in the industry, and tracks that earned real rotation there could sustain Hot 100 presence long past the initial buzz period.
Legacy and Continued Influence
Da Brat's place in hip-hop history is secure regardless of where individual singles landed on the Hot 100. She opened a door in 1994 that subsequent female rappers walked through, and the commercial breakthrough of Funkdafied proved to an industry that was still skeptical that women could anchor solo rap careers at the platinum level. "That's What I'm Looking For" is a snapshot of her maintaining that legacy in a new millennium. Press play and hear what unapologetic confidence sounds like.
"That's What I'm Looking For" -- Da Brat's tenacious 2000s chart statement.
02 Song Meaning
That's What I'm Looking For: Desire, Self-Determination, and the Female Rap Voice
Knowing What You Want
The title of the track announces its central preoccupation: the narrator knows what she is looking for, and the song is in large part a declaration of that self-knowledge. In the context of female rap in 2000, this declarative confidence was not incidental but foundational. One of the consistent contributions of female hip-hop voices to the genre has been the insistence on the narrator's own clarity of desire, refusing to be positioned as the passive object of male attention and recasting themselves as the active subject of their own wants.
Da Brat's lyrical persona had always operated from this position of self-determination, and "That's What I'm Looking For" extends it. The narrator is clear about what she values in a partner and what she won't accept, framing the search for connection as a matter of standards rather than desperation. That framing gave the song a particular resonance with listeners who recognized the empowerment in naming your own criteria rather than waiting to be chosen.
The Grammar of Rap Desire
Hip-hop love songs occupy a distinctive space in the genre. The form's roots in verbal performance and competitive expression give its romantic proclamations a different quality than pop love songs; there is often more self-assertion, more bravado, more insistence on the narrator's own desirability alongside the object of desire. Da Brat works within this grammar naturally, blending attraction and self-assertion in a way that feels more like two aspects of the same emotional position than competing impulses.
The sound of the track, with its confident groove and driving production, reinforces the lyric's emotional register. This is not a searching, uncertain song; it is a declarative one. The narrator is not hoping; she is specifying.
Female Hip-Hop's 2000 Landscape
The female rap landscape of 2000 included voices ranging from the overtly sexual provocation of Lil' Kim to the avant-garde creativity of Missy Elliott to the conscious lyricism of Lauryn Hill. Each carved out a distinct territory within hip-hop's female space. Da Brat's territory had always been a kind of street-inflected cool, less overtly sexual than Kim and less experimental than Missy, but with a lyrical sharpness and a personality that commanded respect from hip-hop's core audience.
"That's What I'm Looking For" sits comfortably in that territory. The track doesn't strain for novelty or shock; it delivers what Da Brat had always delivered: personality, flow, and the confidence of a narrator who knows exactly where she stands.
What the Song Offers the Listener
For listeners in 2000 navigating the terrain of desire and self-determination, "That's What I'm Looking For" offered a specific kind of permission: to name what you want, to hold out for it, to approach the search from a position of self-knowledge rather than need. That permission has a particular value for the female listeners who were Da Brat's core audience, and the directness with which the track delivers it is part of what made it an 18-week presence on the Hot 100. Songs that give listeners permission to feel something they already feel but haven't named tend to stick around, and this one did.
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