"I Need a Dollar" | ||||
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Single by Aloe Blacc | ||||
from the album Good Things | ||||
Released | 16 March 2010 | |||
Format | CD single, digital download | |||
Recorded | 2010 | |||
Genre | Soul | |||
Length | 4:04 | |||
Label | Stones Throw Records, Sony Music Entertainment UK | |||
Writer(s) | Leon Michels, E. Nathaniel Dawkins, Nick Movshon, Jeff Dynamite | |||
Producer(s) | Leon Michels, Jeff Dynamite | |||
Aloe Blacc singles chronology | ||||
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"I Need a Dollar" is a song performed by American singer Aloe Blacc. Blacc co-wrote the song with Leon Michels, Nick Movshon and Jeff Dynamite.
It is the intro song for the HBO show How to Make It in America, and was featured as the iTunes Single of the Week. It also featured in the game Fight Night Champion. Blacc has performed the song live on Later... with Jools Holland, The Graham Norton Show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Conan. In April 2011 it was featured in a commercial for Boost Mobile wireless services.
Two versions of the video have been released. The first, the "New York" version, features the screen being split in half. The right side shows Blacc singing inside an apartment while the left side shows a man walking through the streets of New York.
The second, the "Las Vegas" version directed by Derek Pike, shows Blacc walking alone along a highway in Nevada, and then hitching a ride to Las Vegas, where he finds a dollar coin on the casino floor, uses it to play a slot machine, and wins.
*sales figures based on certification alone
^shipments figures based on certification alone
Various hip-hop artists have sampled "I Need a Dollar" or freestyled over the instrumental, including Yelawolf, T.I., Wax, Dumbfoundead, Chris Webby, MGK, and Mac Miller, and Sammy Adams.