I Gotcha (Joe Tex song)

"I Gotcha" is a song by Joe Tex. Originally intended for King Floyd, instead Tex recorded it himself in the late 1960s, but did not release it at that time. He decided to re-record it in late 1971 and released it as the B-side of "A Mother's Prayer", the first single from his 1972 album I Gotcha. Mostly spoken in the form of an early rap song, with few singing passages, "I Gotcha" has the singer admonishing a woman for playing with his affections: "You never shouldn't have promised if you weren't gonna do it".

Radio DJs ended up playing this B-side song more than the A-side. This would result in Tex having his first major hit in five years as "I Gotcha" eventually peaked at Number 1 on the R&B chart and Number 2 on the Pop chart for two weeks, behind "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack[1] and would sell around three million copies. Billboard ranked it as the Number 6 song of 1972.[2] In Canada, the song reached Number 22.[3] Tex would later re-record "I Gotcha" in a ballad-style for his 1978 album Rub Down.

Like other Tex songs, "I Gotcha" has been sampled in various hip hop and R&B songs over the years. Liza Minnelli performed the number for her 1972 television concert Liza with a Z. It is also featured on the soundtrack to the 1992 Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs. A shorter version of the song appears in Kermit's Swamp Years.