The success of the album sprang from the creativity of Craig David and its production team, Artful Dodger which was composed of Mark Hill and Pete Devereux. The team's classic garage sound coupled with Craig's excellent vocals produced a practically perfect body of work.
As the story goes, Artful Dodger, then a struggling studio in the back streets of Southampton was working on its debut album and identified Craig as a perfect voice to feature on a couple of tracks. The hard part was that they were too broke to pay him as little as £100 for his efforts and performances on the album. Instead they recorded a few tracks for him for free. The first three tracks they recorded were monster hits "7 days", "Walking away" and "Time to party". Mark Hill revealed that making the album was a great and relaxed experience as Craig did not have a recording contract, manager or pressure of any kind to perform. The result was an effervescent and totally fresh experience for fans everywhere.
In Nigeria the album was a monster hit whose tracks were on heavy rotation on radio, television, cable and club Dj playlists for at least two years. Unofficial sources estimate that at least 4 million pirated copies of the CD have been sold in the country till date. Globally It represented the ability of British R & B artistes to hold their own in a genre dominated by American acts like Usher and paved the way or inspired other UK acts like Donaeo. Canadian rapper Drake's singing adventure in tracks like "Find your love" and "Hold on we're going home" are largely modelled after Craig's singing style.
Like what happens to so many fresh ideas, The success of the album led to major deals, pressure to perform and a move to the USA and Craig David never hit the heights of his debut. Born To Do It was voted MTV's second greatest album of all time in 2009 and was barely edged out by Michael Jackson's Thriller. A testimony of what could happen when artistes make music for the fun of it and not just for the rewards of success.
