Songfacts®:

• When you burn rubber, you drive away so fast that the tires leave some of their rubber on the road. There's often a cloud of smoke left behind as the car takes off. In this funk classic, the girl makes a quick exit, burning rubber and leaving the guy behind after she sends him out for a soda. The poor dude can't figure out what he did to deserve it.
• The lyrics are a composite of two true stories. It was written by Gap Band producer Lonnie Simmons, lead singer Charlie Wilson, and Rudy Taylor, who did mixing for the band and contributed to the songwriting. Simmons had a girlfriend in college who left him abruptly, and a roadie for the band had a girl who sent him to the store and moved out while he was gone.
  
  "It could have been a love story if you slowed the track down, because it talked about this girl leaving this guy and running home to mother, and burning rubber out the back door and taking all of her clothes and leaving only hangers and bows in the closet," Simmons explained in the Billboard Book Of #1 R&B Hits. "Part of that was a true story."
• The song opens with the sounds of a car burning rubber and driving away. They used two cars to do it. The revving noise was a Volkswagen owned by Cavin Yarbrough of Yarbrough & Peoples ("Don't Stop The Music"). That car didn't have the horsepower to burn rubber, so they used another car for that and combined the sounds. Both were recorded in the parking lot of the Los Angeles studio where they were working, Total Experience.
  
  It's a very memorable open, but it almost got nixed. According to Lonnie Simmons, their record label asked them to remove it, fearing that radio stations wouldn't play it. They took it off, but some copies accidentally went out with the car sounds. Those got a great response, so they made sure the sound effects stayed in.
• The song was just a modest hit on the pop charts, but it went to #1 R&B and stayed there for two weeks. It was the biggest hit for The Gap Band to this point; they later scored with "Early In The Morning," "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" and "Outstanding."
• Dave Grohl told Pharrell Williams that he stole the opening drums on this song for the open of the Nirvana classic "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
  
  He said he borrowed liberally from The Gap Band, Cameo, and Chic on the whole Nevermind album.
• "Early In The Morning," the first single from the group's next album, is a sequel of sorts to this song, with Charlie Wilson looking to find a new girl.