by Jay-Z
BIG PIMPIN’ (EXTENDED) / FEATURING UGK
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Big Pimpin’. (3:10)
Uhh, uh uh uh / It’s big pimpin baby … / It’s big pimpin, spendin cheese / Feel me … uh-huh uhh, uh-huh … / Ge-ge-geyeah, geyeah / Ge-ge-geyeah, geyeah … / You know I thug em, fuck em, love em, leave em / Cause I don’t fuckin need em / Take em out the hood, keep em lookin good / But I don’t fuckin feed em1 / First time they fuss I’m breezin / Talkin bout, “What’s the reasons?” / I’m a pimp in every sense of the word, bitch / Better trust than believe em / In the cut where I keep em / till I need a nut, til I need to beat the guts2 / Then it’s, beep beep and I’m pickin em up / Let em play with the dick in the truck / Many chicks wanna put Jigga fists in cuffs3 / Divorce him and split his bucks / Just because you got good head, I’ma break bread / so you can be livin it up? Shit I / parts with nothin, y’all be frontin / Me give my heart to a woman? / Not for nothin, never happen4 / I’ll be forever mackin5 / Heart cold as assassins, I got no passion / I got no patience / And I hate waitin / Hoe get yo’ ass in / And let’s RI-I-I-I-I-IDE check em out now / RI-I-I-I-I-IDE, yeah / And let’s RI-I-I-I-I-IDE check em out now / RI-I-I-I-I-IDE, yeah / [Chorus: Jay-Z] / We doin big pimpin, we spendin cheese / Check em out now / Big pimpin, on B.L.A.D.’s / We doin big pimpin up in N.Y.C. / It’s just that Jigga Man, Pimp C, and B-U-N B / Yo yo yo big pimpin, spendin cheese / We doin big pimpin, on B.L.A.D.’s / We doin big pimpin up in N.Y.C. / It’s just that Jigga Man, Pimp C, and B-U-N B6 / On a canopy my stamina be enough for Pamela Anderson Lee / MTV jam of the week / Made my money quick then back to the streets but / Still sittin on blades,7 gettin off treys / Standin on the corner of my block hustlin8 / Still gettin that cane / half what I paid slippin right through customs / It’ll sell by night it’s extra white … / I got so many grams if the man find out / it will land me in jail for life / But I’m still big pimpin spendin chesse / with B.U.N. B, Pimp C, and Timothy / We got bitches in the back of the truck, laughin it up9 / Jigga Man that’s what’s up
STREETS IS WATCHING
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I Was Not a Pushover. (2:20)
Uh-huh uh huh uh / Gee-gee-geyeah / Baby, watchin, streets / Uh-huh uh huh uh / You don’t have to look / Uh-huh uh / The streets is watching / Check it, check / Uh-huh uh, check / Look, if I shoot you, I’m brainless / But if you shoot me, then you’re famous1—what’s a nigga to do? / When the streets is watching, blocks keep clocking / Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake2 / Can’t ignore it, that’s the fastest way to get extorted / But my time is money, and twenty-five, I can’t afford it3 / Beef is sorted like Godiva chocolates / Niggaz you bought it, I pull the slide back and cock it / Plan aborted, you and your mans get a pass / This rhyme, you’re operating on bitch time / Y’all niggaz ain’t worth my shells, all y’all niggaz / tryin to do is hurt my sales, and stop trips to John Menielly / The type to start a beef then, run to the cops / When I see you in the street got, one in the drop4 / Would I rather be on tour getting a hundred a pop / Taking pictures with some bitches, in front of the drop / The streets is watching / [Chorus] / When the streets is watching / Blocks keep clocking / Waiting for you to break, make your first mistake / Can’t ignore it / Now it’s hard not to kill niggaz / It’s like a full time job not to kill niggaz, can’t chill / the streets is watching you, when you froze your arms5 / Niggaz wanna test you and your gun goes warm6 / Can’t get caught with your feet up, gotta keep your heat up / Sweet niggaz running ’round swearing shit is sweeter7 / Once you’re tagged lame the game is follow the leader8 / Everybody want a piece of your scrilla, so you gotta keep it realer / Kidnap niggaz wanna steal ya / Broke niggaz want no cash, they just wanna kill ya / for the name,9 niggaz don’t know the rules / Disrespectin the game, want you to blow your cool / Force your hand, of course that man’s plottin / Smarten up, the streets is watching, it’s on / [Chorus] My street mentality flip bricks forever,10 know me and money / we like armed co-defendants, nigga we stick together / Shit whatever for this cheddar ran my game into the ground / Hustle harder until indictment time came around / Now you can look up and down the streets and I can’t be found / Put in twenty-four-hour shifts but, that ain’t me now / Got a face too easy to trace, niggaz mouths got slow leaks / Had to hire a team of workers, couldn’t play those streets / Stay out in space like Mercury, you jerkin me? Hectic / Had to call upon my wolves to send niggaz the message / I said this: “Let’s play fair and we can stay here / I’m trying to transform you Boyz II Men like daycare” / Hey there’s money to be made and niggaz got the picture / Stopped playing with my paper and we got richer11 / Then hard times fell upon us, half of my staff / had warrants, the other half, in the casket lay dormant12 / I felt like life was cheating me, for the first time / in my life I was getting money but it was like my conscience was eating me / Was this a lesson God teaching me? Was he saying that?13 / I’m playing the game straight from Hell from which few came back / like bad coke, pimp or die, was my mindframe back / When niggaz thinkin simplify I was turning cocaine crack? / Ain’t a whole lot of brain to that, just trying to maintain a stack / and not collide like two trains that’s on the same track / But I get my life together like the oils I bring back / In the bottom of the pot when the water gets hot / Got my transporter take it ’cross the border then stop14 / Set up shop with a quarter of rock, here’s the plan / For three straight weeks, niggaz slaughtered the block / But you know the game is cruel, fucked up me and my dudes / One drought can wipe a nigga out, faster than the cops / and this unstable way of living just had to stop / Half of my niggaz got time, we done real things15 / By ninety-four became the subject of half of y’all niggaz rhymes / Public apologies to the families of those caught up in my shit16 / But that’s the life for us lost souls brought up in this shit / The life and times of a nigga’s mind, excited with crime / And the lavish luxuries that just excited my mind / I figured, “Shit why risk myself I just write it in rhymes / And let you feel me, and if you don’t like it then fine”17 / The mindstate of a nigga who boosted the crime rate / so high in one city they send National Guards to get me / Ya dig?
My parents were into every kind of music, including early rap—I remember them playing songs like “King Tim III” by the Fatback Band and, of course, “Rapper’s Delight,” the first rap song to really break out nationally—and internationally. But while millions of people loved it, including nine-year-old me, it drove the serious rappers of 1979 absolutely crazy.
Rappers had been growing their art for years before this so-called “first rap song” appeared. MCs were tight when they heard it, not just because the lyrics were lightweight, but because the MCs on the record were considered to be wack no-names. Whole chunks of the song were completely bitten: Big Bank Hank not only stole Grandmaster Caz’s lyrics for his part in the song, he didn’t even bother to change the part where he spells out his name: Check it out I’m the c-a-s-a-n the –o-v-a …
But it was a major hit and it created the first real crossroads in the story of hip-hop. Some rappers got angry about the commercializing of their culture. Other people saw it as an opportunity: If a group like the Sugar Hill Gang could have a hit, then that meant that there was a real audience out there for hip-hop. Russell Simmons was in a club with some of the pioneers of hip-hop when he first heard “Rapper’s Delight” and, like them, was surprised that the first hip-hop hit came from a group of outsiders. But he did his homework on it and went gold with Kurtis Blow, formed Run-DMC, managed the Fat Boys and Whodini, and launched Def Jam, dominating hip-hop for the next two decades. A lot of other people in that room that night never got paid for the art form they helped invent and are still nursing a grudge against the people who did.
It’s a recurring sto
ry in hip-hop, the tension between art and commerce. Hip-hop is too important as a tool of expression to just be reduced to a commercial product. But what some people call “commercializing” really means is that lots of people buy and listen to your records. That was always the point, to me. After my first record got on the radio and on BET, it was wild being at home, feeding my fish, and suddenly seeing myself on TV. But it was satisfying. Hearing it on the radio was even better. There may be some artists who don’t believe in radio, especially now, because the radio business is such a shady racket, but radio love puts you in the hood for real. I care if regular people—sisters on their way to work, dudes rolling around in their cars—hear my shit. I’m a music head, so I listen to everything. People around me are passionate about music. We study music, seek it out. I know there are a million music blogs out there and people who are willing to put in the work finding new music on them. But I like to reach people who get their music from clubs and the radio and television, too. I want my music to play where those people live. While there’s something intensely personal about what I rap about, I also make choices in technique and style to make sure that it can touch as many people as possible without it losing its basic integrity.
There are sometimes two Jay-Zs when you look at my music. There’s the one who can drop a “Big Pimpin’” or “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me),” songs that are intended for wide audiences, designed to just get listeners high off the sheer pleasure of them. And then there are the deeper album cuts, which are more complicated. The entire package is what makes an album. I think it’s worth it to try to find that balance. It’s like life—sometimes you just want to dumb out in the club; other times you want to get real and go deep.
Even then, the idea some people have of “dumbing down” is based on a misperception of what a great rap song can do. A great song can be “dumbed down” in the sense that it appeals to a pretty low common denominator—a big chorus and a great beat and easy-to-follow lyrics can get you a hit (but even then there’s an art to combining those elements). But that’s not the whole story: A great hit can also give listeners a second layer, and then a third, and more.
The song that’s probably the biggest hit in my career so far, “Empire State of Mind,” is a great example of how this can work. On the “dumb” side, it’s driven by Al Shux’s incredible track, Alicia Keys’s giant arc of a hook, and my in-the-pocket flow—those are completely universal in their appeal. The next layer down is the storytelling. For a hit song, the narratives are pretty ambiguous: They’re about loving a city for all the regular guidebook stuff (the Yankees, the Statue of Liberty, et cetera), but also recognizing it as the place where I used to cop in Harlem and have a stash spot where I cooked up work like a pastry. There’s a great tension between the anthemic, even hopeful chorus and the lines about the gang of niggas rollin with my click and corners where we selling rocks and the story of girls who come to the city of sin and get turned out.
And for the hip-hop heads who come looking for technique, it’s got all kinds of sneaky Easter eggs if you’re a close listener: the way I played with the flow on and in the winter gets cold in vogue with your skin out to also make it sound like a reference to Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue (which conjures the image of glossy fashion as a counterpoint to the literal meaning of the line); the way I turn the old cliché about New York being a “melting pot” into a fresh reference to the drug game; the way I use the punchy sonic similarity between “bus trip,” “bust out,” and “bus route” to amplify a metaphor about getting sexually exploited. Even little shit—the Special Ed shout-out or the line about LeBron James and Dwayne Wade—forces you to keep listening beyond the “dumb” elements. And then there are the bits of snap philosophy—Jesus can’t save you life starts when the church ends—and punch lines with new slang like nigga, I be Spiked out, I could trip a referee. It’s a trick I learned from all the greatest emcees: a “dumbed down” record actually forces you to be smarter, to balance art, craft, authenticity, and accessibility.
When I first heard the track for “Empire” I was sure it would be a hit. It was gorgeous. My instinct was to dirty it up, to tell stories of the city’s gritty side, to use stories about hustling and getting hustled to add tension to the soaring beauty of the chorus. The same thing happened with another big hit, “A Hard Knock Life.” The chorus is a sweet-sounding children’s song, but the lyrics are adult: violent and real. Knowing how to complicate a simple song without losing its basic appeal is one of the keys to good songwriting.
LET ME HANDLE MY BUSINESS, DAMN
The other part of “commercialization” is the idea that artists should only be thinking about their art, not about the business side of what we do. There was maybe a time when people in hip-hop made music only because they loved to make music. But the time came when it started to pay off, to the point that even dudes in the street started thinking, “Fuck selling drugs, this rap shit is going to be my hustle!” A lot of people came to hip-hop like that, not out of a pure love of music, but as a legit hustle, another path out of the hood. I’ve reflected some of that in my music because, to be honest, it was my mentality to some degree—when I committed to a career in rap, I wasn’t taking a vow of poverty. I saw it as another hustle, one that happened to coincide with my natural talents and the culture I loved. I was an eager hustler and a reluctant artist. But the irony of it is that to make the hustle work, really work, over the long term, you have to be a true artist, too.
In the streets there aren’t written contracts. Instead, you live by certain codes. There are no codes and ethics in music because there are lawyers. People can hide behind their lawyers and contracts and then rob you blind. A lot of street cats come into the music game and expect a certain kind of honor and ethics, even outside of contracts. But in business, like they say, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. So I mind my business and I don’t apologize for it.
There’s this sick fascination with the dead artist, the broke artist, the drugged-out artist, the artist who blows all his money on drugs and big chains and ends up on a VH1 special. Or artists so conflicted about making money from their art—which so often means making money from their pain and confusion and dreams—that they do stupid shit with it, set it on fire or something. This is a game people sometimes play with musicians: that to be real, to be authentic, you have to hate having money or that success has to feel like such a burden you want to kill yourself. But whoever said that artists shouldn’t pay attention to their business was probably someone with their hand in some artist’s pocket.
OPERATION CORPORATE TAKEOVER
I’m getting courted by the bosses, the Edgars and Doug Morrises-sss / Jimmy I and Lyor’s-ses1 / Gotta be more than choruses / They respect-ing my mind now, just a matter of time now / Operation take over corporate / Make over offices2 / Then take over all of it / Please may these words be recorded / To serve as testimony that I saw it all before it / Came to fruition, sort of a premonition / Uh, uncontrollable hustler’s ambition / Alias superstition / Like Stevie, the writing’s on the wall like my lady, right baby?3 / Saw it all before some of y’all thought I was crazy4 / Maybe like a fox I’m cagey / Ah, ah, the more successful, the more stressful / The more and more I transform to Gordon Gekko / In the race to a billion, got my face to the ceiling / Got my knees on the floor, please Lord forgive him5 / Has he lost his religion, is the greed gonna get him? / He’s having heaven on Earth, will his wings still fit him?6 / I got the Forbes on my living room floor / And I’m so close to the cover, fucker I want more7 / Time’s most influential was impressive / Especially since I wasn’t in the artist’s section / Had me with the builders and the titans / Had me right with Rupert Murdoch / Billionaire boys and some dudes you never heard of8 / Word up on Madison Ave is I’m a cash cow / Word down on Wall Street homie you get the cash out / IPO Hov no need for reverse merger9 / The boy money talks no need to converse further / The baby blue Maybach like I own Gerber / Boardroom I’m
lifting your skirt up10 / The corporate takeover
MOMENT OF CLARITY