The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

by Serrano, Shea

  During 1995, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the most erratic and unpredictable member of the group, did a lot of crazy things, as bastards who are old and dirty tend to do.10 Here’s a thing he said about government assistance: “The people that wanna cut off the welfare, man, I think that’s terrible. You know how hard it is for people to live without nothin’?” He said it during an interview with MTV. Everyone thought it was funny because it came after he’d ridden in a limousine with MTV to pick up the food stamps he’d been allotted that month by New York.

  ODB had of course earned more than enough money to disqualify himself from aid—Enter the Wu-Tang sold more than a million copies, plus he’d been given a $45,000 advance from his record label, Elektra, for his own solo album.11 But he’d not filed his taxes for the year yet, so the state was using his previous year’s income reporting, so, in that particular moment, he was eligible. “I’m glad to get the food stamps. Why wouldn’t you want to get free money? . . . You owe me forty acres and a mule, anyway.”

  C.R.E.A.M.

  “I grew up on the crime sife, the New York Times side” (0:23)

  “So then we moved to Shaolin land” (0:31)

  “A young youth, yo rockin’ the gold tooth” (0:34)

  “Sticking up white boys in ball courts” (1:03)

  My life got no better, same damn ‘lo sweater” (1:08)

  “It’s been twenty-two long, hard years of still struggling” (1:37)

  “A man with a dream with plans to make cream” (1:48)

  “Life as a shorty shouldn’t be so rough” (2:05)

  “Ready to give up so I seek the old earth” (2:28)

  “Stray shots, all on the block that stays hot” (2:39)

  Declarative, Descriptive, Lifestyle, Introspective, Insightful, Get Money, Autobiograpical

  REBUTTAL: “PASSIN’ ME BY” THE PHARCYDE

  Many great rap albums came out in 1993, by Wu-Tang, Snoop, Tupac, and more. For the average-Joe white dudes in a Washington, D.C., suburb, those records were great and all, but we really didn’t get them. We said we did. But we didn’t. High school kids don’t really understand much and West Coast rap was definitely not something we got.

  But outside that domain, that’s where the Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” was. It was different than most rap we were listening to. It was a rap song that anyone could identify with—any high school dude, that is (which I was). We wanted girls to like us. We struggled to get girls to like us. The Pharcyde got real with us and told us that it wasn’t going to happen. “Damn, I wish I wasn’t such a wimp,” Fatlip exclaims in the third verse, followed by an exasperated “Damn.” Damn, indeed.

  The Pharcyde never had another hit like “Passin’ Me By.” Ironically, the world kept passin’ them by. Maybe it’s because most of us grew up and found out girls don’t always have to pass you by. Maybe it’s because we took their rhymes and turned them into a cautionary tale. Getting passed by sucks. But we knew what it felt like. Like all important music.

  —MIKE AYERS

  1. Brandon Perkins actually assigned me my very first long-form profile for a print magazine. He sent me to the Warped Tour to hang out with a DJ I’d pretended to know about so he’d give me the assignment. It was pretty bad. I blinked a lot during the interview, I’m sure.

  2. This is a Ratatouille reference, FYI, and I’m proud to say that this moment right here is the first time Ratatouille and the Wu-Tang Clan have lived this close together in literature.

  3. RZA, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, Method Man, Raekwon, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

  4. There are a healthy number of associated acts. The closest affiliate: Cappadonna. The most bizarre affiliate: a rapper named Christ Bearer. He was loosely connected to the Clan as part of a group of guys signed to the Wu-Tang company out of the West Coast in the early to mid-2000s. Nobody had ever paid any attention to him until April of 2014 when he cut off his penis and jumped off the balcony of an apartment building in a suicide attempt.

  5. Ol’ Dirty Bastard died in 2004.

  6. Specifically, but not limited to, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and GZA’s Liquid Swords.

  7. To be thorough, “C.R.E.A.M.” was not released as a single from Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) until the end of January 1994. HOWEVER, the actual album came out in November of 1993, so “C.R.E.A.M.” was available for consumption in 1993 and that’s why it landed here. Otherwise this chapter would have featured “Who Am I? (What’s My Name?)” by Snoop.

  8. It was also counterintuitive to the jazzy style many East Coast rappers had been adopting in the early ’90s, and thank goodness for that.

  9. RZA has made an almost unfathomable amount of good creative decisions. His one bad one: playing the Blind Master in G.I. Joe: Retaliation. That was like if you took all of Lil Wayne’s everything from 2010 to 2014 and mushed it up into a few minutes.

  10. In a separate interview with MTV, John Norris asked ODB if he was a fan of Drew Barrymore. ODB said he didn’t know who she was, though he definitely used the F word in there. Norris told ODB that she was in E.T. ODB said yes, that he remembered, she was the little bald-headed girl who played E.T. HE THOUGHT E.T. WAS DREW BARRYMORE AS AN ALIEN. I love you and I miss you, ODB.

  11. ODB used his welfare card as the cover art for his album. That’s really why he invited MTV along with him that day.

  WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT

  Reminiscing about how things used to not be that good but now they are very good.

  WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

  It was the perfect version of a rap song that was a pop song without giving up any of its character or insight.

  Here are nineteen of the twenty best rap albums that came out in 1994, which is, in no uncertain terms, one of the three best years in this history of hip-hop.1 They are ranked because only a human with a spine made of fiberglass would ever put together a list and use a variation of the phrase “in no particular order”:

  20. Method Man, Tical

  19. Various Artists, Murder Was the Case: The Soundtrack

  18. O.C., Word . . . Life

  17. Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth, The Main Ingredient

  16. Eightball & MJG, On the Outside Looking In

  15. Warren G, Regulate . . . G Funk Era

  14. Organized Konfusion, Stress: The Extinction Agenda

  13. The Roots, Do You Want More?!!!??!

  12. Digable Planets, Blowout Comb

  11. Jeru the Damaja, The Sun Rises in the East

  10. Various Artists, Above the Rim soundtrack

  9. Gang Starr, Hard to Earn

  8. Da Brat, Funkdafied

  7. UGK, Super Tight

  6. Common, Resurrection

  5. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Creepin’ on ah Come up

  4. Outkast, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

  3. Scarface, The Diary

  2. Nas, Illmatic

  One of two things just happened right now. You (a) appreciate Nas and respect Nas and understand that Nas’s place in rap history is near the top but have never truly found his hyperaware ability to unpack a particular setting or situation especially compelling and so you read that Illmatic was the second-best album of 1994 and said, “Yup,” because you knew what the first best album of 1994 was as soon as you started reading this book; or, you (b) are a very big Nas fan and so when you read that Illmatic was the second-best album of 1994, your eyeballs exploded in your skull, in which case I am sorry about your eyeballs and also, wow, congratulations on being able to read without eyeballs.

  If you are in the first group, I am going to move on, because re-explaining something to you that you already understand is dumb. If you are in the second group, I am also going to move on because trying to convince a Nas fan that Illmatic is anything short of God’s will is no different than trying to explain to a fish how to climb a tree, in that both would be neat to see but neither are very likely to happen. And so:

  Here is the best album of 1994:

 
1. The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die

  ♦

  Ready to Die was the Notorious B.I.G.’s proper debut, and the only album he put out while he was still alive. It was a master class in paranoia, depression, death contemplation, the unfamiliarity of legitimate success, and the intersection of all four of these things. It is regarded by some as a completely perfect recording. “Juicy” was the album’s first single and its most important moment.2

  “Juicy” did four things well:

  “Juicy” was gorgeously produced, albeit (probably) unoriginally. The build and the tinks and the weightlessness and the every little detail. All golden. And also swiped. Poke3 and Puff Daddy are credited with having produced “Juicy,” sampling a track called “Juicy Fruit” by the funk/soul band Mtume. But producer Pete Rock has long asserted that he came up with the original version and that it was lifted from him. Still, even if that’s not true, even if Rock is lying (which seems unlikely), San Francisco’s Dre Dog released a song in 1993 called “The Ave.” that also sliced out a sliver of “Juicy Fruit” and turned it into its foundation. The origination is murky but the point is not: The most famous version of the beat featured in “Juicy” was not the first iteration of it.

  “Juicy” was eager. It was, in effect, the song that gave the Puff Daddy Rap Vehicle perpetual motion, the one that first fueled his Diddy Bop across history. Its success helped legitimize Bad Boy Records,4 and it helped rocket Puff toward moguldom, and that was definitely not an accident.

  “Juicy” was impeccably timed. Its most important immediate effect was that it counterbalanced Snoop’s Doggystyle, which had arrived from California just ten months prior and obliterated everything. “Juicy” helped pin rap down again in New York for a little bit longer as the West Coast continued yanking it back across the country.

  “Juicy” was nuanced/insightful/incisive/culturally perceptive in a manner that allowed it more wiggle room than fundamentally equally menacing tapes. It was an examination of the existence of the disenfranchised black man in America disguised as a pop-rap track for anybody with ears. You could argue that its top was the moment when hip-hop sprinted out from the shadows of popular American culture, from its dirtiest and most threatening corners, and began absorbing all of its energies and dollars, shaping the schema into the earliest version of what we know it to be today.5

  But here’s what “Juicy” did that no other song like it had ever managed to do, and really what B.I.G. eventually proved he was going to do well on basically every song he ever recorded ever in his whole life ever: It took all of these very specific feelings and observations and thoughts he had and turned them into ideas that were very familiar and common. He pushed sentences out through that humidor he had for a voice box, floating those humid clouds of words that had just the right blend of plump confidence and plumper insecurity out into the atmosphere, and it emboldened you. You always knew exactly what Biggie was talking about, even if sometimes you didn’t know exaaaactly what he was talking about.

  When he talked about listening to Rap Attack, a radio program on New York’s WBLS 107.5, on Saturdays; when he talked about having to eat sardines for dinner; when he expressed feelings of disbelief and self-doubt (“I never thought it could happen, this rapping stuff”); when he talked about the pivot his love life made after his name began to ring out (“Girls used to diss me / Now they write letters ’cuz they miss me”) and the pivot his financial life made, too (“Birthdays was the worst days / Now we sip champagne when we thirsty”), you knew.

  I understand what you’re saying, Biggie. I feel it, too, Biggie. I am also nervous and happy and scared and excited and confounded by the complexities of life, Biggie. We are unified, Biggie. Everything is one, Biggie. Thank you, Biggie.

  The only other song from 1994 that could’ve possibly stolen this spot on the list from “Juicy” was Nas’s “N.Y. State of Mind,” Illmatic’s fire-and-brimstone street sermon. And it is a technically amazing song. It’s a sword slice right down the middle of your fucking chest. But Nas has mostly always been a selfish6 genius.7 He didn’t share it with you on “N.Y. State of Mind,” he just showed it to you. He brought you inside of his head to show you that he was a superhero. Biggie veered in the opposite direction. He opened your skull up and showed you that you weren’t a superhero, but that he wasn’t either, and that maybe nobody was, really. Nas was popular. Biggie was a populist. He brought you to him, and then he took you both into the cosmos.

  That’s the very best, most influential thing a rapper (or human) can do.

  The shakings from “Juicy” will echo forever in the canon. It dwarfs everything else.

  REBUTTAL: “THUGGISH RUGGISH BONE” BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY

  “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” is the most important rap song of 1994. It took the multisyllabic, tongue-twisting flow that had been a staple of the South and Midwest for years and changed it from a gimmick in the eyes of the hip-hop nation (back when the hip-hop nation still thought of itself in those terms) into a legitimate style and a cultural and commercial force.

  In the proud tradition of Snoop’s “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” and, later, Eminem’s “My Name Is,” “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” told you everything you needed to know in one song about a group you’d likely never heard of before. Like those records, the hook is built around the group’s name (takeaway: the shit works), but “Thuggish Ruggish” goes one step further, winding down with Shatasha Williams singing all of BTNH’s members’ names and then shouting out the home market, Cleveland. Here was an entirely new sound by an entirely new act from an entirely new place, and after this one record, you wanted to know and hear a whole lot more. —BENJAMIN MEADOWS-INGRAM

  Timeline: Tupac and Biggie

  1993: Tupac Shakur meets the Notorious B.I.G. whole filming Poetic Justice. They became friends.

  November 1994: Tupac gets shot outside of a recording studio in New York. He sees Biggie, Puffy, and Andre Harrell once he makes his way fully inside.

  February 1995: Biggie releases “Who Shot Ya” a song that very much sounds like a jab at Tupac. Biggie explains that he’d written and recorded it months before Tupac’s shooting.

  April 1995: Tupac gives an interview to Vibe while in prison. He very strongly implies that Biggie, Puffy, and Harrell were responsible for the shooting.

  August 1995: Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row, makes fun of Puff Daddy at the Source Awards for always showing up in his artists’ videos.

  October 1995: Tupac gets out of prison. He signs with Death Row, which had become a premier label behind Dr. Dre’s The Chronic in 1992 and Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle in 1993.

  March 1996: Tupac’s entourage gets into a verbal altercation with Biggie’s at the Soul Train Awards. A gun is pulled, though no shots are fired.

  May 1996: Tupac releases “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” featuring Snoop Dogg. In the video’s opening, a person imitating Puffy has a meeting with a person imitating Biggie. They talk about how they’ll be the main figures once Tupac is gone.

  June 1996: Tupac releases “Hit ‘Em Up,” a massively crushing diss song aimed at Biggie;s forehead.

  October 1996: Tupac is shot and killed in Las Vegas following a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon. Nobody is ever charged, let alone convicted.

  March 1997: Biggie is shot and killed while in the passenger seat of a car in Los Angeles. (The song playing while he was shot was “Going Back to Cali,” which starts with a conversation between him and Puffy where Biggie implies that maybe that’s not the best idea. Shortly after the burial, the bulletproof car he’d ordered arrives at his house.)

  1. The three best years in the history of rap for America are: 1988 (Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back; N.W.A, Straight Outta Compton; Run-DMC, Tougher Than Leather); 1993 (Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle; Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers); A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Marauders); and 1994 (The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die; Nas, Illmatic; Scarface, The Diary). The three be
st years in the history of rap for me are: 1992 (Wreckx-N-Effect release “Rump Shaker,” and the video features an attractive woman pretending to play the saxophone on a beach, and that’s the first time I’d ever seen that in my eleven years on earth); 1992 (while rapping his verse on “Rump Shaker,” A-Plus compliments a woman on her body, then tells her he has an award for her, and then that award turns out to be his penis, and up until then I didn’t know you could give your penis out as an award); and 1992 (I called into the radio station and asked them to play “Rump Shaker” and the DJ said okay and then a few minutes later they played it and I was like, “Wow, I just made thousands of people listen to ‘Rump Shaker’”).

  2. Not its “best.” Its best was “Big Poppa,” a song so mind-bending that it almost became cool to be overweight.

  3. Poke is part of a production team called the Trackmasters. They worked on a bunch of stuff in the ’90s and 2000s, including but not limited to Nas’s “If I Ruled the World” and Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “You’re All I Need to Get By,” maybe the best rap love song that’s ever been.

  4. Bad Boy Records was a brand-new label at the time. Ready to Die was its first album release, which is as good a start to something as anyone has ever had to anything. It eventually sold more than four million copies. Seventeen of Bad Boy’s first twenty album releases achieved platinum sales, with Biggie’s Life After Death selling more than ten million copies. Puff Daddy helped Black Rob sell a million copies. BLACK ROB. Puff was not dicking around.

  5. I wrote a little about this for Grantland in 2014.

  6. This sounds more negative than it actually is.