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

by Serrano, Shea

There are thirteen reasons you should visit California and celebrate California, according to Tupac and Dr. Dre in “California Love.”

  GOOD REASONS

  1. Lots of opportunities for sex: If you are in charge of promoting tourism for your state, you should 100 percent include that your state has a higher sex rate per capita than other states, if that happens to be the case.

  2. Bomb-ass hemp: “Bomb ass” is slang for “very good,” and “hemp” is slang for “marijuana.” I remember reading this thing about how when you want to add a new word to your vocabulary, you have to use it two times out loud, so I’d recommend that here for you so that you can get comfortable saying this. For example, if your friend’s mother passes away, you might try consoling him or her by commenting on the high quality of the event: “Susan, hi, I just want to say real quick that this is a bomb-ass funeral. Your mother, also bomb-ass, would’ve been pleased.”

  3. Dance floors busy with bodies: “Ecclesiastes assures us . . . that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to laugh . . . and a time to weep. A time to mourn . . . and there is a time to dance.” —Kevin Bacon, Footloose. Footloose is so much fun.13

  4. Hoochies, likely screaming: Hoochies who like to scream are better than, say, hoochies who like to stab, or hoochies who like to steal your identity.

  5. Chucks: This is in reference to the Chuck Taylor Converse. Chucks are timeless.

  6. Dark sunglasses and khaki suits: This seems a lot like something that a murderer would wear, because it’s difficult to picture a sane person shopping in a store and asking where the khaki-suit section is. But dark sunglasses and khaki suits are always cool.

  7. Caution: This is from the line “Flossin’, but have caution,” and, really, being cautious while flossin’ is smart, and it’s the way I’d floss were I ever in a position to do so. (It’s also probably counterintuitive to the spirit of flossin’. Still, it’s a good reason, just to be safe.)

  8. The potential to bump and grind like a slow jam: I am a very big fan of bumping and grinding, be it like a slow jam or any other jam, really.

  9. Bomb beats from Dre: Sure.

  10. Serenades: Okay.

  BAD REASONS

  1. Pimps: I’ve only ever met two pimps in my life. Neither of those times was that great of an experience. The pimps were not anywhere near as entertaining as the flamboyant pimps you see in movies from the ’70s. They were more like the pimps from Taken.

  2. Fiends: What’s happening right now?

  3. Riots (not rallies): No, thank you. But you have fun at your riot full of pimps and fiends.

  That’s ten good and three bad. California seems okay.

  ♦

  Roger Troutman’s Zapp band had a very clear influence on G-Funk. Dr. Dre choosing to use him for the hook on “California Love” indicates a new stage in rap: having precedents and heroes and the ability to incorporate them into the new music being made from their seeds. That he was being featured on a song that was connecting gangsta rap with G-Funk for this new thing feels significant, too, as does the fact that this celebration of Cali counterculture was happening while the ground was still vibrating from the police batons and boots that had swung at and stomped on Rodney King. “California Love” was Tupac’s turn as the biggest gangsta rapper in the world. He was dead nine months later.

  REBUTTAL: “THA CROSSROADS” BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY

  As with most Bone songs, keeping up with the lyrics of Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone, Krayzie Bone, and Layzie Bone to “Tha Crossroads” and singing them word for word is damn near a fool’s errand, but the somber mood of the track (produced by their in-house producer DJ U-Neek), which samples the Isley Brothers’ soul ballad “Make Me Say It Again Girl (Parts 1 and 2),” is all we need to feel the song’s weight. Dedicated to Eazy-E, the man who signed them to Ruthless Records and brought them to national prominence, “Tha Crossroads” was ironically their biggest hit ever. The song not only reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, it also gave the group a Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

  No song since has ever been able to speak about sudden death and loss the way Bone did on “Tha Crossroads.” Considering the tragic circumstances that made the song possible (Eazy-E’s sudden passing), that’s probably a good thing. “Tha Crossroads” is a song that matches an unexplainable feeling we all have either experienced or will go through at least once in our lives. That is why, in a weird way, it’s the song we never want to have to hear, because it usually means we have been overcome with some terrible news. “Tha Crossroads” is the perfect song for the shittiest feeling, but whether we want to admit it or not, we all need a song like it.

  —JOZEN CUMMINGS

  California Love

  “Now let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west” (0:46)

  “Pack a vest for your jimmy in the city of sex” (0:53)

  “I been in the game for ten years makin’ rap tunes” (1:05)

  “Diamonds shinin’ lookin’ like I robbed Liberace” (1:13)

  “Throw up a finger if ya feel the same way” (1:22)

  “Out on bail fresh of jail, California dreamin’” (2:18)

  “Fiending for money and alcohol” (2:21)

  “In L.A. we wearin’ Chucks not Ballys” (2:35)

  “Flossin’, but we have caution” (2:40)

  “Bumpin’ and grindin’ like a slow jam” (2:48)

  “Let me serenade the streets of L.A.” (2:54)

  “Give me love” (3:01)

  Considerate, Proclamation, Thrilling, Name Brand, Autobiographical, Insightful, Comparative

  1. This.

  2. Just.

  3. Keeps.

  4. On.

  5. Getting.

  6. Worse.

  7. And.

  8. Worse.

  9. He was shot five times on December 1, 1994, the night before the sentencing. He rolled himself right TF into the courtroom the next day.

  10. The first five albums Death Row released: Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, Snoop’s Doggystyle, the soundtrack for Above the Rim, the soundtrack for Murder Was the Case, and Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food.

  11. I can’t think of four actors who had a better back-to-back-to-back run, seriously.

  12. I meant this generally—the big videos, the budgets, all that—but in this case it’s also specific: Puff re-created the desert scene from “California Love” in his “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” video. He just replaced the Mad Max cars with a very expensive one for him and Mase.

  13. The original version, I mean. Not the 2011 remake. The 2011 remake was a real chore, the one clear exception being Miles Teller as Willard. He wasn’t nearly as complex as Chris Penn, but he was still a total gem.

  WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT

  How nobody could hold down Puff Daddy, Mase, or anyone else in the Bad Boy camp because, per Puff Daddy and Mase, they were all so very amazing.

  WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

  It was the first song in an unprecedented streak of radio dominance for Bad Boy Records, it yanked rap away from the West Coast once again, and it represented the beginning of the most opulent era of rap to date.

  It’s nearly impossible to discuss Puff Daddy without mentioning one of three things, and most of the time at least two of them, and occasionally all three if you happen to be having a very long conversation about him. There’s:

  The City University of New York Tragedy. In 1991, nine people were trampled to death at an overcrowded celebrity basketball game at the City University of New York, organized, in part, by Puff. This one generally only comes up if you happen to be writing about him or producing a documentary about him. But if you do happen to be doing one of those two things, it comes up a lot. It’s part of his complicated history with death, which he always appears to be trying to outrun.

  The Name Changes. This one generally comes up sarcastically, and usually in a way that’s meant to be funny but never, ever is. It’s often in a sentence that ends with some form o
f “. . . or Diddy or Puffy or Puff Diddy or Diddy Pops or whatever it is he’s calling himself these days.” It’s usually delivered by a mom or a dad or a friend who nobody likes.

  The Notorious B.I.G. This one comes up all the time. And it should, because it’s the most important. Puff and Biggie are tied together in history almost inextricably. The exchange of influence and skill and ideas that occurred between them, especially as it relates to the West Coast–East Coast rap rivalry that punctuated the mid- to late ’90s and all of the tributaries that stem off that, is a labyrinth, and a true chore to attempt to detail within the confines of a chapter in a book, and basically impossible in just one paragraph in the intro of a chapter.

  Here are the very general, very generic, very basic details of their relationship:

  Puff Daddy interned at a company called Uptown Records. He was brought on as an employee. He was fired. He attempted to start his own label. He backed his way into finding the Notorious B.I.G.1 He heard him. He loved him. He signed him. They put out Ready to Die as the first album on the new label (Bad Boy Records). It eventually went quadruple platinum. More Bad Boy albums came. And they sold very well, too. None were ever as impactful as Biggie’s, though. To be stylistic about it: Puffy was the face, but Biggie had become the voice of Bad Boy. And then he was murdered.2

  Puffy had been a successful producer, and had operated as the head of a successful label, and had even rapped a tiny amount, but nothing he’d done without Biggie touched anything he’d done with Biggie. Plus, for as much as he’d made himself visible in his artists’ videos, he’d never been a solo act. That’s why when Biggie was gunned down, most assumed Puff’s career was going to shrivel up and die right along with him.

  Then “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” came out.

  ♦

  “It looked like Puffy was finished a hundred times; it don’t make no difference. No matter how many times you stab him, Puff ain’t gonna lay down. He’s a survivor. He’ll reinvent himself.” —Russell Simmons, cofounder of Def Jam Records and V-neck sweater devotee, talking about Puff Daddy’s success after being fired from Uptown Records

  “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” was Puff’s first solo song. It sold more than four million copies and was a Billboard number one for six weeks. Part of the reason it was so successful is that it was so instantly likable, and part of the reason it was so instantly likable is that it was instantly recognizable. To make it, Puff doctored up Grandmaster Flash’s 1982 hit “The Message” (see this page). Ice Cube had tried something similar with “The Message” on 1992’s “Check Yo Self,” and that was a fine enough song,3 but even over that very pop-oriented production he still sounded too rugged. Puff’s talk-rap style was perfect for it. His version was warmer, smoother, easier to digest. And he doubled down on the nostalgia, too: In addition to sourcing “The Message,” “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” also incorporated part of Matthew Wilder’s 1983 hit “Break My Stride”4 for the chorus. He even aligned himself with the ideological core of the song.5

  To wit: In the opening of “Break My Stride,” Wilder sang about an unfavorable exchange he had with a woman (he dreamt he sailed to China to be with her, but that she said she had laundry to do6), and he did so as a way to say that he was a strong person and this wouldn’t break him (“Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride / Nobody’s gonna slow me down”). Puff’s initial argument was the reverse (I’m great and people are envious of me), but the end point was the same (others couldn’t stop him).

  The video for “Can’t Hold Me Down” was an opulent ode to itself, which is to say it was a standard Bad Boy video. The most memorable portion was Puff and Mase driving around the desert in a Rolls-Royce looking not all that impressed with driving a Rolls-Royce around in the desert. Later, they blow the car up because they get bored with it. And then in the next scene they’re dressed in all white in an all-white room with no furniture or furnishings, because colors and chairs are boring, too. The whole thing felt like the inverse of Tupac and Dr. Dre’s “California Love” video, a Mad Max–themed ode to anarchy that consisted of makeshift cars being driven around the desert (see this page).

  So for his first song Puff just redid what he’d done as a producer (sample famous songs people recognized) and redid what he’d done as a video coordinator (spend a lot of money), and I think we’re all feeling pretty foolish for having not been able to see that he was going to be just fine without Biggie.

  All Up in the Videos

  Puffy had cameos in no less than 35 music videos between 1991 and 2005

  Heavy D, “Dont’ Curse, featuring Kool G. Rap, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Big Daddy Kane, Grand Puba, Q-Tip + Mary J. Blige, “Reminisce” + The Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy” + The Notorious B.I.G., “Warning” + Craig Mack, “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix),” featuring The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Rampage + Total, “Can’t See You,” featuring The Notorious B.I.G. + The Notorious B.I.G., “Big Poppa” + Mobb Deep, “Survival of the Fittest” + Total, “No One Else (Puff Daddy Remix),” featuring New Edition and Missy Elliott + MC Lyte, “Cold Rock a Party (Bad Boy Remix),” featuring Missy Elliott + The Notorious B.I.G., “Hypnotize” + Mase, “Feel So Good” +The Lox, “We’ll Always Love Big Poppa” + Black Rob, “Whoa” + Big Pun, “It’s So Hard” + Lil’ Kim, “Not Matter What They Say” + Busta Rhymes, “Break Ya Neck,” + G-Dep, “Special Delivery (Remix),” featuring Ghostface Killa, Keith Murray, Craig Mack, Puff Daddy + Usher, “U Don’t Have to Call” + Faith Evans, “Burnin’ Up (Bad Boy Remix),” featuring Missy Elliott and Freeway + Jay Z, “La La La (Excuse Me Miss Again)” + Mary J. Blige, “Love @ 1st Sight,” featuring Method Man + Da Band, “Bad Boy This, Bad Boy That” + Da Band, “Tonight” + Loon, “Down for Me,” featuring Mario Winans + Loon, “How You Want That,” featuring Kelis + T.I., “Rubberband Man” +8 Ball and MJG, “Forever,” featuring Lloyd + 8 Ball and MJG...

  ♦

  The dominance of Puffy: The song that followed “Can’t Hold Me Down” on top of the Billboard’s Hot 100 was “Hypnotize” by the Notorious B.I.G., which is the most perfect example of Bad Boy’s We Have Money, Life Is a Party mission statement. It was there for three weeks. Hanson’s ridiculous “MMMBop” ba-duba-dopped its way to the top for three weeks (Puff did not produce that one, turns out). After that, it was “I’ll Be Missing You,” a tribute song to the Notorious B.I.G. by Puff, Faith Evans, and 112. It was at number one for eleven weeks. “Mo Money Mo Problems” was next (by the Notorious B.I.G., Puff, and Mase). It was there for two weeks. And then “Honey” by Mariah Carey came after. It was there for three weeks. Puff produced that one, too. That’s a stretch of twenty-five out of twenty-eight weeks where Puff Daddy was, in part, responsible for the number-one song in the nation, and he’d spread it over five songs. It had never happened that way before. It hasn’t happened that way since.

  If we can go broader: “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” was the first single from Puff’s debut album, No Way Out. The album sold more than seven million copies. The six albums that had come before it on the Bad Boy label: the Notorious B.I.G., Ready To Die (4x platinum); Craig Mack, Project: Funk Da World (gold); Faith Evans, Faith (platinum); Total, Total (platinum); 112, 112 (2x platinum); the Notorious B.I.G., Life After Death (10x platinum).

  And the next twenty that came after No Way Out on the Bad Boy label were also all certified gold, platinum, or multiplatinum.

  Puff even managed to sell six hundred thousand–plus copies of Da Band’s album. That’s the most amazing thing. Do you remember Da Band? They were a group formed on a reality TV show called Making the Band on MTV. The only thing anyone seems to know about them today is that Dave Chappelle made fun of one of the members7 one time. Puff Daddy is a genius.

  ♦

  There are two ways to view Puff Daddy’s legacy.

  He is either (a) one of the most successful persons in rap, with an influence and an impact on music history that is unquestioned and unending, and that is incredible. Or he is
(b) one of the most successful persons in rap, with an influence and an impact on music history that is unquestioned and unending, and that is incredible, but a steadier look outside of the jet stream of his propulsion toward the sky shows a littering of discarded acts who are irrelevant,8 broke,9 incarcerated,10 or dead,11 and that is not incredible.

  Either way, “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” plays an essential role in his legend, and his legend is essential to rap.

  REBUTTAL: “THE RAIN” MISSY ELLIOTT, FEATURING TIMBALAND

  Supa Dupa Fly, Missy Elliott’s debut album, is a seventeen-track duet with Timbaland’s beats. “The Rain” starts out with a delicate boast and back-and-forth with a sample from Ann Peebles’s “I Can’t Stand the Rain”: “Me, I’m supa fly, supa dupa fly, supa dupa fly,” Missy raps, countering Peebles’s plucky timbale backing track. She sets the expectation for her sound: “Me and Timbaland . . . / We so tight that you get our styles tangled.” Later: “BEEP! BEEP! Who got the keys to the Jeep? VROOOOM.” There’s no point in imagining these lyrics coming out of another rapper’s mouth, over another producer’s beat, because no other duo would be so audacious to try that shit, and no one else on the planet could make it sound and look so purely cool—dressed in a trash bag and under a fisheye lens, to boot. “The Rain” is an iconic song with an iconic (Hype Williams) video, featuring the best tangled styles in hip-hop.

  —EMMA CARMICHAEL

  1. A writer gave Biggie’s demo tape to Puff after featuring him in The Source’s Unsigned Hype column.

  2. He was killed sixteen days before the release of his second album, Life After Death.

  3. Cube’s version shipped more than a million copies.

  4. Wilder did an interview in 2012 where he talked briefly about Puff sampling “Break My Stride” for “Can’t Hold Me Down.” “That was the first I’d ever heard of [rappers sampling songs]. They came to us with the finished product and said, ‘We’ve used your song,’ followed by, ‘Can we use it?’ And I was like, ‘You’re kidding, right?’”