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

by Serrano, Shea

  9th: Theophilus London’s “I Stand Alone” (2011) It was a rowboat. Like, a real, for real, actual rowboat.

  ♦

  Jay Z avoiding a fifteen-year prison sentence is a monumental What if . . . moment in rap. SO MUCH stuff would’ve been different. It’s a string of possibilities superseded by only two other potentialities:

  What if Tupac had not been murdered in 1996?

  What if Biggie had not been murdered in 1997?

  Others on the What if . . . list that fall somewhere below those top three: What if the Hot Boys never disbanded? What if DMX favored cats instead of dogs? What if BET: Uncut never existed? What if Patrick Ewing didn’t miss that finger roll? What if Lauryn Hill didn’t go crazy? What if Chris Tucker made Friday 2? What if Plies used his government name?8 What if Suge Knight was two feet shorter?9 What if Dr. Dre was Mr. Dre? What if Halloween didn’t fall on that weekend? What if Kanye never had his heart broken? What if the Fresh Prince’s dad hadn’t abandoned him? What if Lil Wayne was from, say, Rhode Island? What if Snoop didn’t beat his murder charge? What if Soulja Boy never Supermanned any hoes? What if Lil’ Kim didn’t do that to her face? What if Master P’s tank was just a normal-ass tank?

  But to the original point: Originally, Pimp C didn’t want to record for “Big Pimpin’.” It wasn’t in line with the sound he and Bun B had built for UGK.10 “We put the [‘Big Pimpin’ ’]reel on and we hear these flutes and this happy music . . . and I’m like, maaan. I’m not doing it. I called [Jay Z] and said, ‘Hey, man, are you trying to sabotage me?’ He said, ‘Look, fam, it’s gonna be the biggest record of your career.”11 Eventually, he was convinced to do it. Bun B was glad. “It was probably the biggest chance that we took in our career, but it ended up being the biggest payoff as well.”12

  So, what if UGK passes again on Jay’s invite to be on one of his songs? They never do “Big Pimpin’” together. What happens? Does Jay Z just keep it moving and do it with Three 6 Mafia instead? Or maybe Jay takes offense at having been turned away twice.

  And maybe Jay, already short-tempered from having Nas gnawing at him, attempting to goad him into war—maybe Jay snipes at Pimp C and Bun B in a song instead of how he went for Nas’s neck. And so then instead of getting the historic “Takeover” vs. “Ether” 2001 battle (see this page) we get a true North vs. South rap war, because there is a zero percent chance that if Jay says Pimp C’s name in a song, Pimp doesn’t spend a planet’s worth of energy attempting to unravel Jay Z’s career. How does that play out?

  Is it Biggie and Tupac again—an uncontrollable firestorm that ends in tragedy? Or does the fight stay on tape like how the Jay Z vs. Nas feud did? And if Jay never calls out Nas by name on “Takeover” then Nas never records “Ether,” right? And if he doesn’t record “Ether,” then which direction does his legacy point? Because “Ether” is for sure a critical part of the Nas legend. And how does he use his extra time? Do we get to Nas’s reggae period ten years earlier, and is rap even ready for that in 2000?

  Or maybe Nas, having watched Bun and Pimp throw salt on Jay as two vs. one, teams up with Jay behind some home-team allusion? And so we get Jay Z and Nas vs. Bun B and Pimp C? When it’s over, do Nas and Jay Z release a duo album together? Is it any good? Or maybe the two couldn’t get their styles to congeal and it flops and so they both just sort of fizzle around in New York, local titans but that’s it? Oh my god: WHO MARRIES BEYONCÉ IF SUCCESSFUL JAY Z ISN’T THERE? Is it Kanye? Or does Jay Z somehow still end up with Beyoncé except now it’s not really a power couple, it’s more of a Britney Spears and Kevin Federline couple? Does Beyoncé spiral into insanity? Does Britney Spears end up recording “Single Ladies”? Whaaaaat issss happpppening?

  “Big Pimpin’” is the representation of a time in Jay Z’s life that almost wasn’t. But it’s also a linchpin in history, keeping the reality line from sprigging out into all sorts of weirdo directions.

  REBUTTAL: “SO FRESH, SO CLEAN” OUTKAST

  “Big Pimpin’” is not a bad song. It’s a very, very good song. “So Fresh, So Clean” is just superior, that’s all.

  To be great, “Pimpin’” requires the aid of not only UGK’s Pimp C and Bun B but also a “mutilated” sample from an Egyptian film whose makers are still suing for the way Jay Z and his producers butchered it. Not saying overstacking is always a damning quality (see “Monster,” this page, which is clearly the correct choice for 2010), but in this case, the muses are clearly on the side of “Clean,” which careens into Classics-ville with its slick, timeless, endlessly applicable simplicity. Big Boi and Stacks float on a carefree wave of well-tailored greatness, and the fact that they did this much without featured artists or problematic samples (they use Joe Simon’s “Before the Night Is Over,” and possibly an unconfirmed riff from Funkadelic’s “I’ll Stay,” neither of which has garnered a lawsuit) speaks to “Clean”’s exceptional nature.

  I mean, I still have absolutely no idea how to process the line “I love who you are / I love who you ain’t / You’re so Anne Frank,” but considering the rest of the song, I’m gonna just maintain that comparing a lover to an optimistic Jewish child hiding from and eventually caught and murdered by Nazis is a singular compliment. —DEVON MALONEY

  Big Pimpin’

  “You know I thug ‘em, fuck ‘em, love ‘em, leave ‘em” (0:14)

  “First time they fuss I’m breezing” (0:23)

  “Many chicks wanna put Jigga’s fists in cuffs” (0:36)

  “I’ll be forever macking” (0:49)

  “Coming straight up out the black barrio” (1:40)

  “Go read a book you illiterate son of a bitch and step up your vocab” (2:00)

  “Gettin’ blowed with the motherfuckin’ Jigga Man” (2:31)

  “Smoking out, pouring up, keeping lean up in my cup” (3:01)

  “Everybody wanna ball, holla at broads at the mall” (3:10)

  “All my car got leather and wood” (3:05)

  “Chroming, shining, sipping daily, no rest until whitey pays me” (3:21)

  “My stamina be enough for Pamela Anderson Lee” (3:58)

  “It’ll sell by night” (4:12)

  “We got bitches in the back of the truck, laughing it up” (4:23)

  Observational, Inflammatory, Deadly, Examining, Lifestyle, Psychological, Hopeful

  1. He did so because he’d been told that Rivera was responsible for Vol. 3 . . . Life and Times of S. Carter leaking a month before the official release date.

  2. Jay was sentenced in December of 2001. Four months before that, he’d released “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” the first single on the album that followed Vol. 3. On “Izzo,” which he’d written after the charges came down but before the sentencing, he rapped, “Cops wanna knock me, D.A. wanna box me in / But somehow, I beat them charges like Rocky.” This was (highly likely) a miscalculation on his part—he (probably) thought he actually was going to beat the charge. Or, I guess I suppose he could also have been talking about the first Rocky movie, where Rocky loses at the end but really he wins.

  3. This is an easy assertion to make when it’s not your abdomen being gouged into.

  4. To be clear: I don’t want anyone to be stabbed. But if we can detract the violence of the event from what came after it, then, yes, I am for real thankful.

  5. Please see footnote 4.

  6. From “Big Pimpin’” to 2014, he’s had twenty-one singles that were gold or platinum.

  7. The least successful was when Jay Z tried to co-opt Juvenile’s free-form flow on the “Ha (Remix).” Oh, man. That was a sad day.

  8. Algernod. ALGERNOD. That’s not a rapper’s name. That’s the name of a mischievous elf in a Disney movie.

  9. That puts him somewhere near as tall as George Costanza, and fucking NOBODY would’ve been afraid of Black George Costanza.

  10. In 1998, Jay extended an offer to UGK to be on a song called “A Week Ago” from Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life. Pimp C opted against it and they passed.

  1
1. This quote comes from a book called Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland & How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing.

  12. This quote comes from a 2014 interview with BET.com.

  WHAT THESE SONGS ARE ABOUT

  Destroying the other person by discrediting the other person.

  WHY THEY’RE IMPORTANT

  Because the two together represent the Homeric intersection of real life and art, and are one of the greatest-ever testaments to the role that ego plays in rap music.

  Note: This is the only chapter in the book that’s about two songs. It had to be this way.

  Today, Jay Z is very famous. He’s very famous inside of rap and he’s also very famous outside of rap.1 Nas is considerably less famous outside of rap but equally famous within it. This, it would appear, is a reflection of what was at the very center of their very famous feud, which culminated in “Takeover” vs. “Ether,” the most electrifying rap battle that’s ever occurred and that will ever occur.

  In the interest of space, I’m going to move forward under the assumption you understand three things:

  1. Jay Z and Nas are two of the very most influential rappers of all time. It’s as true now as it was in 2001 and as it will be in 2101.

  2. Jay Z and Nas were equally at risk during their war. That’s a large part of the reason the feud ended up being so important. This wasn’t LL Cool J vs. Canibus, where one guy is a star and nobody really knows who the other one is. This was two boss-level bosses. And that meant that the loser was going to be unfavorably remembered forever. That is a terrifying thought, for sure. It’s why these sorts of things happen so rarely, really. It’s just, like, why risk it? Think on it like this: Ja Rule and 50 Cent were equal stars relative to one another when they started going at each other (2002–2003). Ja could’ve avoided it. He didn’t. So 50 Cent crushed him. Now 50 Cent is worth about half a billion dollars and Ja Rule works at Arby’s.2

  3. Jay Z and Nas both wanted the same thing (to be the best rapper) but were trying to get there in different ways; Jay thought stacking up credits could get him there;

  Nas thought layering art on top of art was the way there.

  Here is a timeline of the six years it took for Jay Z and Nas to go from spark to nuclear war:

  1995: Nas is a no-show for a recording session with Jay Z. Producer Ski Beatz, still wanting Nas’s voice on the track, lifts the line “I’m out for presidents to represent me” from Nas’s “The World Is Yours,” then uses it as the spine for Jay Z’s “Dead Presidents.” Despite “Dead Presidents” being an amazing song—tempered, insightful, perfectly pitched—Nas isn’t that happy about being included without actually being included.

  Sidebar: There’s a scene in the video for “Dead Presidents” where Jay, the Notorious B.I.G., and Dame Dash, who used to be Jay Z’s manager and business partner but is now only in the news anymore when people want to talk about how much financial trouble he’s in, sit at a table and drink alcohol and play Monopoly. Given what we know now about his business acumen, I have to assume Jay Z won this game handily.3 I also have to assume Dame Dash spent all his efforts trying to land on the railroads and Baltic Avenue to buy them. There’s no land more useless in Monopoly than Baltic Avenue.

  1996: Nas says the line “Lex with TV sets [are] the minimum” in his song “The Message.” It lives in disguise at first, but is eventually revealed as a masked swipe at Jay Z, who Nas says he’d seen riding around in a Lexus with TVs in it. (Nas also once said, “I got rid of my Lexus at that point and I was looking for the next best thing.” NAS THREW AWAY A CAR because he saw someone he was upset with driving a similar one. One time I ate half of a donut that I found on the floor in the bathroom at my house. He and I live in different worlds.)

  1997: Following the death of the Notorious B.I.G., Jay Z attempts to anoint himself replacement royalty on In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. On “The City Is Mine,” Jay raps, “Don’t worry about Brooklyn, I continue to flame / Therefore a world with amnesia won’t forget your name / You held it down long enough, let me take those reins.”

  1998: Jay releases Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life. It debuts at number one on Billboard’s Top 200, and eventually sells more than five million copies and earns him a Grammy for Best Rap Album. Some people are upset because it seems pretty clear that the album’s main goal is success instead of art. Jay Z is not upset because he is only a handful of smart business moves4 and ten years away from marrying Beyoncé.

  Sidebar: Jay Z has proved to be driven by commercial success, specifically the accelerated advancement of his brand within whichever corridors he feels offer the greatest ROI. He’s certainly not alone in this philosophy—Ice-T, for example, though slightly less interested in shaking hands with Prince William, has always talked about his career in music as an enjoyable by-product of his desire to become impactful—Jay Z’s just the very best at it. In 2014, Forbes estimated his net worth was greater than $520 million.

  1999: Nas releases “We Will Survive,” a song that is, in part, an ode to the Notorious B.I.G. It includes this: “It used to be fun makin’ records to see your response / But now competition is none now that you’re gone / And these niggas is wrong, using your name in vain / And they claim to be New York’s king? It ain’t about that.” Nas has always appeared more interested in artistry,5 which is a trait that nearly everybody who is familiar with rap attributes to him, even if he did go on to record “Braveheart Party.”6 That discrepancy in purpose was the point of his barb here, and really the whole philosophical reason for their fighting. After he rapped it, everyone looked at Jay Z to see what he was going to do. Jay Z responded by looking at his very expensive watch to see if he was late for a meeting.

  1999: Nas pokes Memphis Bleek in the eye. Bleek, who is closely associated with Jay Z, responds in 2000 on “My Mind Right,” saying, “Your lifestyle’s written / So who you supposed to be? Play your position.” It’s a tame assault (it references Nas’s album It Was Written), but it was at least proof that Nas had Jay’s ear. (The most important thing Memphis Bleek did in his career was exist so Nas could pick on him, which eventually led to Jay Z responding to Nas. Bless you, Bleek.) [Note: Mobb Deep, Nas allies, also began inserting themselves into all of this around this point, though never to any real effect beyond being close enough to Nas to encourage him.]

  2000: Nas, (probably by this point) frustrated he’s not goaded Jay into a direct response yet, gets louder, more confrontational, more unavoidable: “Y’all niggas all hail, the King is dead / He running like a bitch with his tail between his legs / ‘Stillmatic,’ still eye for an eye, wanna be God / You’re just the next rapper to die, fucking with Nas.” He makes it impossible for Jay Z to ignore him. So Jay Z stops ignoring him.

  Sidebar: This feels like a good time to mention that in an interview that ran in a 2003 issue of XXL, Nas said that when he heard Tupac diss him on “Against All Odds,” it made him cry. Nas is great for a lot of reasons, but one of the ones near the top is that he’s always seemed aware of his emotions, even if he doesn’t explicitly speak about them all regularly.

  2001: FINALLY, Jay Z responds. While performing at Hot 97’s Summer Jam concert, Jay performs a previously unheard song called “Takeover.” The first verse is aggressive, though it doesn’t specifically name names. The second verse calls out Mobb Deep, doing so while showing adorable pictures of Mobb Deep member Prodigy as a child on the stage’s big screen. Everyone laughs. Jay ends the song with the line “Ask Nas, he don’t want it with Hov, no!” Everyone goes, “Whhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!” It’s all the provocation Nas needed.

  2001: Nas releases “Stillmatic (Freestyle),” which is just full-on war mode. He attacks several of Jay Z’s label mates, then Jay himself, calling him, among other things, a liar and a homosexual and a copycat. All of a sudden, two of the most terrifying rappers on the planet are missiling toward each other at a trillion miles per hour. “Exciting” isn’t the word. Nothing else matters.

  2001: Jay releases the full version of �
�Takeover,” which includes a whole section dedicated to the mathematical annihilation of Nas. This is the most crushing part:

  You said you been in this ten, I’ve been in it five.

  Smarten up, Nas. Four albums in ten years, nigga? I can divide.

  That’s one every, let’s say two.

  Two of them shits was due.

  One was . . . “Nahhh.”

  The other was Illmatic.

  That’s a one hot album every ten year average.

  And that’s so . . . laaaaammmme!

  Nigga, switch up your flow.

  Your shit is garbage, but you try and kick knowledge? (Get the fuck outta here.)

  Everyone assumes Nas is going to put his head in an oven. He does not.

  2001: Nas releases “Ether” and all of the birds in the sky die and all of the fish in the ocean die, too. It’s full of salt, but the worst is when Nas strips away the bluster:

  My child, I’ve watched you grow up to be famous.

  And now I smile like a proud dad watchin’ his only son that made it.

  You seem to be only concerned with dissing women.

  Were you abused as a child?

  Scared to smile?

  They called you ugly?

  Well, life is harsh.

  Hug me, don’t reject me.

  Or make records to disrespect me, blatant or indirectly.

  The saddest thing, too, about my whole life is Little Kid Jay Z being called ugly.

  ♦

  Seven questions:

  1. Is this the best rap battle that’s ever happened?

  Yes. It’s one of only two rap battles that was as mesmerizing to experience as it is to talk about today, which is how everyone knows that it’s very important. The other one is Tupac vs. Biggie, which matched Nas and Jay Z’s star power. But Tupac vs. Biggie was never even truly a battle. There was confrontation, yes (see this page), and there were of course two clearly defined sides, yes. But “Tupac” and “Biggie,” at least in the context of “Tupac vs. Biggie,” were always just avatars for “West Coast” and “East Coast.” The closest Biggie ever even came to addressing the animus of the situation was releasing “Who Shot Ya,” which showed up a few months after Tupac was robbed and shot in New York in 1994. But Biggie never said Tupac’s name in it, and he never publicly acknowledged that it was even about Tupac.7