REBUTTAL: “WORK IT” MISSY ELLIOTT
Not to be that guy—Ack! The nostalgist!—but as wrong as hiphop could have gone in 2002, it mostly kept going crazily, awesomely right, week after week after week. 2002 was so good that “Grindin’” never went higher than eight on the Billboard rap songs chart. Eight. On the rap chart. 2002 had “Pass the Courvoisier Part II (Remix)” and “My Neck, My Back” and “Hot in Herre” and “Lights, Camera, Action!” and, uh, “Mama’s Baby, Poppa’s Maybe.” But, look, this amazing thing happened at the end of the summer that year. This woman rapping, in inimitable cadences, about how awesome sex with her would be: so good that you’d have to resort to onomatopoeia to describe it, so good that she’s gotta speak in tongues, so good that you have to laugh—and it’s never not funny. “Badonkadonk”? Hahahaha! This was Missy and Timbaland in the age of sexual eruption. Hiphop had never been more graphically horny, more headed to spring break, more likely to leave you praying for that Clearblue minus to never go plus. This song doesn’t sound like the future or the past or even the present. It keeps on operating in its own surrealist universe of clocks melting in the rocks and pipes not being pipes. Missy did it at the Super Bowl 41, and the song shot back up the Billboard chart. In 2015! Don’t doubt “Work It.” It still works.
—WESLEY MORRIS
1. “I felt like it was so authentic, man.” –Pusha T, talking about The Wire with MTV in 2012
2. The same year The Wire started, I’d like to remind you.
3. And better than anyone’s done it since, FYI.
4. Pharrell Williams + Chad Hugo.
5. In fact, it’s a direct homage to Slick Rick’s very similar claim on 1985’s “La Di Da Di” (see this page).
6. Oh, hey, Timbaland.
7. In 1985, Toddy Tee released a song called “Batterram.” It was about the armored vehicle battering ram the police had started using in Los Angeles to bust through the walls of suspected drug houses. It was the first diss track aimed at a mode of transportation.
8. This is from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is brilliant.
9. We didn’t see another large-scale gangsta rapper until 50 Cent showed up in 2003 (see this page).
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
It’s a celebration of life, or at least a celebration of the celebratory life, trading specifically but not exclusively in birthdays.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
It was the perfect crossover rap track from the perfect crossover rapper at the peak of commercial rap, which was about to be foot-swept by the Internet.
“People love the bad guy. I watch movies all the time and root for the bad guy and turn it off before it ends because the bad guy dies. It’s cinematic law: the bad guy has to die. But sometimes the bad guy gets a record deal and becomes a superstar like 50.” —50 Cent, The Guardian, 2003
Right around the middle of the aughts, there was a pushback against Oprah Winfrey by several rappers, the most famous being Ludacris, 50 Cent, and Ice Cube. All three asserted she had an agenda against rap.
Ludacris was invited on her show in 2005 with the rest of the major cast members of the movie Crash, but that’s where his ire was born; he told GQ that his inclusion was a last-minute addition, that he felt his interview was acrimonious and unfair, that she took the opportunity to lecture him about his music even though he’d gone on the show to talk about his film role, that she told him privately she wasn’t comfortable with giving rappers the sizable platform an appearance on her show afforded. Following that, 50 Cent extended Luda’s complaint, telling the Associated Press she’d been making television for old white women so long that she’d become one.1 He also got a dog and named it after her, and that’s pretty terrible but also kind of funny.2 Ice Cube was mad she’d invited cast members of Barbershop to her show but left him out, which was certainly strange given he was the star of the movie, so he took potshots at her, too.
After receiving the three swipes, Oprah, queen, told MTV she didn’t have a problem with rap, she had a problem with the way that it can/will/had/has marginalized women. Ice Cube had a song in 1990 called “It’s a Man’s World” that opened with “Women, they’re good for nothing—no, maybe one thing / To serve needs to my ding-a-ling,” and there are about one billion other examples of similar viewpoints from rappers, so her criticism of rap made/makes sense. In a 2006 interview with Ed Lover, though, she admitted she wasn’t above listening to it, that she liked some of it. The one song she mentioned specifically: “In Da Club.”
“I’ve been accused of not liking hip-hop and that’s just not true. I got a little 50 in my iPod. I really do. I like ‘In Da Club.’ Have you heard the beat to ‘In Da Club’? Love that.”
She called 50 Cent “50,” and that’s cool. She’s probably danced to “In Da Club,” and that’s cooler.
♦
50’s origin story is the sort of thing an uncreative person would come up with if he or she were trying to manufacture a gangsta rapper.3 A fact-and-effect version of it:
FACT: He was an underprivileged youth who never knew his father.
EFFECT: This would give him the long-form mistrust and disregard for authority he’d need.
FACT: His mother was a neighborhood drug dealer.
EFFECT: This would give him the eventual agency he’d need to become a criminal himself.
FACT: His mother was murdered early in his life and the case was never solved.4
EFFECT: This would give him the broken and blackened heart he’d need.
FACT: He was raised by grandparents but felt the need to take care of himself, so he became a drug dealer at age twelve.
EFFECT: This would help him hone his business acumen under the most severe kind of stress.
FACT: He was arrested as a young boy.
EFFECT: This would either help him fully understand the stakes or extinguish any remaining fear he had in him—in this case, it was the latter.
FACT: He dropped out of school.
EFFECT: This would almost entirely wipe away the ability to attain wealth through legitimate means, making his lawlessness even more urgent.
FACT: He rose to the top of his deadly drug dealer–based ecosystem.5
EFFECT: This would foster the endless self-belief he’d need.
FACT: He was shot some terrible amount of times6 in an attempted assassination but didn’t die.
EFFECT: This would establish hyperauthenticity while also creating a He’s Indestructible myth.
FACT: He was dropped by his record label because he was deemed too big a liability.
EFFECT: This would propagate the idea that he was so dangerous that even standing near him was too big of a liability, which magnifies the aforementioned myth.
FACT: He was picked up off the wire and championed by the most successful rapper of all time and the most influential rap producer of all time.7
EFFECT: This would give him insta-credibility, both artistically and commercially.
FACT: He was hand-delivered to the radio with “In Da Club,” an unstoppable and seismic single.
EFFECT: He “puts the rap game in a choke hold,” as he explains it.
The whole thing, it’s predictable and uninteresting in any fictional capacity. As a work of nonfiction, though—as a work of nonfiction it was the single most compelling story arc any rapper presented for a decade in either direction. 50 arrived to us fully formed and absolute. He was the best villain in rap since Eminem, but he was about twice as likable and two hundred times scarier, and “In Da Club,” the first single from his first album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, managed to package everything together. It became the spire of free-enterprise rap. Nobody’s been able to re-create that moment since (not even 50). For perspective: Only eight albums in the history of all of rap have sold more copies than GRoDT, and no rap album that’s come after it has sold as many.
♦
“I’ve never really felt anticipation on an artist like that and I’ve dealt with Biggie and watched Dr. Dre and
Snoop. This is a new type of beast.”—Puff, talking to MTV about 50 Cent after “In Da Club” was released and exploded Jupiter with the vibrations it made
“In Da Club” was the first single from Get Rich or Die Tryin’, a very real classic that was as successful as an album as “In Da Club” was an individual song.8 “In Da Club” was number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for nine weeks. (That’s one week for every time he was shot.) In total, it was on the chart for thirty weeks. “In Da Club” received Grammy nominations for Best Male Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song.9 Billboard picked it as one of the one hundred hottest songs of the decade. Rolling Stone did, too. Rolling Stone also picked it as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. VH1 had it on their 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs list. It broke Billboard’s “most-listened-to song in radio history within a week” record, which is a thing I didn’t even know they kept track of.
♦
Did you know that after Columbia dropped 50 from their label, the first person who called him to come work was Puff Daddy?10 Did you know DJ Quik played percussion on “In Da Club”? Did you know Eminem’s group D12 was actually given the beat to “In Da Club” first but they passed on it because they weren’t sure what to do with it? Did you know 50 Cent told rapper Tech N9ne he bought Mike Tyson’s mansion off the success of “In Da Club”? Did you know four of 50’s first ten singles went platinum, and seven of them went either platinum or gold? Did you know in the history of rap only Kanye, the Notorious B.I.G., and Drake have done anything similar?11 Did you know before 50 recorded “In Da Club” he met with Eminem, and he was so nervous that he barely talked and that made Em nervous that 50 didn’t like him and that’s basically the exact same thing that happened when Dr. Dre met Em before they recorded “My Name Is” in 1999?
♦
50 Cent is a good businessman. That’s easy to see now because when Forbes writes about the wealthiest rappers, he is always included and there are always nine numbers by wherever his name is on the page. But it was easy to see before he was rich, too. The two most obvious examples:
1. While in jail during his drug-dealer life, 50 made acquaintances with a group of stickup men. When they got out of jail, he hired them. He had them go around and rob competing drug dealers. He’d give them the info they needed, they’d rob the dealers, keep the cash and whatever else they got, but give 50 the drugs. As a result, the drug dealers who were being robbed had to start carrying guns, and that meant that when the police popped up they had to run away, which is a thing they’d avoided previously because they never had guns or actual drugs on them while they were dealing. Even in drug dealing, consistency is vital. While the other dealers would periodically be forced to abandon their posts, 50 was always available. What’s more, he was packaging the stolen drugs with his drugs and offering them as two-for-one deals.
2. In 1999, 50 released a song called “How to Rob,” which was him rapping for four minutes about all the different ways he’d rob different people. Among those listed was Jay Z, who was by then well into propping himself up as a superstar. Jay Z responded on a song called “It’s Hot,” saying, “I’m about a dollar, what the fuck is 50 cents?” This was before 50 had even released an album, and before he’d teamed up with Eminem and Dr. Dre, and before he was shot and so on. 50, willing opportunist, began using it to open his shows.
There’s no string of reality where 50 Cent isn’t successful.
In Da Club
Amount of Love Shown to 50
Before Niggas Heard 50 Fucked with Dre
After Niggas Heard 50 Fucked with Dre
“In Da Club” components measured in energy expended
Partying, Holding Drugs, Considering Love, Being Aggressive, Considering Money
REBUTTAL: “MADE YOU LOOK (APACHE REMIX)” NAS
Of all the cuts that crushed us in ’03, “Made You Look” stayed with us from when it dropped at the see-your-breath February parties in dank Chicago warehouses until the year was out. It was a time when songs were no longer concrete. They were mutating, rife with remixing, mating, and memeing with novelty—Jay got Grey’d, “Beware of the Boys” went unavoidable, and “Work It” arrived in new weekly iterations in time for each weekend’s set. Yet “Made You Look” remained virgin and intact—no use trying to temper it, and no reason to. Nas flexes with exceptional fearlessness over that Apache sample that doesn’t quite resolve itself, stringing it with a new tension that is only punctured with that startle of the shot. Click click boom. The sheer lethality of it telegraphed the unease of the time. Released a month before the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq—“Y’all appointed me to bring rap justice”—this was our song, an anthem of seductive, rectifying might with Nas, trigger hand standing in for that reckless, justifying hand of America, moving with the surety and machismo assured by armament, of hot control, of a USA 4-ever cocked and ready.
—JESSICA HOPPER
1. He said so during an interview he did with Elle magazine. ELLE MAGAZINE.
2. He also got a cat and named it after Gayle, Oprah’s longtime friend. 50 Cent excels at pickling his enemies.
3. He or she would almost certainly use the phrase “gangsta rapper” in their notes. He or she would also probably be wearing annoying shoes.
4. 50 was eight years old when his mother was murdered. Someone put something in her drink that knocked her out, then that someone closed all the windows and doors in the house, turned on the gas, and left her body there to inhale all the everything.
5. At his peak, 50 says he was making $5,000 a day selling crack and heroin.
6. 50 was shot nine times in 2000, including once in the face, which knocked a chunk of his gums out and gave him a permanent soft slur.
7. Eminem and Dr. Dre.
8. It moved 872,000 copies its opening week despite being released five days early because of bootlegging. That was the most for a debut album by any artist. It’s since sold twelve million copies worldwide.
9. Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” won both. 50 Cent also lost the Grammy for Best New Artist that year. Evanescence won. 50 walked up onstage during their presentation as a matter of silent protest, then walked back off. Nobody made a big fuss about it like they did when Kanye did it to Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. That’s because Taylor Swift is adorable and Evanescence is like if a headache was alive.
10. He wanted him as a songwriter, but after 50 showed up in a bulletproof vest holding a cocked gun, he didn’t want him as a songwriter anymore.
11. Kanye did 8/10, Biggie did 7/10, and Drake did 9/10. Drake’s only misstep was “Fancy,” which makes sense because Swizz Beatz was on it and Swizz Beatz is always dicking up everything.
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
It’s a lifestyle song, stuffed fat with meta Houston rap references and slang.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
It turned Houston into the epicenter of rap in the months following its release. The city’s influence in rap has yet to wane.
There were only four songs that were in contention for this chapter, but really there was only ever one.
The four: “Roses” by Outkast; “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams; “Jesus Walks” by Kanye West; and “Still Tippin’” by Mike Jones, Slim Thug, and Paul Wall.
The most fun song of 2004 was Outkast’s “Roses,” a song so transfixing that you kind of forgot that Andre 3000 makes twenty-five separate references to poop in it. But “Roses” wasn’t even the most important song on 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. That was “Hey Ya!,” possibly the best rap song ever with an exclamation point in the title.
The most mesmerizing song of 2004 was Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” a song so hypnotic it managed to prop Snoop atop Billboard’s Top 100 chart for three straight weeks, a thing that had somehow never previously happened during his career. But Snoop had been rapping for sixty-five years1 by the time he released “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” He’d long been a star. It didn’t establish him. Nor did
it establish Pharrell. Pharrell actually wrote for, and helped produce, Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Rump Shaker” in 1992. That’s how long Pharrell had already been around.2
The best song of 2004 was Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks,” a song so perfectly constructed I have to assume it is, and will remain forever, the high point of Jesus’s rap career. But it gets nixed, too, because while it was/is/will remain truly magnificent, it (mostly) didn’t accomplish anything broader than its own success.
The most important song of 2004 was “Still Tippin’.” It managed to not only create insta-superstars out of Mike Jones, Slim Thug, and Paul Wall (and Chamillionaire, albeit indirectly), but, more permanently, it legitimized Houston as a viable rap city, which in turn led to the adoption and mutation of the city’s music styling, a sound still prominent in rap today.
♦
These are some things that happened during 2004 that were memorable, and so maybe you’d like to remember them:
Facebook launched. That meant we were all only six years away from the Facebook movie and then from there only a few days away from a bunch of Well, Actually conversations about how the Facebook movie wasn’t actually titled The Facebook Movie.
The USA men’s basketball team lost to Argentina in the semifinals at the Olympics. I blame this on Stephon Marbury. To be fair, I can’t say for certain that it was his fault America lost, but if something goes wrong in basketball or even just in life, in general it’s usually Stephon Marbury’s fault. A semi-related, 100 percent true thing: In 2003, I received an autographed Stephon Marbury basketball. By 2005, the skin on the ball had nearly completely flaked away. In 2003, I met David Robinson and he signed a separate basketball for me, too. I still have it. The skin is in perfect condition. I’m left to conclude that Stephon Marbury’s touch is enough to chemically destabilize leather. I’m also left to conclude that I was super-uninteresting in 2003 because I was apparently collecting autographed basketballs.
The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed Page 20