Song(s) of the day 7/1/19 - To all the people that lived above the buildings that I was hustlin' in front of, called the police on me when I was just tryin' to make some money to feed my daughter...
from the album Ready To Die (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10
Today's song(s) of the day come from rapper Christopher Wallace, otherwise known as the Notorious B.I.G., otherwise known as Biggie Smalls. Born in Brooklyn to Jamaican immigrants, his dad left the scene when he was a toddler, leaving his mother Voletta Wallance to pick up the slack. Although Chris did well in school his dabblings in dealing drugs ended up derailing his education, first dropping out then spending time in jail. After coming through that Biggie recorded a demo that got spread around the hip-hop community so much that up and coming record exec Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs got a hold of him, bringing him first to Uptown Records, where he guested on a couple of Heavy D & The Boyz tracks, then to Combs' own label Bad Boy. After being featured on a few more hits, most notably Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" remix as well as the revamped version of Craig Mack's "Flava In Ya Ear", both top ten successes, Biggie went to record his debut album Ready To Die. The first release from the set would by the single "Juicy", which heavily sampled the #1 R&B hit from Mtume "Juicy Fruit" brought in by rapper/producer Pete Rock and the chorus sung by future hitmakers Total. The music video features both his mother and daughter...
"Juicy" became the Notorious B.I.G.'s first top-40 pop hit in November of 1994. The song also climbed to #14 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the single climbed to #72 in the UK.
Now the "B-Side" of the two-track single, "Unbelievable", got enough airplay on both R&B and Mainstream pop stations to be listed along with "Juicy" on the chart It had samples of both "Impeach The President" and R. Kelly's "Your Body's Callin'"...
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's Biggie appearing live on MTV's The Grind to perform "Juicy"...
And doing "Unbelievable" at a gig in Georgia...
And lastly, a snippet of "Juicy" from a Junior Mafia concert....
Up tomorrow: Grunge band gets a bit star-stricken.
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