Robbed hit of the week 6/1/20 - Nas and Lauryn Hill's "If I Ruled The World"...
from the album It Was Written (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #53
This week's "robbed hit" comes from rapper Nas, who grew up as Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, the son of a jazz musician father and postal worker mother. Discovered and mentored by MC Serch of the seminal blue-eyed hip-hop duo 3rd Bass, who helped get Nas signed to Columbia Records, the rapper released his debut album Illmatic in 1994. The second single from that set, "It Ain't Hard To Tell", landed him on the official pop Hot 100 chart in Billboard magazine for the first time at #91, while going to #57 on their R&B list. (It also was a minor hit in the UK at #64.) The album went to #12 on the sales chart, going on to sell over two million copies, as well as be critically heralded inside and out of the hip-hop musical community.
In 1996, Nas returned with his most ambitious set to date; It Was Written covered a myriad of themes true to the African-American experience in the East Coast cities, and that was proven no more than by the lead single "If I Ruled The World". Laid on a rhythmic base of a slowed down sample of Whodini's early rap classic "Friends", the song's chorus featured Lauryn Hill of the Fugees at her prime, interpolating the dramatic soul nugget "Walk Right Up To The Sun", which went to #13 on Billboard's R&B chart in 1971. With lyrics about police treatment of black people still relevant in 2020, as well as the community's struggles, hardships, and faults, the record give Nas a way to guide the listener into his mental path to his ideal philosophy, for better or worse...
While "If I Ruled The World" rose to #17 on Billboard's R&B chart, the single stalled under the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 in August of 1996, lingering on the list for 20 weeks. Internationally, the song was much more successful on the charts, reaching the top ten in New Zealand (#2), Iceland (#2), Sweden (#3), Germany (#4), France (#4), Norway (#5), Switzerland (#7), and the Netherlands (#9). It also peaked at #11 in Belgium and #12 in the UK. The Illmatic album became his first #1 set on the sales chart, as well as making the British top-40 at #38. At the Grammy Awards in 1997, "If I Ruled The World" was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance, which was won by LL Cool J with the much more radio-friendly "Hey Lover". But with Nas' next single, he himself would find himself in the mainstream heights.
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Here's the unedited album version of the song...
Next up is Nas performing "If I Ruled The World" live on Showtime At The Apollo...
and finally, live in concert...
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