Songoftheday 12/2/21 - I dipped in my stash, splurged on a chain, now I'm Titanic Iceberg's the name...

 

 

"Jigga My N****" - Jay-Z

from the albums Ryde Or Die, Vol 1 and Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter (both 1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from rapper Sean "Jay-Z" Carter, who had made his big crossover into the mainstream pop market in 1999 with concurrent top-40 hits "Can I Get A..." and "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" from his third studio album Vol 2...Hard Knock Life.  Also that year, the rapper contributed a track to producer Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean's Ruff Ryderz label compilation Ryde Or Die, Vol. 1.. "Jigga My N****", written by the pair and produced by Dean, it surely wasn't meant for mainstream consumption, but his evergrowing fanbase bought this up like hotcakes. But the unmelodic production and Jay-Z's bragging and violence along with a title that's in the urban dictionary under masterbating, and this just goes over my head. It seems Snoop Dogg did much better with the "what's my MF'ing name?" theme, as this is almost unlistenable save for his flow...

Nevertheless, "Jigga" became the second top-40 crossover hit from Ryde Or Die after Eve & Nokio's "What Ya Want" (which was actually released after his) in September of 1999. The song climbed all the way to #6 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart, while topping their Rap Singles list for two weeks (surprisingly his first single to do so, most likely due to the availability of the CD Single). The song would eventually go on to be a "hidden track" at the end of Jay-Z's next studio album Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter, which will bring another song of his to this series.

(1/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

And here's Jay-Z performing "Jigga" at the Tunnel in New York in 2000...

Up tomorrow: German singer rides the end of the neo-swing wave with a list.