Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

i got in trouble when i was 9 for yellin BEEEYOTCH not realizing it was 'bitch' & just assuming it was thing rappers said

when you were 13 and kids started saying "bitch" were you all "Y'ALL SHOULD'VE LISTENED TO ME WHEN I WAS 9. YOU WERE SLEEPING!!!!!!"

ehhh yr reaching. this was an anecdote about 'beeeyotch'

heehee

i didnt have cable. we watched it on the box. that was his biggest track while he was alive iirc.

― *sets trend* (deej), Monday, September 13, 2010 10:46 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
lol i remember the box

― one hood ass geometry teacher (The Brainwasher), Monday, September 13, 2010 10:47 PM (35 minutes ago)

at the risk of turning this into another oh mannnn the fuckin box ruled back in the day derail...the fuckin box ruled so hard man

idk i think this goes right into the THREAD DERAILS ABOUT 'THE BOX' canon myself

:)

did not have the box :(

i didn't have the Box either. I would only see it when we stayed in hotels iirc

I always thought his biggest song pre-1997 was "Big Poppa."

i don't specifically remember "juicy" from the time, but in about 2000/01 i definitely remember realising OHHHH it's the "it was all a dream" one

rare that the opening line of a song feels iconic in itself

Speaking of The Box, it turned out to be 21/24 Whingey. Which is perfect for a classy guy like me.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/28/nc_21_club_081027_mn.jpg

ok I've been wanting to start a thread about The Box for a minute, gotta do it now

and even if you aren't a hiphop dude like i was, it gets played all the time at parties and bars. no excuse.

Not at parties and bars I go to, sorry.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what kind of parties guys like deej and Lex mean when they refer to a song's popularity at "parties." Frat parties? '80s teen-comedy parties? The parties I went to in college involved Moby and Weezer; the parties I go to now mostly just involve someone putting their iPod on shuffle. In most cases people just stand around drinking beer and talking. For a few years I helped organize a New Years Eve party held at a bar in which we picked a bunch of classic songs guaranteed to make people dance, but "Juicy" was not among them.

I think I might've been familiar with "Juicy" if I were a couple years younger. I paid a lot of attention to commercial hip-hop and R&B in 1992-93 but then started listening to alt-rock radio. So I missed Ready to Die. And I didn't go back to pop radio for another ten years, so I missed Biggie's post-death canonization, too. (Though, like I said, "Mo' Money Mo' Problems" and "Hypnotize" were still big enough for me to have heard them once or twice.) I mean, I probably didn't hear "Are You That Somebody" until maybe 2004.

hipster parties/frat parties/all parties basically played juicy when i was in college?

Were there actual DJs at these parties, or just people putting on CDs? I'm struggling to think of anyone I was friends with in college who would've had a Notorious B.I.G. album.

but aren't you several years younger than me and jaymc? I don't really know for sure but I think maybe it took a few years for "juicy" to become like the default/best-known b.i.g. song. I'm 31 and I heard "hypnotize" and "big poppa" way before I heard "juicy," but I think maybe for the dudes on here in their 20s, "juicy" had become one of the canonical b.i.g. songs by the time they were seriously into music and/or going to parties like this. just a theory.
xpost

Actually, yeah, by the time you were in college, people probably used iTunes at parties anyway.

not saying "juicy" wasn't a hit to start with because it obviously was but I think maybe there was just a lag before it became like "the" notorious big song. I don't remember hearing it at college frat parties either.

I always thought his biggest song pre-1997 was "Big Poppa."

― billstevejim, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 2:39 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

As it occurred, yes. But in retrospect, "Juicy" definitely got more of a legacy. Lots o ppl who weren't payin attention in 1994 posting in this thread imo

I'm 31 and I heard "hypnotize" and "big poppa" way before I heard "juicy,"

A couple of years older over here, but I had the same experience. I didn't really become a Biggie fan until a buddy made a C-90 of stuff from RTD and LAD, along with selections from Wu solo albums (great tape too).

"Unavoidable super-hit" "Juicy" peaked at #72; "Big Poppa" hit #6. It def became a classic in retrospect.

iirc and it turns our i do rc

Also, no frats at my school. Most of the big parties I went to in college were hosted by art/theatre kids.

In most cases people just stand around drinking beer and talking

you make parties sound so much fun!

as deej says, it's...all parties, really. house parties, friends' club nights, all of them. i've probably heard "juicy" at the majority of parties i've ever been to.

I'm struggling to think of anyone I was friends with in college who would've had a Notorious B.I.G. album

or maybe this just wasn't true of us. it's not exactly weird to know or have known people who own biggie albums, surely?

lex how old are you?

I also wasn't familiar with Juicy until very recently. Hypnotize was everywhere on the radio in LA when it was released and at college parties in the early-mid '00s. Maybe among a certain set of people it's legendary but definitely not the most recognizable or famous BIG song...in my experience at least.

28

i mean, i'd say "mo money mo problems" and "hypnotize" are as iconic as "juicy" too

"Unavoidable super-hit" "Juicy" peaked at #72; "Big Poppa" hit #6. It def became a classic in retrospect.

why is whiney using the UK chart positions?!

oh wait it was "mo money" that hit no 6 here, "big poppa" got to no 63

weird that "juicy" had a no 72 peak in both UK and US

"Juicy" isn't iconic or his biggest hit, it's just his signature song, the lead single from his classic first, the one that sums him up better than any other song. it'd be a good example of songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller but it's #2 on iTunes behind "Hypnotize" (#3 and #4 are "Mo Money" and "Big Poppa")

his classic first album, i meant to say

some dude otm

count me down as another one: the real-time Biggie songs I knew were "Big Poppa" & "Hypnotize" & I didn't become aware of "Juicy" until, like, last week. I may have heard it but it never registered.

I wz in a frat, but the music that we played at parties were usually like "Ass n' Titties", "Ms. Jackson", and maritime shanties. And the Dead.

I knew "Juicy", but it wasn't as ubiquitous as "Hypnotize" or "Mo Money" at the time.

So wait, are we saying more people on ILX are familiar with "Gold Soundz" than "Juicy" because

It's possible I may have heard GS more than Juicy irl...

Time for another poll, whiney?

(btw its crazy how p4k could number the ticks burrowed in their collective epidermises & it wd still create huge ripples in ilx...)

This "Juicy" conversation is enlightening! The only radio station I was listening to at the time was Boston's R&B/hip-hop station, so I heard "Juicy" a LOT. I assume anyone else who was also listening to hip-hop/R&B stations knew it at the time as well; considering the strong indie/alternative slant of ILM, plus the demographic beginning to skew younger, it's not that surprising that many people here wouldn't be familiar with the song until much later.

actually, (btw its crazy how p4k could number the ticks burrowed in their collective epidermises & it wd still create huge ripples in ilx...) it's nto that crazy, it does make some sense.

xp to Dan...yeah there were no real hiphop stations where I lived in 1994, in fact iirc I wasn't even allowed to watch MTV back then...three rock stations though, so I was well aware of alt-indie stuff.

it's not exactly weird to know or have known people who own biggie albums, surely?

No, not at all! But surely the opposite isn't that strange, either? I don't disagree that "Juicy" is an iconic song for lots of people; my only point is that it's not "impossible" for me to never have heard it before 2006 when that kind of thing wasn't really on my radar screen at all.

this seems like one of those weird things where people had different experiences from one another

oddly enough ime in 1994 "juicy" was then the national anthem of the small central asian republic where i was living but wasnt regularly played on the one hip hop/rnb station there. perhaps because doing so would require anyone listening to stand at attention for the duration. the biggest radio jam at the time was bone thugs n-harmony's seminal thuggish ruggish bone...

I really don't know if this is the time to challenge deej's assertion:

i dont think theres a high school student in america who doesnt know who [gucci mane] is.

― *sets trend* (deej), Sunday, September 12, 2010 8:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahahahahaha