![]() ![]() On “Come and Get Me,” Jay admonished rap rivals who thought he’d gone soft: “I ain’t cross over I brought the suburbs to the hood / Made ’em relate to your struggle, told ’em ’bout your hustle / Went on MTV with do-rags, I made them love you.” And on the DJ Premier–produced “So Ghetto,” the B-side to Vol. 3, in a year when hip-hop and TRLwere strange bedfellows. As Kelefa Sanneh wrote of Jay in a 2001 New Yorker profile: “Most people thought of Puffy and Biggie as opposites-the executive and the thug, the businessman and the artist, the pop star and the rapper-but Jay-Z’s insight was to seize upon the avarice that united them.” Hov blurred the lines, making records that appeased both sides. Jay-Z was able to straddle the commercial-underground divide better than most, having risen to mainstream status after humble beginnings as an indie underdog. 3’s “Snoopy Track,” Juve and Jay-Z reunited on a loopy, flow-driven Timbaland rhythm that began with the Brooklyn rapper paying homage to the South: “This is for my n-ggas down in Houston on candy paint / All my n-ggas in the Dirty South, Miami mayne / All my n-ggas in the ATL throwin’ dem ’bows.” (Jay-Z also popped up on a No Limit record-Silkk the Shocker’s “You Know What We Bout”-that went nowhere.) On Vol. I didn’t have problems with all those companies who didn’t know who I was.” The “Ha” remix set off a chain of NYC-South team-ups in ’99, including the Ruff Ryders’ Juve-featuring “Down Bottom” and Cash Money’s appearance on Noreaga’s second solo album. “After that,” said Juve of the remix in 2012, “I didn’t have a problem doing nothing with anybody. The South may have been buzzing, but NYC was still the ultimate arbiter of rap cool. That unsolicited Jay verse was added to the official remix, and suddenly Juvenile was a bigger presence nationwide. Cash Money’s breakthrough came with Juvenile’s 1998 single “Ha.” As the song started traveling beyond the South, Jay recorded his own verse over Mannie Fresh’s instrumental and sent it to Cash Money through its parent label, Universal. ![]()
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