Juicy opens with a kid reading a magazine.
It was all a dream
The Notorious B.I.G., Juicy (1994)
I used to read Word Up! magazine
Word Up! was a teen hip hop magazine. In the lines that follow, Biggie is hanging pictures of the rappers he looks up to on his wall. It’s the first single from his debut album, Ready to Die, released on Bad Boy and Arista in August 1994. Poke of Trackmasters produced it with Sean Combs, and the beat is built on Mtume’s 1983 record Juicy Fruit, lifted from its Fruity Instrumental mix. It got to number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went to number one on Billboard’s rap singles chart.
Posters on the wall
Biggie was one of a lot of kids putting posters of the rappers they looked up to on their wall, and no doubt thinking, “I’d like that lifestyle.” The difference is that his dream didn’t stay a dream. He turned it into reality. That’s what this song’s about.
Which is why the mood for this one is dream big, start small. The dream in Juicy is huge. The way it actually happened started with something very small.
A demo tape and a DJ
In 1991 Christopher Wallace made a demo tape with a DJ called 50 Grand. Mister Cee, a Brooklyn DJ known for his work with Big Daddy Kane, heard it and passed it to The Source. The magazine put him in its Unsigned Hype column in March 1992. Sean Combs read that column and arranged to meet him. In 1993 Biggie became the first artist signed to Combs’s new label, Bad Boy.
As a DJ, I love that a DJ is in the middle of this story. Mister Cee heard something on a tape and didn’t keep it to himself. The tape led to a column, and the column led to a meeting. Small steps, each one pointing the same way.
By August 1994, the kid who used to read Word Up! had a record out telling the whole story.
I wrote about my own version of this, the dream I carried for years before I did anything about it, in Never Give Up On Your Dreams.
Whose poster was on your wall?
