"Remixed" For Your Pleasure: The Notorious B.I.G. - "Juicy"

"Juicy" is a song that requires no introduction, but I have to write one anyway, or else the terrorists win.  The first single released from his debut album, Ready To Die, "Juicy" was essentially the mainstream's introduction to Brooklyn's own The Notorious B.I.G., a smooth shit-talker whose rhymes reflected the hardships he had faced at his young age, the community he grew up in, and the sense of humor he was pretty much forced to adopt in order to tolerate his surroundings.  That may sound overly dramatic, but as the biopic Notorious taught me, patriotism has its limitations.  I've also just realized that I may have watched the wrong version of Notorious, but I'm rolling with it.

"Juicy" wasn't Biggie's first solo single (that would have been "Party and Bullshit", from the Who's The Man? soundtrack, where he was credited as just B.I.G.), but it was his first for the newly-minted Bad Boy Records, Sean "Puffy" Combs's vanity label who would go on to build its entire aesthetic around the duality of radio-friendly rap and R&B songs from the streets, a description that didn't even really make fucking sense until Puff Daddy managed to grasp onto hip hop with his grubby, money-hungry hands.  Anyway, "Juicy" was a hit, much to Biggie's surprise, as he reportedly didn't like the song all that much, wanting the album track "Machine Gun Funk" to be the opening salvo from Ready To Die.  Although I like "Machine Gun Funk", can you imagine how many sales Biggie would have gained if Puffy allowed that to happen?  Zero.  Can one even count negative sales?  It was a terrible idea, and at least Puffy was smart enough to realize that his young charge needed to get regular radio and video airplay before he could bring out that gutter shit.

"Juicy" has been slapped with mild controversy on the Interweb and with hip hop heads of a certain age, however, because of what's featured in the next clip.

Mount Vernon producer extraordinaire Pete Rock was sitting at home, fucking around with a sample he lifted from Mtume's "Juicy Fruit".  He had some people over at his house, and everyone was having drinks, shooting the shit, enjoying themselves, while music pumped out of the basement, which was a frequent occurrence in Peter Q. Rockefeller's home, since he's a music producer who likes music.  His beat (whether or not it was complete is a valid question), featuring the "Juicy Fruit" sample, played in the background, and it caught Puff Daddy's ear, which proved to be a bit of a problem, as Puffy immediately went to the studio and, with the assistance of Poke (of the production duo Trackmasters, who hadn't yet formed), ripped off Pete's idea for the instrumental, "Juicy Fruit" sample and all.  The end result was the radio-friendly platinum single "Juicy" which we're all familiar with, but as if he were throwing him a bone, Puffy commissioned Pete Rock to "remix" the track, which basically meant that Pete Rock laid Biggie's vocals over the beat he had already completed.

So this marks the first time in this series where the "remix" is actually the original version of the song.  Sort of.  All Puffy heard was the beat: Pete didn't have Biggie spit over it directly (yet), so all he jacked was the source material.  Pete Rock received no writing credit for being Puffy's muse, something that still nags at him to this day, although he doesn't carry any ill will for either Biggie (who had fuck-all to do with this) or Puff, and besides, it's not like many hip hop heads actually think Puffy's a better producer than Pete "Horns!" Rock, anyway.

The result is a "remix" that isn't nearly as widely known as the "original", which is a goddamn shame.  While the album track is perfectly entertaining radio-friendly ear candy, Pete Rock lays the exact same sample underneath some hard drums and avoids all of the flourishes Puffy preferred, all in favor of creating a slice of boom-bap that, had Biggie recorded this version officially, he may not have been as upset about that whole "debut single" thing.  It's unfortunate that Pete's treat was relegated to a b-side, and that apparently only a clean radio edit exists: it's not like Biggie cursed incessantly over the original "Juicy", but I'm still not a big fan of censorship.  Pete also avoids the "Horns!" that I keep attributing to his production style, instead looping the sample and letting its melody serve the track, as opposed to Puff Daddy, who added in all sorts of audio trickery.  In fact, if you're not familiar with Pete Rock's "remix", after listening to it above, you might find Puff and Poke's take to be overproduced and far too glossy for the rough-and-tumble Notorious B.I.G. (R.I.P.).  Which is something he had to deal with every day he was signed to Bad Boy, but that's a story for another series.

I've also included the official video just because, well, it's "Juicy", damn it.

GO WITH THE "O.G." OR THE "REMIX"?  They're both good, but I prefer the Pete Rock "remix", not just because of Puffy's questionable ethics, but simply because it sounds better to me. 

-Max

RELATED POST:

The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready To Die (review)