“And Another One!” In the words of our late great Biggie Smalls, the legacies of these Brooklyn greats go on. Dead or Alive Brooklyn births greatness. Today, New York Magazine began unveiling the covers for its “Annual Yesteryear Issue,” which aims to examine 100 years of pop music in the New York. Three of the eight amazing covers go to Brooklyn’s greatest! The three greats born in Brooklyn go to Jay Z, Biggie and the great Barbara Streisand. The other covers go to Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, and Lou Reed.

jayz-teaserbiggie-yesteryear

 

According to the Encyclopedia of New York Pop Music  (Click toRead Full List)

  • On “1990s: Puffy and Biggie”

 There never was a New York hip-hop season quite like the autumn of 1994, when 22-year-old Bed-Stuy native Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G., released his debut album. Biggie, who signed with Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and later joined Bad Boy Records, had been popping up in guest spots. The 1993 single “Party and Bullshit” confirmed the suspicion that the guy was an outrageous talent, a rapper with mesmerizing flow and a devastating gallows-humor wit. He was also, emphatically, a local hero. The songs on Ready to Die gave gangsta rap a New York spin. Like Mickey Spillane, he was a virtuoso teller of hard-boiled street tales, and he was a thugged-out Woody Allen, a classic New York neurotic, stressed by the squad car on the corner, by other hustlers eyeing his loot, by the “everyday struggle.”Ready to Die wasn’t just a personal triumph, it was a municipal one: a New York reclamation of rap, whose center of gravity had shifted to Los Angeles. Of course, the East Coast–West Coast feud was far more serious than anyone believed; soon, it would claim the lives of both Tupac Shakur and Biggie. But for a glorious long moment, New York hip-hop felt reinvigorated, even utopian. Puff’s own debut record, No Way Out, released in the wake of Wallace’s murder, was also unmistakably a New York record: With the album’s shiny surfaces and endless boasts about cash flow, conspicuous consumption, and high-end brands, Puff launched hip-hop into the bling era. —J.R.

Jay-Z asked me to work on a song with him. He was retiring, and he was making what he thought was his last album. He wanted one song from each of his favorite producers and asked if I would do it. That was my first hip-hop song since the early days, and that was “99 Problems.” It was really fun. He was incredibly inspiring as a lyricist. We worked on a lot of ideas, and then he honed in on the track that felt most exciting to him. Actually, Chris Rock had the idea for the chorus. It’s based on an Ice-T song called “99 Problems,” and he said, “Ice-T has this song, and maybe there’s a way to flip it around and do a new version of that.” And I told Jay-Z the idea and he liked it. The Ice-T song is about “got 99 problems and a bitch ain’t one,” and then it’s a list of him talking about his girls and what a great pimp he is. And our idea was to use that same hook concept, and instead of it being about the girls that are not his problem, instead of being a bragging song, it’s more about the problems. Like this is about the other side of that story. —Rick Rubin

Biggie-yesterdayear

What do you think of the choices? Congrats Brooklyn, We continue to SLAY!