Throwback Thursday: 1997 (3 Weeks at #1)

This week, we have two R&B/Hip-Hop videos with huge extended action movie-style music videos. I love this instinct. To have the song going, but to really just have the musicians playing Action Hero. Love it.

Also, there's "MMMBop". And I love "MMMBop". I bought the cassingle and eagerly anticipated getting the album for my 14th birthday and I loved the album. It is a SOLID pop song and I love it.

Mariah Carey - Honey (9/13-9/27)

Hanson - MMMBop (5/24-6/7)

The Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize (5/3-5/17)

Throwback Thursday: 1997 (2 Weeks at #1)

Notorious B.I.G featuring Puff Daddy and Mase - Mo Money Mo Problems (8/30-9/6)

I just love this song so much and the video is a big throwback to one of the styles of the time. Whenever I hear this song, it makes me think, "Man, Biggie was a great rapper." Not that Mase and Puffy aren't talented, but there's a reason they left Biggie's verse for last, you know?

Notorious B.I.G. - "Things Done Changed"

So, I watched the documentary Reason and Rhyme the other night and it got me in the mood for some hip-hop. I think I listened to Wu-Tang Enter the 36 Chambers that night, but then the next day I threw on Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die album because I'm not familiar with it and I sometimes find myself enjoying hip-hop that I'm not overly familiar with a little more.

Anyways, the first proper song on the album is one called "Things Done Changed" and it is mostly filled with the kind of gangsta-ish lyrics that Biggie was known for. It's a song about how things used to be a whole lot better but now everyone's violent and it's a kind of kill or be killed environment.

The song sports some great internal rhymes. I think the internal rhymes are my favorite part of Biggie's whole thing. So the song's going along and all of a sudden I hear the last 2 lines of the song and it's like everything else fell away. And I don't just mean the instrumentation. I mean all of Biggie's toughness and violence and confidence and everything! The lines are:

Shit, my momma got cancer in her breast
Don't ask me why I'm motherfucking stressed, things done changed

It's a very sobering ending. This whole album is pretty great and this is how it kicks off. Here's the video: