After the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, hip-hop’s focus left the East Coast and the West Coast and planted flags in newfound creative capitals - “newfound” in the sense of the rest of the country finally taking notice.Ĭash Money was already living up to its name by the time Juvenile’s 400 dropped. Based in New Orleans, the label rose to regional prominence around the same time that another NOLA conglomerate, Master P’s No Limit Records, was achieving nationwide success. “ Ha” was the first single from Juvenile’s 400 Degreez (more on that in a moment) and made him Cash Money Records’ brightest star. Unbeknownst to us, the moment and the lyrics would stay with us through high school and college (for those who went), through marriage and divorce. To us, then, “Back That” wasn’t about the actual lyrics. None of us realized then that the lyrics, so doused in a dominant male sexuality, were so much a part of Cash Money’s greatest hits.
You couldn’t be the wallflower when the holy gospel of all heavenly twerkness came on. We would all wait for the DJ to spin “Back That Azz Up” because while we weren’t exactly sure what we were doing, we knew we had to be doing something. The dance party at the rink was a pregame of sorts to watching BET’s Uncut a few years later. Twerks from girls were an extremely valuable currency back then for us straight male teenagers. Outkast’s 'Aquemini,' the blueprint of the Southern black renaissance, turns 20.Cherish tonight - James and Wade are the brotherhood Jay-Z and Biggie never had the freedom to experience.Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s ‘Everything Is Love’ is a graduation to the rest of their lives.Lil Wayne’s ‘Carter V’ is triumph over trauma.Think about Lil Wayne’s closing set, an unassailable soliloquy of ratchetness that so many still hold near and dear: Now after you back it up then stop / Now wha-wha-wha-what, drop it like it’s hot … Wobbledy, wobbledy, drop-drop it like it’s hot. Think about the first five seconds of the record, the violin solo with, unequivocally, the most famous call to arms in music history: Juvenile’s Cash Money Records/ Takin’ over for the 9-9 and the 2000s. But “Thang” has the all-important “Cash Money Records takin’ over …” and the complete version of Lil Wayne’s outro. “Azz” is, of course, the raunchier version - and as sex-crazed teenagers who didn’t yet understand the nuances and intricacies of sex, we still wanted to party to what we all at least thought “sex” encompassed. The clean version uses “Thang” while the explicit version uses “Azz,” and there was a tug of war going on between the two that wasn’t just about profanity. It’s more of a call-and-response anthem than it is a traditional rap song, and that’s why it sticks. It was in NOLA where the needle shifted in a manner that would, via a chain of events leading to Drake’s present-day dominance, forever change the trajectory of hip-hop.
And when “Back That” was released officially as a single, that’s all anyone wanted to hear. That’s what we really came to the rink for: the dance party. For the second half, sneakers returned to the wooden floor. For the most part, though, we were all there for a good time - and not a long time. It was a mix of kids from the ’hood and the ’burbs that, sure, produced a fight here and there.
Soda, pizza, hot dogs, water - food was fuel, and we all needed it for what would come later. It wasn’t New York Fashion Week, but for us it was more important. It was all there: kids in Jordans, Air Force 1’s, white T-shirts, baggy pants, jerseys, jersey dresses and Baby Phat. If you wanted to be seen, you went skating. If you wanted a clublike atmosphere, you went skating. If you were a black teenage boy in the mid-’90s and wanted to meet girls (as I was and did), you went skating. Teen skate parties were where things went down back in the day. The deep popularity of “Back That Azz Up” has origins that date to places such as a now-defunct skating rink in Petersburg, Virginia. 400, along with Master P’s MP da Last Don, rank as the biggest-selling projects of any New Orleans artists in the past half-century. 400 is Cash Money Records’ highest-selling project to date - topping even Lil Wayne’s landmark 2008 Tha Carter III. Degreez doesn’t feature the Olympic display of lyricism and storytelling of, say, Outkast’s Aquemini, but Juvenile’s third solo project, drenched in New Orleans drawl, flavor, dialect and, at times, aggression, became the highest-selling album of 1998 with more than 4 million copies sold. The song is set to celebrate its 20th anniversary on Sunday.Īnd what people forget is that 400 Degreez, the album “Azz” is on, shifted the course of Down South hip-hop. The Oxford English Dictionary added “Bling Bling” to its pages in 2003.