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A Year of Lil Wayne: What Was It Like to Discover Wayne in the 90s?

Imagine a time before the word "bling" even existed, when you couldn't just look an unknown rapper up online.

Day 198: "Neighborhood Superstar" feat. Big Tymers – Hot Boys, Get It How U Live!!, 1997 / "Tear It Up" feat. Lil Wayne and BG – Big Tymers, How You Luv That Vol. 2, 1998

Today, Andrew Barber, founder of the blog Fake Shore Drive, longtime friend of Noisey—indeed, one of the first people to ever lend me a helping hand as a young freelancer in Chicago—and 90s New Orleans rap enthusiast par excellence, is joining A Year of Lil Wayne to talk about those good old days of Cash Money and No Limit Records. Andrew will also be on Noisey Radio on Beats 1 this weekend talking about Chicago rap, so if you think this is good—just wait! With no further ado, let's talk Big Tymers.

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So full disclosure: My favorite Lil Wayne verse ever is on "Loud Pipes" from Weezy's Tha Block is Hot album, but Kyle already wrote about that, so I'll save that story for another time. Mostly it involves trying to pull up everywhere smelling like dime sacks and cognac.

To keep it all the way 100, the first time I ever heard Lil Wayne in my life was on a song called "Tear It Up" from the Big Tymers' 1998 album How You Luv That Vol. 2. Actually, that was the first time I heard anything Cash Money, period. I remember thinking, "who TF is this little kid on here, he's tight AF." ("Tight" was a popular slang term at the time.) Despite the fact that I know now that Wayne and I are the same age, he sounded wild young at the time, like he could have been 12 or something. But he was rapping better than the adults he shared the track with—and he did the hook and a bridge. I was amazed. (BG went crazy on here, too, but let's stay on Wayne for now.) He dropped like a thousand bars. He was rapping about jumping out of suitcases, doing sound effects with his voice, and switching up his flow multiple times. He just had the craziest style I'd ever heard from a kiddie rapper. And he was all over that album! Keep in mind, this was pre-Wikipedia, so we couldn't just go online and look up how old he was. We just knew his name was Little Wayne, and he was probably a child.

So how was this Big Tymers album the first piece of Cash Money Records-produced content I got my hands on? Well, I'm gonna tell you. History has largely written this piece of information out of the Cash Money Records story, but the first album the label dropped after getting their historic $30 million dollar deal with Universal was not 400 Degreez—it was How You Luv That Vol. 2, a revamped version of the original, which dropped in 1997. The album had done so well independently in the south that Universal repackaged it with a different color album cover, slapped on a new song, and re-released it. Knowing Birdman now, it makes total sense that his first major label album would be his own. Duh. But people typically remember 400 Degreez as the label's first major album because of how successful it was. It was a monster, and it remained the highest-selling CMR release up until 2011 when Take Care finally caught it at 4x Platinum. How You Luv That Vol. 2, on the other hand, didn't blow up the way Cash Money expected, so it was kind of swept under the rug. But they did have an awesome video for the single "Big Ballin" that got decent airplay on BET's Rap City.

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Now, let me remind you that all of this was happening during the height of No Limit Records. I was incredibly loyal to Master P. I was a TRU Tank Dogg in the truest sense, and I was wary of Cash Money from the jump. The Source, Vibe, XXL, and other rap rags at the time had been reporting about this landmark deal Cash Money had struck with Universal Records, and they started pitting the label against Master P's army by writing stuff like "No Limit isn't the only game in town anymore." I'd seen Cash Money's indie releases in mom and pop record stores a few times, but their garish album covers all looked like No Limit's. I just assumed they were knock-off versions of Percy Miller's stable. No Limit was so popular and influential at the time that almost every album from the South and Midwest was emulating their Pen & Pixel-designed covers. People always accused Master P of being a huge biter—which, sure, he was guilty of quite a bit—but in hindsight his business model and aesthetic was one of the most borrowed in rap history. Hell, people are still flipping the Pen & Pixel style in 2017, whether ironically or not.

But once I saw that Big Tymers "Big Ballin" video on BET, I was hooked. Seriously, go watch that video. Juvenile's "Ha" video is Cash Money's crown jewel, but "Big Ballin" is pretty much the prequel to "Ha" and is essentially the same video—the song just didn't sound as weird as "Ha." Needless to say, we immediately went out and bought the Big Tymers album, which dropped a couple of months before 400 Degreez. We were feeling ourselves because we were the only kids at our high school bumping it. We knew we were on the next shit. I can't lie: My love for No Limit began to wane at that very moment.

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Once the "Ha" video dropped, the rest of the world started to slowly catch on. And when Jay Z jumped on the "Ha" remix, it was over. Cash Money was now standing on top of No Limit. It's funny listening to both labels talk about those days now as if they weren't in an all-out competition with each other. They totally were. So many subliminals were flying back and forth, but that's another story for another time (see Wayne: "Ain't got on no suits 'cause we ain't trying to be presidents.")

Once 400 Degreez blew up, Universal went back and re-released much of the Cash Money back catalog (Priority Records did the same with No Limit), and started promoting the old albums in magazine ads. Now all of this Cash Money content was available at every music store, and we couldn't get our hands on it quick enough. However, in these ancient times, you couldn't just go to a streaming site and listen whenever you felt like it. Hell, you couldn't even illegally download it. You had to save your hard-earned money to go out and physically purchase music at a store. It was a process.

Blend tapes and mixtapes were very popular regionally at the time. DJs would mix songs over different beats, making unofficial remixes and mind-blowing blends. These were typically sold at mom and pop records shops and flea markets, and they were easily traded between students and friends. I can't recall what DJ's tape it was on, but around this time I heard "Neighborhood Superstar" on one of these projects. I couldn't stop playing it. It instantly became my favorite song, and it was an anthem for me and the crew. Mannie's beat felt like a vacation, and it featured the entire Cash Money squad. The pinnacle of the song, however, was Wayne's closing verse. By that time, we'd caught wind that Wayne was our age, despite the fact that he says "I'm only 14, I'm a Big Tymer." As a result, he became even greater in our eyes: This kid was our age, and he was bodying everyone on the song. Everyone loved Juvenile the most, but Wayne's verse was by far the most anticipated. When he became the biggest rapper in the world a decade later, it didn't come as a surprise to me.

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At the time, however, our dilemma with "Neighborhood Superstar" was that we didn't know the actual name of the song or what album it was on. It was on one of those mixtapes, and they rarely came with tracklists. As mentioned, this was before you could go to Wikipedia or just Google song lyrics, so we literally had no idea where to look. We figured the song was called "Feared by Many" or "Loved by Broads." It literally could have been from any of the early Cash Money releases. Perhaps it was a B-side to a single or something. Imagine these dark ages. I'm not even sure how we survived as fans.

Finally, after making trips to enough record stores and scouring enough albums' back covers, we put the pieces together that it was on the Hot Boys' Get It How U Live!! and that it was called "Neighborhood Superstar." Instant purchase. Imagine cracking open this cornucopia that is the first Hot Boys album and hearing all of this great Lil Wayne material. (Do yourself a favor and go play "Block Burner" right now.)

Shortly thereafter, those in the know recognized the greatness of "Neighborhood Superstar." It was and still is a cult classic. I always knew this was a significant track, but 20 years later, we can look back and recognize its role in history, too. Why? It was the first time Wayne—or anyone on Cash Money—used the term "bling" ("got diamonds that will 'bling' blind ya.") Yes, that sounds silly now, but "bling" was not a thing yet. The terminology had not been invented. It literally did not exist in anyone's vocabulary. It was simply just a sound effect Wayne threw out there. There's no way he could have predicted this term would come to define this era and lead to a mega smash for B.G. just a few months later. This song literally changed history—and rap music, and the dictionary—forever. And I swear I knew that was gonna happen.

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Years later, Wayne proudly boasted "I made Bling Bling" on Birdman's "Get Your Shine On." People tried to refute him, and say Slick Rick or 2Pac said it first. Yes, Rick and 'Pac are two of my favorite rappers ever, but let's not play ourselves: Bling belongs to Wayne. Respect him as the creator. Long live Dwayne Michael Carter.

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