Jadakiss Names His Top 25 Songs

 

J to the Muahhh sat down with Complex Magazine recently to break down 25 of his favorite tracks that he’s kissed. Are they your favorites as well from the Yonkers emcee?? Find out after the jump!! And if you haven’t already done so, cop I Love You here.

@MarisaMendez

1. The Lox f/ The Notorious B.I.G. “You’ll See” (1996)
That was the glory years. Puff had us on a trial like, ‘I wanna sign y’all but I don’t really know.’ He was really gonna sign us, but back then that was just how the CEOs and all of them were on it. So he was like, ‘I’ma throw y’all on this joint to see,’ like it was a tester. But just for him to submit us a beat like, ‘We want y’all to write to this,’ we were like, ‘Hell yeah.’

“It was at one of the meetings. Ruff Ryders was our managers back then. Dee brought us down to the studio, so that was like an experience for us, going to Puff’s studio, because we were only used to being in our studios. We’d never really been in the big joints. So we came there, we chillin’, and he gave us the beat like, ‘Take this beat and come back in a day or two and when you come back we’re gonna lay it with you.’

“I guess [Puff] went to B.I.G. like, ‘I got these new kids, they’re crazy,’ and he gave it to B.I.G., and you know B.I.G. was already with just getting on anything hot. But it was like, ‘Yo, our first joint is with B.I.G.’ But we didn’t get to actually meet B.I.G. We didn’t know him, he just did it off Puff’s word. But it came out right.

“We were walking around with copies of that in all pockets, like, ‘Yo pop this in, we got that ‘You’ll See.’ It was crazy. We had New York and Yonkers on smash when ‘You’ll See’ came out. We were on top of the world. We here. Because it was all talk, ‘Yo we’re going to have a meeting with Puff Daddy, we might be signing to Bad Boy.’ Yeah right. But then when you hear that, it was like ‘Yo!’ So that was like a good introduction to the world.”

2. The Notorious B.I.G. f/ The Lox “Last Day” (1997)
“We were still pretty much in the hood, probably like a nice day like today, chillin’ on the block. We get the call, ‘Yo, y’all gotta go down to Daddy’s House, B.I.G. wants y’all on his album.’ Everybody’s looking around like, ‘What?!?’ I guess we hopped in a cab, or whoever was driving, however we had to get there.

The whole Junior Mafia and B.I.G. was there. It was a beat produced by Havoc, so the beat was already knockin’. B.I.G. was like, ‘What y’all wanna do with it?’ We just sat there, smoked, drank, and it came out. I had another rhyme before the actual one that was on there. I said it to B.I.G. and he was like, ‘Nah, I need you come harder for me.’ Alright. Went in there, and wrote that right there, and that was it. It was beautiful being in the studio with B.I.G. And then to actually be able to record with him for his album was like a super honor.

”That was a self-accolade for us. We felt we made it once B.I.G. told us we were nice anyway. Like, ‘Yo, y’all got it.’ That was the push out to the world that we needed.”

3. Puff Daddy f/ The Lox, The Notorious B.I.G., & Lil’ Kim “It’s All About the Benjamins (Remix)” (1997)
“[Puff] had the beat from The Hitmen. But the rhyme, his first intro, ‘Now, what y’all wanna do, wanna be ballers…,’ I wrote that. I was rhyming in the MIDI room amongst us, we were trading rhymes, me and Styles and whoever was there. He came in, heard me saying that, and was like, ‘I need that!’ Then he put that on the ‘Benjamins’ beat. He had laid it, but me and Sheek didn’t put nothing down yet. We didn’t really like the beat.

So then the whole No Way Out was almost finished, and Diddy was like, ‘Yo, y’all gotta lay a verse on this beat.’ And that’s how ‘Benjamins’ came about. But we weren’t crazy about it, how it went all crazy. I didn’t personally [like it]. I thought the beat was garbage, from when it was raw. Then being in the club, the skating rink, and they’re playing it for thirty, forty minutes straight, that was crazy.

“That was part of why B.I.G. was in Cali. Working, and promoting Life After Death. Whatever he was doing, he was still working. He laid that verse in Cali if I’m not mistaken. I only heard it on the remix. And Kim was always around. She was family.”

4. The Lox “If You Think I’m Jiggy” (1998)
“That was the time when sampling was in. Puff was terrorizing the radio with the samples. So I was just trying to catch one of them that could pop for us. I always used to hear that Rod Stewart song [‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’], so once I got the beat from Dame Grease I just tried to flip it. It ain’t really work out how I had planned it, but still the people liked it.

“I understood how much they liked it when we went on the Ruff Ryders/Cash Money tour, and we were doing the spoof of it. We used to come out with the shiny suits on, rip them off and then go into ‘Fuck You.’ But at a lot of the arenas, people used to not ‘boo’, but be like ‘ahhh!’ They wanted to hear that! We used to be backstage like, ‘They really fuckin’ like that ‘If You Think I’m Jiggy.’’ It worked out. We probably wanted to be more harder back then because we didn’t understand the business of radio play and crossing over. But it’s all good, when you look back it did its justice.”

5. The Lox f/ DMX & Lil’ Kim “Money, Power & Respect” (1998)
“We were on Bad Boy now, we were in the family. Puff’s album came out, everybody’s album came out, Mase’s album came out, now it’s time for us to work. We got our batch of beats, and that was just one that we knew was gonna be a great thing. I wasn’t there when Styles and Sheek laid their verses, I was sick. Then I remember Diddy, Deric Angelettie, and everybody like, ‘Yo, you gotta come with a right verse, they laid their verses, what you gonna do?’ Then once I laid it, we were good.

”We were having trouble seeing how we were gonna get the hook. Then we’re like, ‘We need Kim on the hook.’ I think we all collaborated [on writing the hook]. X was just family, he put the icing on the cake. They were just getting him a deal over at Def Jam, so he needed to get on everything anyway just to make that more solidified.”

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