I got asked back onto the MacroDirt podcast for their after-market review of the 1998 Billboard Hot 100 list. This was a crazy year to review, not just because how poppy everything had gotten, but - ok, it’s seriously crazy just how poppy basically everything had gotten by 1998. I lived it and still, looking back at the shift from even ‘97, and the outright leap from the years leading up to that, it’s pretty profound to look back on.

In doing my prep, I feel like I cracked what happened.

There’s one cultural moment, in a song that sort of rubbed me the wrong way at the time, where I can now say with confidence - for all the cool, amazing, and beloved moments the ‘90s gave me - the exact moment where the songs at the tops of the charts jumped the shark occurred in 1997, with the Puff Daddy ft. Faith Evans & 112 smash hit, “I’ll Be Missing You.”

On the podcast I sketched out how we got there, and what came after, but it deserves it’s a post of its own.

Because - what a shark-jumping moment actually signifies, is a proven format being stretched too far, to the point of cartoonification, and the only solace we get is that if we look hard enough, or far enough down the charts, we can still find an honest embrace of what made the magic work in the first place.

The presence of the shark-jump doesn’t meant here’s nothing on the other side. There really, truly is, which is what created this realization for me and we’ll get there. But first, let’s talk about the formula as it emerged.

In order to make a crossover, chart-topping rap song, here’s what you need to do: get some rap-along-bars in the verses for style points, and get some catchy-as-hell so anybody and everybody can sing-along stuff in the chorus for established pop points.

Pause for a moment and remember where teenagers were in the mid-to-late 90s. I’ll speak for myself on it. We were too young for punk in ‘77, too young for indie and new wave in the ‘80s, barely got a taste of grunge/slacker where we were out and in the world, and now, hanging out at the mall, buying CDs of things we had on tape at the record store, we were feeling the early innings of techno-optimism of the fast approaching late-90s.

We wanted a party. We wanted it to be our party. And we we were going to draw on everything from our parents’ record collections, to the coolest aspects of the prior generations that we missed out on. MTV was doing a hell of a job telling us all of this.

I remember watching Aerosmith and Run DMC on our little black and white TV set. I already knew “Walk This Way” from my parents’ collection and the radio (shoutout the white, greatest hits cassette I played a million times over), and these guys, in their ghetto blues brothers getups, with shell toe Adidas shoes, they were THE UPDATE it felt like we were waiting for. That wall coming down in the video is imprinted on my brain from 1986 on.

The formula was already established. They didn’t do this first. This is just the first time it really imprinted on my brain.

Flash forward to 1995. Wu-Tang has emerged as the nearly chorusless magic that somehow feels like the best of punk and metal masked in urban mystery (to my suburban ears). They’ve crossed over into pop territory some, but they haven’t sacrificed their art in any way shape or form to do it. Outside of grunge and the next wave of punk, the charts had not seen this for teens of my generation.

It seemed like Wu wouldn’t need an Aerosmith gimmick, and while true, they stumbled across a variation of the formula when Method Man released the “All I Need (Razor Sharp Remix) ft. Mary J. Blige."

The Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “You’re All I Need To Get By” is the source interpolation - and this matters. It was a song of their childhood, and their parents’ generation, that they were updating. Plus, a footnote to the formula, it’s a love song. It’s for the ladies and the fellas, which if you’re getting a party going, as sure as Marvin and Tammi knew it too, this is as essential as a beat you can dance to.

This set the formula into hyperdrive. An enterprising Sean “Puffy” Combs got Trackmasters to do a radio version that was everywhere at the time. The single sold 800k units and went platinum. It made it to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 that year, and number one on the R&B singles chart.

Note the update in the beat, which, as much as I love the original off of Method Man’s solo album, and the original remix that followed, this is the version we had playing at all of our school dances, that you heard echoing out of car windows all the way up and down the ave.

When the Notorious B.I.G. got shot and killed in 1997, there was (another) Cobain/Garcia moment for music fans. Maybe not everyone will remember it that way, but for the mall kids, with our Rolling Stones and MTV loyalties, it hit. Hard.

Puff Daddy was destined to spin it to his advantage. The loss was felt, clearly, but this was what he did. He was a mercenary when it came to making a story into his advantage, and I don’t know how long he had this idea in his head, but armed with an interpolation of “Every Breath You Take” by The Police, sung by Biggie’s wife, Faith Evans, they took over all of the charts.

First, absorb this:

So why do I pick this as the spot the formula jumped the shark?

Well, let’s spend a moment on The Police because this is the key:

This was a bonafede hit. It was an easy lift to interpolate. But, honestly, what connection are we supposed to see between the source material and Puff, Biggie, or Faith? It’s a song Sting himself has described as a little evil and about jealousy and surveillance and ownership, and while he doesn’t begrudge people who use it at their weddings, any interpretation of how he talks about it suggests he thinks it’s weird.

I think it’s weird too. Because it’s a great song, but what is the possible connection to the people who made it the top song of 1997? Because this song was inescapably everywhere. To an obnoxious level. And, even for teenage me, who was also a Police fan thanks to, again, my parents’ having those records around, I could not wrap my head around what the fuss was all about.

Run DMC and Aerosmith made it a crossover party. Method and Mary J. made you feel the connection to the source material. Puff and Faith made a cash grab with a lazy interpolation on the back of a lost friend and that’s why this is when pop rap jumped the shark.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S HOPE.

The shark jump doesn’t mean the end. Just like Happy Days went on to have other good episodes and a spinoff or two (which, even Method Man was watching, as we’d later learn in his “Baby you got me / like Joanie had Chachi / until she got high…” on D’Angelo’s “Left and Right”), our 90’s days learned something from this bastardization of the formula.

If Method Man and Mary J. had formalized the formula, only to have Puff and Faith cartoonify it, Big Pun and Joe showed up in 1998 ready to perfect it.

Scrolling the ‘98 Billboard Hot 100 charts, the song I knew I had to talk about when I went on the podcast with Jared, Tony, and Brent, was “Still Not A Player” by Big Pun ft. Joe, produced by Knobody.

There is no doubt in my mind that “A Little Bit of Love” by Brenda Russell made an impression on all three of them in the late ‘70s. It was a love song, a dance song, and Brenda herself was a New Yorker who went on to do big things, like producing music for Rufus, backing Elton John at Wembley Stadium, and even co-writing tracks for Earth Wind & Fire.

The song wasn’t a chart-topping or even chart-registering hit, but it is a JAM of an album cut. Check out the iconic piano riff, the timbale hits, and the raw way she delivers that vocal. Think about how she’s a native New Yorker. Think about the Hispanic influence in those drum hits. Think about why young Christopher Rios in the Bronx probably had this in his bones.

Big Pun, aka Christopher Rios, was a Puerto Rican, Bronx born underground rapper. In the mid-90s, if you knew him, you knew him for his post-Kool G rhyme schemes and pretty much had zero expectation of hearing him on the radio. In a twist of talent and fate, his co-collaborator Fat Joe got their crew, Terror Squad, involved with Loud Records, and a solo deal for Pun with some serious pop aspirations in mind.

They were going to be street. They were going to be local. They were going to crossover, somehow and someway.

For the album they were looking for a way to make sure people knew where they were from, that they knew everyone was invited to this party with them, and not - under any circumstances - lose their street cred OR style.

It was a tall order. But also, there was formula to hijack. So armed with the Brenda Russell sample, they started to piece it together.

First, they took the Pun song, “I’m Not a Player” and it’s infectious “I ain’t a player I just crush a lot line” line which was already immensely quotable for multiple reasons. In one part because it showed his soft side (he crushes a lot, how cute!), against his spanish speaking raunchy side (the mulos and sumo line, ay dios mio!), with the timeless O’Jays sample that I sing to my wife all of the time (of “You’re my darlin’ / darlin’ babaaaayeeeaaa / you’re my darlin’ / darlin’ girreerrurrrrelll”).

It’s the formula but too much for the fellas and not enough for the couples on the dance floor.

The player line had something, though. R&B singer, Joe, had a hit of his own, and this is massively important. With its vocoder lines and appeal to the ladies via his reformed player plea of, “Don’t wanna be a player no more / I think I found someone I could live my life for” - we are getting really close to formulaic mastery.

With the idea to put the Brenda Russell love song, under the link of Joe’s plea in the chorus, and Pun’s filth-as-bars in the verses, “Still Not a Player ft. Joe” was proof that in a post-shark-jump world, you could still make magic.

It was a song that knew where it was from. It was a song that was for everybody. It was a song that was stupid smart in it’s design and internal rhyme schemes.

And, most importantly for teenage me, it was a song that even if I couldn’t literally relate to at all, it became part of the soundtrack to my life. It’s the first place I heard “Boricua, morena” which would serve me well a few short years later at parties in New Britain. It was a gateway into more Terror Squad and D.I.T.C. releases as streaming access let us explore more and more music history that we just couldn’t find in that nascent internet era.

And, most of all, it’s just GOOD MUSIC. Yes, it had a formula, but all the great songs have something like that to them. It’s the execution of it that’s peak perfection. Sure, it only got to 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, closing out the year at 85, but you don’t need to sit at the top to leave your impression.

Thanks to Tony and Jared for having me on to revisit this story. Thanks to my wife for tolerating all my trips down these musical memory lanes, and being amused by me singing her songs I probably shouldn't be singing my wife. Thanks to everybody who gets that the secret to great art is great taste - and that it's ok to call out poor taste, so long as you turn around and make something even better.

ps. The Incubus version, for the person who inevitably sends it in, is post-shark jump Sea World shark bait. Let’s just say they needed a bigger boat. Get that s*** out of here, I wish I could pin that on Puffy, too, because it’s an even worse cartoon.

pps. if you need to go one more step with “Boricua, morena” - and maybe you’re already there - make sure you play the classic, by N.O.R.E and Daddy Yankee, along with Nina Sky, Gem Star, and Big Mato, “Oye Mi Canto” next (this might deserve another post, it’s just too fun).