the fact that BIG told the producer
which specifc samples he wanted to use for his first single, and the producer just gave em to LL instead, is truly fukked up. If it was just beats he cooked up on his own then by all means, that'd be fully understandable. But to jack the mans samples for his lead singles and sell em to somebody else??!?!! BIG should have had him beat down.
And the audacity this scumbag thinks he deserved a chance to get back cool with Big???
Speaking of LL taking tracks meant for Biggie, those weren't even the only ones
on that same album – cuz Trackmasters have said they were keeping the 'I Shot Ya' beat for Big too, til Chris Lighty snatched that one up. And they based it around Biggie's 'Who Shot Ya' too:
Poke: “I remember we played him the ‘I Shot Ya’ beat. At first we didn’t even want to give him the beat because we wanted the beat for Biggie. But Chris Lighty was like, ‘No! You’re giving him the beat!’”
Tone: “It’s funny how the name came up because it was a beat for Big but it reminded everybody of ‘Who Shot Ya?’ And somebody in the room said, ‘This is not ‘Who Shot Ya? It’s I Shot Ya.’ And that’s how the title came up.