at least in my area and what I was seeing on tv at the national level. . They were playing him on college radio just as much if not more than Jay Z and rap city gave him his own episode to premier the "money don't make the world stop" video. Then like a week later, he was on Ricki Lake lol. It was shelved and never dropped. Let's not forget, Jay Z didn't have Def Jam behind him on the first album. That was Freeze.Records. Pudgee had Perspective with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis behind him. Especially coming off of that Solo "heaven" remix. They were trying to make him into a star. Plus you had Heltah Skeltah buzzing that whole summer coming off of the "leflaur...." and "blah" singles going into "operation lockdown"(they also got their own episode). Operation Lockdown was so popular, they shot 2 videos with one of them in a day care that most people have forgot about lol. Jay Z was definitely buzzing and making a name for himself, but if you weren't a true hip hop head and knew him form Jaz, Kane, Mic Geronimo albums, many weren't checking for him like that.
I mean, I guess... everybody had their own episode on Rap City tho- if you had an album coming out, that was the place to be a guest. Jay had an episode when 'Dead Presidents' was the only thing remotely jumping off. I wouldn't say Jay was so low on the totem pole that Pudgee was outbuzzing him tho'. He was more like, in the mix with the artists somewhere in the middle. 'Ain't No nikka' was a hit. And then when the album dropped, it got sort of a growing reputation. It was like a slow burn, and little by little those songs were blowing up like "Can't Knock the Hustle" and "Brooklyn's Finest". He also got a lot of guest spots around that time, which usually indicated that an artist was notable. He definitely made some moves in '96- he wasn't a big star yet but he wasn't scraping around on the bottom either.