Your reaction when you first heard Biggie's Hypnotize?

[Mike Wins]

Nas had Tommy Mottola.

Stoute said he was able to get Nas his first multi-million dollar budget for It Was Written. "If I Ruled The World" was playing on the radio all day in NY, and the video was on MTV and BET in what seemed like every 20 mins, lol. So that summer, Nas was all over the place. And Columbia was making a ton of money with him and The Fugees, so they had a lot to spend on videos and making sure those tracks got mad radio play. It was a different time. There was a lot of bread to invest in these artists back then.

Yup, If I Ruled The World and Street Dreams were massive hits that year. IWW was #1 album on the charts 4 weeks in a row, that was almost unheard of for a hip hop album at the time. IWW was as big an album in 1996 as RTD was in 94 and 95.

Only difference is the Nas caught more heat from his fanbase and hip hop media for going commercial than BIG did because BIG had a couple commercial radio tracks on his first album. I say this all the time but the success of IWW and how big an album it was gets overshadowed by Pac and BIG passing shortly after its release

 

[Awesome Wells]

Yup, If I Ruled The World and Street Dreams were massive hits that year. IWW was #1 album on the charts 4 weeks in a row, that was almost unheard of for a hip hop album at the time. IWW was as big an album in 1996 as LAD was in 94 and 95.

Only difference is the Nas caught more heat from his fanbase and hip hop media for going commercial than BIG did because BIG had a couple commercial radio tracks on his first album. I say this all the time but the success of IWW and how big an album it was gets overshadowed by Pac and BIG passing shortly after its release

Truth.

'96 was a big money year for Hip Hop. That's when the labels started seeing sales go through the roof. So a lot of the legends started getting crazy advances and budgets for their projects. Million dollar videos for guys like Nas and B.I.G. were the norm back then. So when Nas started going that route promotionally, and had bigger budget shyt, a lot of people turned their back on him. He was getting killed by critics at the time, saying he was selling out, even though not much had changed with him, at all.

But there was a damn near riot at the The Wiz in Union Square that summer when Nas went there to sign copies of the album. All these chicks out there scrapping and tearing the store up because they couldn't get their shyt signed by him, lol. They had to shut down the event and bring the cops in. Dude was on top of the world back then.