On the next episode of People’s Party With Talib Kweli, guest Jadakiss sits down with his fellow New Yorker to promote his new album Ignatius, but also winds up resolving a 23-year-old mystery. When asked by co-host Jasmin Leigh about who wrote Puff Daddy‘s verse on the 1997 breakout hit “All About The Benjamins,” Jada readily admitted that the iconic verse was all his and shared the story of how it wound up coming out of the Bad Boy founder’s mouth.
“Me and Sheek [Louch] didn’t like ‘The Benjamins,'” Jada explains. “He almost forced us to record the verses that we have on there. We didn’t really understand what that beat was. It didn’t grasp us at the time — we wasn’t eager to record it.” However, he says, “We was in the midi room just rapping. We would be in the midi room and Biggie or Puff would be working in the other two rooms. He happened to just come in and hear me rhyming and I already had that rhyme. He heard it and was like, ‘Nah, that’s me, let me get that rhyme right there.'”
The rest is rock-and-roll history: Puff’s delivery of the line, “Now, what y’all wanna do? Wanna be ballers? Shot callers? Brawler? / Who be dippin’ in the Benz with the spoilers / On the low from the Jake in the Taurus,” became a rap institution and “All About The Benjamins” helped launch guest stars The Lox (of which Jadakiss is a member along with Sheek and Styles P) into hip-hop superstardom, beginning a 23-plus year career that continues to this day with the release of Ignatius.
Check out the snippet from the next episode of Apple’s No. 1 music podcast above.
People’s Party is a weekly interview show hosted by Talib Kweli with big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics. Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.