Courtesy of Old To The New
At the time I made that track in the early-90s sampling jazz was still very popular. I put that beat together but didn’t actually have Biggie in mind when I was making it. But when I played it to him he loved it, but it was just a beat with no hook or concept.
Back then Big was spending a lot of time with me as we only lived a few blocks apart in Brooklyn. I’d pick him up with Lil’ Cease and we’d just drive around listening to music and smoking. I used to play a lot of my own beats but then I’d also play other stuff to try and put Biggie onto old soul and stuff like that. This particular day, I played an old Last Poets tape and at the end of one of their routines it goes ‘And you know, and I know, that ni**ers love party and bullsh*t.’ As soon as Biggie heard that he was like, ‘I wanna f**k with that!’ The Last Poets were a very socially conscious group, so he took what was essentially a positive message and totally flipped it to have a different meaning on his own record. Also, remember the part of the song where Biggie says ‘And a f**kin’ fight broke out…’, then the music cuts off and you can hear all the party noise? To record those sounds Biggie had everyone in the studio get in the vocal booth and just throw mad sh*t around, tables, chairs, everything (laughs).
When I first heard the finished track I thought that, as hard as it was, it was kinda quirky. Biggie had a lot of humour in his lyrics, even though he was talking about some gangsta sh*t. Looking back on it now though, I can sum “Party And Bullsh*t” up in one word – unbelievable. The recording of that track was so spontaneous and nothing about it was planned, so it’s unbelievable to me that 15 years later people still lose it when they hear it.