Notorious B.I.G. releases 'Juicy' as a single

Why it matters

"Juicy" was released as a commercial single on August 9, 1994, the day after the album version dropped on radio. The single peaked at #27 on the Billboard Hot 100, which was a respectable showing but is not the metric that matters here. What matters is that for the next thirty years "Juicy" has been a permanent part of the rap canon, played at weddings, at retirement parties, at proms, at every cookout in the entire month of June. The production credit on the single splits between Sean "Puffy" Combs and Poke of Trackmasters, who built the Mtume sample around Biggie's vocal. The Bad Boy production style (clean samples, song-shaped structures, pop-radio-friendly chorus) starts here, in this single, before "One More Chance" or "Mo Money Mo Problems" or anything else Bad Boy would put out. "Juicy" is the prototype. Every "Juicy"-shaped song that followed (which is many, many, many songs) is the descendant of this one. You can dance to it. You can listen seriously to it. Most rap songs only do one of those well. "Juicy" does both.