"Who Shot Ya?" is released

Why it matters

The line on "Who Shot Ya?" that everybody has spent thirty years arguing about is "you rewind this, B," which Biggie says about a minute and a half in. Whether "rewind this" was a coded reference to Tupac and the Quad Studios shooting ("rewind to that night") or just a producer instruction ("rewind to this part") is the kind of textual close-reading that fans of the beef have done at the syllable level for a quarter century. What is not in dispute is that the song is technically very good. Two minutes and forty-three seconds. A horn loop. Biggie rapping in a slower, more menacing, more deliberate cadence than the one he used on "Juicy." The song works as a song, separate from its place in the East/West narrative. The song also works as a diss, if you want to read it that way. Most great diss records work as records. "Who Shot Ya?" is in that company. You can play it for somebody who has never heard it and they will hear what they hear. The beef will arrive in their head about a minute in. It always does.