Waiting for a policeman to approach his car on the side of the I-95 highway with a stash of cocaine hidden in his sunroof, Shawn Carter probably couldn’t have predicted that one day he’d be performing a song about this episode at a presidential staff ball.
But a decade later, Carter — better known as Jay-Z — would draw inspiration from this incident for his hit “99 Problems”, released as a single from 2004’s The Black Album. Produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, the track is a kind of sonic patchwork, using samples from no fewer than six songs. Rock artists Mountain and Billy Squier provide the pulsating beat, while the title and the unforgettable hook derive from a nauseatingly misogynistic 1993 record by rapper Ice-T in which he posits that having sex with a multitude of women renders all of life’s troubles irrelevant.
Improbably, it was the comedian Chris Rock who gave Rubin the idea of releasing a song about all the problems that were being overlooked by the myopic, and priapic, Ice-T. Jay-Z was immediately on board and set about composing three new semi-autobiographical verses that railed against the litany of issues blighting the lives of black Americans, from exploitation to gang violence and, most notably, racial profiling.
In the song’s much-lauded second verse, Jay-Z revisits that time when he was pulled over by the police. Despite later conceding that he was “all the way in the wrong”, he realises that the officer doesn’t know about the drugs and has stopped him for the transgression of being black. “You was doin’ 55 in a 54,” admonishes the cop — whose lines are delivered by Jay-Z in a mock-supercilious voice — before adding, “Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are.”
“I ain’t passed the bar, but I know a little bit/ Enough that you won’t illegally search my shit,” the narrator retorts before driving away. It’s a triumphant, cathartic moment, even if it is founded on a specious understanding of the law, as expounded in a 2012 law review paper by Professor Caleb Mason.
That the song has been used as a legal case study and referenced by everyone from President Obama (at whose ball Jay-Z performed the song) to, er, the late British comedian Barry Chuckle (whose version can be sampled here), underlines its wide-ranging cultural impact. But the repeated use of the word “bitch” has unsurprisingly invited much reproach. Jay-Z has claimed that he was intentionally trying to be “provocative” and that the word refers to the canine unit that’s sent after him in the second verse. But several gratuitous shots of scantily-clad women in the otherwise artfully shot music video make his defence rather unconvincing.
The song’s blistering, controversial lyrics have ironically proven problematic for artists covering the track. The London-based artist Hugo, for instance, decided only to retain the chorus, replacing Jay-Z’s deeply personal verses with his own. And though he deserves plaudits for playfully reimagining the track as a banjo-led bluegrass melody, his new, banal faux-bluesy lyrics completely strip away the song’s trenchant power.
Then again, Jay-Z’s politically charged words do risk sounding absurd when delivered verbatim by others. The Australian trio Philadelphia Grand Jury recorded a risibly twee acoustic cover (complete with folksy harmonies) for the country’s Triple J radio station. One of the singers’ stuttering attempts to rap (and another’s use of the N-word) makes for particularly painful listening.
Perhaps the best cover is one that’s not even a traditional cover at all. The prodigiously busy producer Danger Mouse remixed the track for his cult album The Grey Album, which ingeniously fused the vocals from songs on Jay-Z’s Black Album with the instrumental arrangements on The Beatles’ White Album. The furious indignation of “99 Problems” is here fittingly paired with the explosive energy of “Helter Skelter”.
Grunge and hip-hop — two genres that were shaped and embraced by disaffected youth — would unite in a live cover by Pearl Jam, who were joined on stage by Jay-Z at a show in Philadelphia in 2012. It’s a well-executed, if fairly underpowered, rendition, but the Seattle rockers’ fans enthusiastically join in. Elsewhere, the famously magpie-like Jack White quoted the track’s chorus in the middle of a live performance of “Icky Thump”, a song that also lambasts racial discrimination.
It was White who once mused that “99 Problems” is “the story of America”. He of course meant this as praise, but his words are, in another sense, sadly all too true. The regularity with which reports emerge of black suspects being assaulted by police officers suggests that the tale that plays out in Jay-Z’s track is still one of the nation’s defining narratives.
We’re keen to hear from our readers. What are your views on Jay-Z’s ‘99 Problems’, and the different versions sampled here?
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s
Music credits: Virgin EMI; UMOD (Universal Music On Demand); Epic
Picture credit: L. Cohen/WireImage for BET Network