DJ S&S - N#ggaz Ain’t Nice
A classic mid-'90s tape from Uptown's king of exclusives.
DJ S&S, aka DJ SNS, was one of the first DJs in New York City to popularize playing exclusives on mixtapes. Inside the pages of Do Remember!, S&S breaks down how he got turned on to playing exclusives, and even shares the stories behind some of the biggest records he ever broke on his tapes.
As for N#ggaz Ain’t Nice, which was loaded with songs that had never been heard before, check out this outtake from our Do Remember! interview with S&S where talks about some the tape’s highlights:
DJ S&S: I stood in the goddamn studio for like nine hours to get that “Walk in New York.” I was so cool with Fredro and them at that time because they used to hang out at the Muse. I was the only DJ in New York playing that record. They gave me that personally. I was sitting in the car and I had that before everybody.
I was in there watching them niggas smoke and everything for them to give me that damn song. That was my first time ever in Edgewater, New Jersey. I didn’t even know what that was back then. As soon as you hit Edgewater, there’s a studio they used to record at—it was right there.
I got in trouble with Meth because I played “Meth vs. Chef.” The album didn’t come out until six months later. I saw Meth in the street and he was like, “Yo! How you gonna play that? You could have asked me. You could have called me.”
He’s right. I was just playin’, bro. I’m sorry. Listen, if I get a record, I’m playing it. And if you put it on your mixtape and you don’t talk over it, I’m taking it.
“The ? Remainz” was my favorite record at that time. You see I played a lot of backpack records—not flashy records—but mainstream hip-hop records. I did that because that’s what a mixtape is. It’s supposed to be a mixture of music.
Speaking of “Meth vs. Chef,” here’s Raekwon speaking about the making of the classic Wu-Tang joint with Do Remember! author Daniel Isenberg for Complex in 2011:
Raekwon: Me and Meth loved the beat. For the world to really know, me and Meth always go back and forth. We like to argue, fuss, and fight with one another, so everybody in the clan they kinda get a kick out of us two geekin’ and lunchin’ on each other every time. But, yeah, when we did that song we definitely was on some battling shit. And I knew Meth had the bounce.
When it comes to flowin’ we always looked at him as a flow-er. Niggas looked at me as a soldier. You know, a militant. Everybody had their specific chambers and at that time it was the flow-er versus the lyricist. The guy who’s gonna come at you with the war rhymes and the straight street shit.
I feel he won still though because his flow was just so, “Who lit that shit it was I, the chinky eye…” I was just going at him with the machine gun, “I’m goin’ all out kid no turn backs…” So to this day, we still laugh about it, and it’s still a mystery to us who really won. But in my eyes, I’ll give it to him.
And here’s DJ Premier on the making of the banging Hard To Earn B-Side “The ? Remainz,” as part of his “So Wassup?” series:
Plus, the official music video for Onyx’s “Walk In New York”:
Stream N#ggaz Ain’t Nice below, and stay tuned for more 50 TAPES posts as we celebrate the release of Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes, out now via Rizzoli.
DJ S&S - N#ggaz Ain’t Nice