Mister Cee - The Best of Biggie

Check out an exclusive interview from inside the book.

It was way high up there on our Do Remember! wish list—to speak to Mister Cee about the making of his The Best of Biggie mixtape. And thankfully, Cee hit us back with no hesitation and was one of our first interviews we did for the book. 

But why was it so important for us to talk to Cee about this particular tape? Well, at the time of its release in 1995, Biggie was the biggest MC in New York, and probably the world. Ready to Die was a smash, and everything he hopped on was an instant classic. So much so that if you had a new Biggie song on your mixtape, it was an automatic cop, regardless of whatever else was on it.

Cee’s tape was different though. This would be the first time a DJ would release a full “Best of” mixtape featuring music by one artist. And because of his close ties to B.I.G., he was able to get an exclusive intro and freestyle from the man himself, too. And the rest of the tape was filled with Biggie joints that people may have missed from the past, including features with artists ranging from Neneh Cherry to Heavy D. 

The tape became so popular that it inspired Mister Cee to make a whole series of “Best of” tapes, including ones for Redman, Method Man, and Mobb Deep. And it inspired other DJs too—soon, the mixtape market was so flooded with “Best of” tapes that Cee decided to give it up.

Here’s an exclusive interview from inside the Do Remember! book, featuring Mister Cee and Tape Kingz’s Iain McNee discussing the story behind The Best of Biggie mixtape:

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Stream The Best of Biggie below, and stay tuned for more 50 TAPES posts as celebrate the release of Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes, out now via Rizzoli.

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Mister Cee - The Best Of Biggie

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Bonus: The Stories Behind Mister Cee’s Mixtape Drops

For those who used to listen to Mister Cee tapes or his live mix shows on Hot 97 regularly, or tune into him now on 94.7 The Block, you’ll appreciate this unpublished breakdown of his three classic Mister Cee drops, as told to us by Cee himself:

1. “Mister Cee, and you don’t stop.” - There's a song that KRS-One did called “Ya Know The Rules.” That's D-Nice’s voice on that record where he’s shouting out DJs. D-Nice is like, “I'm about to shout out some people, some friends of mine—Scott La Rock, and you don't stop, a Sammy B and you don't stop, and Mr. Cee!” He shouts out nothing but DJs, which was very rare at the time on a rapper's record, because normally rappers would shout out other rappers. You rarely heard rappers shouting out DJs. That's where I took the “Mister Cee, and you don't stop” from. 

I spoke to D-Nice about it in passing some years back about it. I don't remember how we even got on that subject but he didn't even know that it was him. But I said, “You know the, ‘Mr. Cee....’ You know, that's your voice, that's you.” And he was like, "Really? Oh, shit. I forgot about that.” I think it was one time I called him some years back, and he came on the phone and he was like, "Mr. Cee and you don't stop," and I was like, “You know that's your voice, right?” And then I had to explain to him where it came from and he was like, “Oh, my God, I never knew that." 

2. “DJ Mister Cee, he is on the mix.” - Easy Mo Bee, who I grew up with at Lafayette Gardens Projects in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, produced Miles Davis’ Doo Bop album. And there was a song on the album called “Blow,” which was the second single off the album. Easy Mo Bee produced the original song and the remix, and I did the scratches on it. And in the remix, one of the members of Rappin’ Is Fundamental rapped, "DJ Mister Cee, he is on the mix." And that's where I got that from. 

3. "This is a revolution sureshot" is from a D.ST record. GrandMixer D.ST has a song called “The Home of Hip Hop” and D.ST has always been one of my idols as a DJ. D.ST and Jam Master Jay, and Grandmaster Flash, those were always my three idols growing up as a DJ. Especially D.ST. The moment when D.ST was cutting up Chic's “Good Times” at the end of Wild Style while the credits rolled—that was one of the main moments I looked at and was like, “I want to be like him.” And so that's where I got "this is a revolution sure shot" from.