Inside the Recording of Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G.’s Collab ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’
Jay-Z rose to prominence in the mid-1990s in the wake of his fellow Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn emcee, The Notorious B.I.G. In 1996, the two rappers teamed up for the collab “Brooklyn’s Finest” from Jay-Z 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt. With Biggie’s death coming a year later, the song became a timeless capture of the two rappers at very different inflection points in their careers.
Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. had similar lives growing up in Brooklyn
Even before they were rappers, Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. shared the same career path: both sold crack on the streets of Brooklyn at the height of the crack epidemic. Biggie eventually left the hustle behind to focus on his music career in earnest, with Jay-Z eventually following suit.
While they were teenagers, the two rappers both attended the same high school, Brooklyn’s George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education Center. Busta Rhymes, another future superstar, attended the school at the same time as well.
Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. collabed on ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’
Biggie knew of Jay-Z when he was on the come-up in Brooklyn. By that point, Biggie had achieved massive success with his 1994 debut album Ready to Die, which contained hit songs such as “Juicy” and “Big Poppa.”
The 2022 book It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him described how Biggie came to be a part of “Brooklyn’s Finest,” originally intended to be a solo track on Jay-Z’s debut LP Reasonable Doubt. He was sitting in on a session with producer DJ Clark Kent when he overheard a beat that Kent was working on for Jay-Z. Biggie was jealous, and wanted the beat, but Kent was adamant that it belonged to Jay-Z.
Kent had the idea to take Biggie to the studio with him and have him wait in the car while he went inside and spoke with Jay-Z. Kent played the beat for the song and thought of how to convince Jay-Z to put The Notorious B.I.G. on the song. “Yo, this s*** is dope. You should put Big on the song,” Kent said.
Roc-A-Fella Records cofounder Damon Dash reportedly said no because didn’t want to deal with Sean “Diddy” Combs, Biggie’s friend and the founder of his record label, Bad Boy Records. Kent explained that he knew Big and could talk to him, which Jay was fine with; Dash, however, was wary. “But,” Dash said, “we ain’t paying Puff no money.”
When Kent brought in Biggie, the two rappers burst out laughing upon seeing each other. They were vibing to the beat of the song, which eventually became “Brooklyn’s Finest.” After a half hour, Jay got in the booth and laid down his verses in one take. “You ready?” he asked Big as he got out of the booth. Biggie, for his part, was flabbergasted, as he’d never seen another artist besides himself who could sit and listen to a beat then rap over it effortlessly off the top of his head.
“Clark, that s*** was crazy,” Big said. Biggie didn’t record his part then, finishing his verse weeks later. But a beautiful friendship between the two rappers blossomed that night at a time when Biggie was in the tabloids for the deterioration of his friendship with fellow superstar rapper Tupac Shakur.
“He pushed me because we both wanted to be the best. It was healthy,” Jay later said of Biggie. “It was like two competitors on the court that played basketball and then after the game’s over be like, ‘Yo, let’s go to the movies or something.’”
Jay-Z was one of the last people The Notorious B.I.G. talked to before his death
In March 1997, Biggie was in Los Angeles attending an after-party for the Soul Train Music Awards. While he was there, he called his good friend Jay-Z, who had promised him he would come out to party, but was instead in bed across the country in New York.
“He felt like he finally was back in Los Angeles and everything was where it was supposed to be,” Jay-Z said of the phone call, according to Elle. Biggie was gunned down after he left the party an hour later. “We see this happen in movies – when everything is just fine, and we hung up the phone, and one hour later, he’s no longer with us.”
