Too $hort Breaks Down His 25 Most Essential Songs

Short Dawg talks about the making of his biggest (and filthiest) hits.

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Complex Original

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By age 17, Todd Shaw already knew the secret to success in the rap game. Too $hort’s first album, released on cassette in 1983, was called Don’t Stop Rappin’—and despite a brief (staged!) flirtation with retirement in the early 90s, the Bay Area legend has certainly has lived up to that motto. It’s 2012 now, and Too $hort’s 19th album, No Trespassing, is due out in a week.

$hort’s formula—and indeed, many of his dirty rhymes and thick-ass beats—have hardly changed since the days when Felix Mitchell was the king of Oakland. Too $hort will turn 46 this year, but you still wouldn’t want to listen to his music around your mother—or, for that matter, underage kids. In a recent video produced by XXL, $hort offered “fatherly advice” to young boys looking to “turn girls out.” It was not a good look, and after the video led to a firestorm of controversy and the suspension of staffers who posted the clip, $hort offered up a rare but apparently heartfelt apology.

Short Dawg’s foul mouth and nasty sense of humor are legendary. But believe it or not, they are tempered by a community-mindedness that one might not expect from the man who loved the songs “Blowjob Betty” and “Invasion of the Flat Booty Bitches” so much he recorded them both twice. But one of his first songs, “Girl (That’s Yo Life)” is a cautionary tale about crack cocaine, which was tearing Oakland apart at the time.

His latest video, “What The Fuck,” features Occupy protesters, who have been tearing up the Town in their own way. This delicate balance between dirty raps and actually giving a damn has helped Short achieve longevity that few rappers will ever enjoy. What better time, then, to have Too $hort Break Down The 25 Most Essential Songs in his massive catalogue? So click through and read up, because life is too short.

As told to Willy Staley (@bushwickwill)

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25. Too $hort "Girl (Cocaine) That's Your Life" (1985)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Don't Stop Rappin'
Label: 75 Girls Records And Tapes

Too $hort: “That's the first song that I made when they let me go in the studio. The first time ever in 1985 when I got in the studio, that's what I rapped about. [Crack] was what was affecting the community, it was new.

“If you listen to the song, I never even use the word 'crack'. It was called rock cocaine. It wasn't even called the crack epidemic yet. It was fucking Oakland up so bad I just rapped about it. It was just that glass pipe, it was devastating.”

24. Too $hort "Playboy Short" (1983)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Don't Stop Rappin'
Label: 75 Girls Records And Tapes

Too $hort: “I wouldn't call it a remake [of the 75 Girls version], we just kinda brought it back. I put it on that reggae beat. I forgot what beat I used for 'Playboy Short' when I brought it back, but I know that the original 'Playboy Short' beat we remade that beat for the first song I did with E-40, it was called 'Rapper's Ball.' That's the original beat.


 

Artists like Parliament would revisit the same music and kinda change it a little bit, change the words and hook, and it'd still be that same flavor. Ohio Players used to do it... I liked that technique, so I brought it into hip-hop.


 

“I took 'Playboy Short''s words and put it to a new beat later on the Get in Where You Fit In album. That was an Ant Banks beat or something, I don't know. I'm telling you man, I felt like I had the right to do that shit. I wrote all that shit, wrote all that music. 'Playboy Short,' I wrote that music.

“I could see how artists like Parliament would revisit the same music and kinda change it a little bit, change the words and hook, and it'd still be that same flavor. A lot of groups back then would make another song that sounded very similar to a song they already had. Ohio Players used to do it. So I adopted that shit. I liked that technique, so I brought it into hip-hop.

“You know that song that I just did with E-40 called 'Bitch?' I brought that song to E-40. That song was for my album, but I knew I wasn't putting any album out any time soon. We made the song [and] 40 was like, 'Man this is a fucking hit.'

“So I told 40, 'Put it on your album. Put it out. Let's just put this shit out right now. If it's a fucking hit, let's put it out now.' So we put it out, sure enough it was a hit. But the guy who made that beat—he doesn't make beats like that. He makes R&B beats.

“He makes this beautiful-ass music that's made for singing and shit. I keep telling him, I'm like, 'Dude, can you please just make another beat that sounds just like that one? Just make it for me. Use the same sounds, change 'em up a little bit.'

“That's just something that's just in me, like if you took that off something like a certain drum kit [that] make some certain sounds and you use a bass guitar or you use some kind of keyboard and you make a hit record with it, go back and use those same instruments, change the notes, and make another fucking hit. People like that sound. You know that guy whose doing all them damn beats for Rick Ross, all of 'em sound similar, but goddamit those motherfuckers hit every time!”

23. Too $hort "Dope Fiend Beat" (1987)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Born To Mack
Label: Dangerous/Jive/RCA
Too $hort: “That was a beat that I made on a Casio keyboard and it was called the 'Dope Fiend Beat.' And Freddy B used to act like he was a crack head, and he'd be singing about how he wanted crack and sherm—but we never called it crack, it was like rock cocaine.

“He'd be like, 'I wanna smoke rocks!' and 'I wanna smoke sherm!' and all this shit. And the beat would be playing, and it was like the junkie was supposed to be rapping and talking and shit. It was great. I would play that bassline, like [Sings bassline to 'Dope Fiend Beat'].Then later, when I got in the studio, I brought all that shit back. Everything came back.”


 

Every rap that I wrote before I signed to Jive, I recycled all that sh*t. That's how I was making those albums on Jive so fast. I was putting 'em out every year, every nine months.


 

“Let me say something for the record: Every rap that I wrote before I signed to Jive, I recycled all that shit. That's how I was making those albums on Jive so fast. I was putting 'em out every year, every nine months. That was because I had all the lines already written.

“No one ever really caught on to that shit either. You're the first person to really call me on that, so I never really discussed this with anybody. I had a box full of raps—like a U-haul box full of rhymes that I had wrote—and I would actually dig through the box when I was working on a new album. I'd pick out songs and lyrics, and every time I'd write them over and use them for a new song, I'd scratch it out.

“So I had this box full of rhymes that were like half pages scratched out, sometimes the whole page is scratched out, some pages weren't scratched out at all. So anything that wasn't scratched out, I knew I could recycle. I went through that box until everything was scratched out.

“I think it wasn't probably until album number 10 when I ran out of rhymes. It was eight years of rhymes. Rappers tell me all the time that they threw away their rhymes, like 'I already rapped that shit.' [But] I was like, 'Nobody ever heard it, so....' I've never thrown away a rhyme book.

“The bitch word started back in like '82 when I had a rap partner named Freddy B. We were known for that whole thing. We would DJ parties, and we would put on instrumentals and we would rap for about 30 minutes.

“If Too $hort and Freddy B DJed your party, you were gonna get a rap show during the party. And we always did that: "Everybody say biaaaaatch!" That was part of the whole shit. When I went solo, he [had] went to prison, and that's when I got on the whole solo thing in '85 and started working with 75 Girls. I kind of just carried on the tradition.”

22. Too $hort "Freaky Tales" (1987)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Born To Mack
Label: Dangerous/Jive/RCA

Too $hort: "That was the song that put me on the map. That was a song that I wrote when I was in high school. I had a song about these hoes and I said, 'I got 16 hoes sucking ten toes.' I was like in 11th grade at the time, so people would be laughing when I said this shit. So I went back and wrote the song called 'Freaky Tales' and told the story about the 16 hoes.

“Later in life, when I first started recording professionally, I was working with a label called 75 Girls and I wrote the same concept, the same 'Freaky Tales' song, I wrote it over and it actually tells the story about these 75 girls.

“Then later on when I started my own label, Dangerous Music, that's when I made the 'Freaky Tales' everyone knows. I kinda narrowed it down to about 40-something chicks. You know the 75 girls version is real, like, boring at certain points. So I narrowed it down to just the good parts and that's the song everyone knows.”

21. Too $hort "Cusswords" (1989)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Life Is...Too Short
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “I had been getting reviews from the first album, from the Born to Mack album—you know, it was a really negative kind of [reception] from the press. They were like, 'This guy's pretty wack, he can't rap.' They were praising N.W.A. and Eazy E and they were shitting on me in the media.

'He can't rap, the music's wack, he'll never make it,' and all this stuff. You know, 'All he can do is curse.' So I made a song called 'Cusswords.' Just take it back to talking shit. I tried to say every cussword I could, in a row.”

20. Too $hort "Don't Fight the Feelin'" (1989)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Life Is...Too Short
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “Tha was supposed to be a song where we had these two female rappers who I called the Danger Zone. Our label Dangerous Music was gonna put their album out and I wanted to do a song with them featured on my album where an older guy gets at these little high school girls, and they're supposed to be like, 'We ain't fucking with you. We're gonna talk shit back to you.'

“We went to the studio to record the song, and then after we wrote some verses, it wasn't really like, 'I'm not giving you no pussy.' It was like, 'Fuck you! Fuck the motherfuck outta you. Fuck everything.'

"Everyone was like, 'Too $hort gon' be mad, he's gon' be mad.' Nah, I said, 'I'ma go back and write my verse and make them be mad at me like that.' So I went back and rewrote my two verses. And everyone was like, 'Man, I don't know $hort, they just fucking you up!'

Rappin 4-Tay was affiliated with our crew at the time, and I went and got 4-Tay and told him, 'Man, just bring it on and just shit on 'em.' Like, y'all can't talk about the big homey like that. Everyone loved the shit. It's like you talk all this shit about girls, how come they can't talk shit back? It's an unfair environment, you know?”

19. Too $hort "Life Is...Too $hort" (1989)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Life Is...Too $hort
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “My engineer on the Life is Too $hort album was Al Eaton. Al Eaton had a studio called One Little Indian Studios, and he was a pretty good guitar player. He would suggest certain songs. Al was the force behind Life is Too $hortand definitely the force behind songs like 'The Ghetto.' And he did guitar on 'City of Dope.' So he pretty much spearheaded that track, and it was just based on the little guitar riff.

“I knew the music well enough, 'School Boy Crush.' I knew the music so I wanted to make a song—you know, a good song should make good music. So that's why 'Life is Too Short' doesn't have any curse words. It had a catchy hook, it felt good. Every time I get a track that I feel like it sounds like radio or sounds commercial, it sounds like a lot of people might like it—I'm kinda careful with the lyrics.”

18. Too $hort "Dead or Alive" (1990)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Short Dog's In The House
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “I got shot in the head in a crack house. I was smoking the pipe, I went in the crack house, and they killed me in the crack house. Shit never happened in real life. But it was a real fucking rumor. Without social media, the shit went all over the whole country and I was just—I was dead. With social media, when the rumor goes out, the rumor gets killed.

"When it went out back then, it [stayed] out for a long time, so I was dead. I was gone, I was out of there. They were having memorials for me, all kinds of shit. You got people waking up and going, 'Oh my God, my friend is dead.' Like they believe in this shit. Radio stations were having a moment of silence and shit, and I wasn't officially back alive until the next album came out [with this song.]”

17. Too $hort "The Ghetto" (1990)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Short Dog's In The House
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “[That was] the first time we ever really did what you were supposed to do [for a music video]. Everything before that was like some ragtag, just throw the cameras on, just do these silly old videos.


 

I've had [Donnie Hathaway's] wife come back to me and thank me for making the song the way I made it. It was a good thing. Even his daughter, they all remember the song.


 

“If you look at videos like 'Short But Funky,' 'I Ain't Trippin'' and 'Life Is Too $hort,' all that stuff was like, 'Your first video!' But 'The Ghetto' was a real song that got a lot of radio play. I'm pretty sure the song was on the radio and was a certified hit long before we shot the video because that's how they used to do it back then. The song had to be a proven hit and then you got a video budget.

“I knew the history of the song by Donny Hathaway. It was another song Al Eaton brought me. I watched him sit there and record the guitar part in one take. He was playing the guitar the way Donny Hathaway sang it. He was doing the the singing part through the guitar. When he gave me the track. You can just hear a fucking hit when you hear it.

“The hook hadn't been put on there yet but I did the hook from Donny Hathaway, I went home, and I did the right fucking song. I've had [Hathaway's] wife come back to me and thank me for making the song the way I made it. It was a good thing. Even his daughter, they all remember the song. It was a special kind of thing.”

16. Too $hort "Short But Funky" (1990)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Short Dog's In The House
Label: Jive
Too $hort: “That was just a silly song. I didn't even write that song. A guy named Dangerous Dame wrote it for me. Every blue moon, I would take one of the local rappers that was in the crew that hung around us or whatever, and I'd be like, 'Write me a rap.'


 

if you wrote a song for Too $hort, you'd get a lot of money. You'd make like five to ten grand just for the song. And you'd probably get checks later on for the rest of your life.


 

"The whole point was that it would be a different flow for me. Then, if you wrote a song for Too $hort, you'd get a lot of money. You'd make like five to ten grand just for the song. And you'd probably get checks later on for the rest of your life.

"Dangerous Dame wrote me that song. if you listen to the words and the flow, it's not me. But still, I pulled off a lot of those songs. Of all the songs I perform, I've probably had 15 written by other people...I'd just like randomly grab someone and be like, 'Write one for me, man.'”

15. Too $hort "I'm a Player" (1993)

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Producer: Dangerous Crew
Album: Get In Where You Fit In
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “I cliqued up with Ant Banks in 1992. I got with Shorty B, there was a keyboard player named Pee Wee, he came from Digital Underground—he still played with Digital Underground at the same time as he played with me.


 

if you put on a Parliament-Funkadelic album and play it, all of us [would know it], just every note, every word, every song.


 

“All those dudes, including me, all of us [grew up on funk music]. So if you put on a Parliament-Funkadelic album and play it, all of us [would know it], just every note, every word, every song. That was like our religion. We would get in the studio and we would really remake Parliament shit.

“We'd do songs with like a spinoff with a piece of Parliament. We would make the whole song. We'd sample songs to play on top of 'em—we'd just do whatever. I don't know if it was Ant Banks or Shorty B, but one of them wanted to do 'I'm a Player' and it was Ant Banks with the creative sampling of the hook [from Hollywood Squares.] It was Shorty B who played the bass, Pee Wee on the keyboard and then I stepped in there, write a rap to this shit, and bring it home.

“That was one of the most fun videos we ever shot. We went to my house and just actually had a party. And filmed us rapping at the party. it was a pool party and shit, and that was life, you know? I was riding around in the Cadillac that I drove around Oakland. It was just real life.”

14. Too $hort "Blowjob Betty" (1993)

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Producer: Dangerous Crew
Album: Get In Where You Fit In
Label: Jive


 

She catches that fatal nut from Short Dog and it goes down her windpipe and chokes her to death.


 


Too $hort: “It's the same concept [as the 75 Girls version], but I just kind of updated the lyrics a little bit [for the Jive version]. The whole story about the ex-prostitute girl who liked to have sex too much, but she couldn't get her money right, and then ended up sucking a bunch of dicks in the men's restroom at a club. She catches that fatal nut from Short Dog and it goes down her windpipe and chokes her to death. It's a comedy story. You gotta visualize the Short version of the story and see the humor... That's just me by myself with my personal twisted humor. I just wanted to be the dirty rapper.”

13. Too $hort "Money in the Ghetto" (1993)

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Producer: Dangerous Crew
Album: Get In Where You Fit In
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “I don't think anyone remade ['Hollywood Swangin''] before I did. I pulled that out the crates, man. That hadn't been touched by any rappers. But that was more like 'The Ghetto' part two. That wasn't anything much more than that. Just revisiting the concept of 'The Ghetto.'

"We upped it a little bit. Put money in the ghetto and talked about how motherfuckers was really balling in the ghetto. 'The Ghetto' is more like talking about like, we're not struggling in the hood, like we're living good. 'Money in the Ghetto' was like, look we fucking living like Hollywood in the ghetto.”

12. Too $hort "Cocktales"

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Producer: Shorty B
Album: Cocktails
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “I always think of concepts for my album covers. You gotta have an album cover concept as well as the songs gotta be the shit, but the album cover has to be creative and interesting. I was in the airport and I saw a little bar and it said, 'Cocktails.' I said, 'Now that's funny if you spell it like C-o-c-k and then t-a-l-e-s: Cocktales.'

"We decided to name the album that, with the graphics and the girls in the martini glasses. We spelled it the proper way—like the drink—on the cover, but if you look at the title of the song we spelled it 'Cock Tales'—two words. And 'Cock Tales,' that was like 'Freaky Tales' part three, part four, whatever the fuck. Same shit. Then I got to shoot a video to it, using my same Cadillac from the 'I'm a Player' video."

11. Too $hort "Gettin It" (1996)

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Producer: Too $hort
Album: Gettin' It
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “The retirement had to do with the 10 albums, six platinum and four gold. It was a mathematical thing. I was turning 30 years old. Once I ran it by Jive, they [said] I should just capitalize on that shit. They were like, 'Let's hold a press conference, let's retire you.'


 

It was all a hoax... I never retired. I was under contract with Jive. I was planning on making the next album. I wanted the money and I needed the money. There was no retirement.


 

“It was all a fucking hoax, the whole shit—from the start. I never retired. I was under contract with Jive. I was planning on making the next album. I wanted the money and I needed the money. There was no fucking retirement.

If you listened to the song 'Gettin It,' it's damn near the same music as 'I'm a Player,' It's almost the same fucking notes. The magical part of 'Gettin It' is that Parliament-Funkadelic did a show in Atlanta, Georgia. That night after the show, they came to my studio. They brought the whole fuckin' band to my studio in the middle of the night, and they played for like 24 hours and made two songs.

“'Gettin It' was the first song. And 'I've Been Watching You' was the other song. If you listen on album number 10, there's a song on my album called 'I've Been Watching You' and I'm not even on the song! [Parliament] just made the song, and it was a remake of one of their old songs."

10. E-40 f/ Too $hort & K-Ci & JoJo "Rappers Ball" (1996)

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Producer
: Ant Banks
Album: The Hall of Game
Label: Jive, Sick Wid It

Too $hort: “'Rappers Ball' was born from the whole KMEL trying to ban me [over] me showing up with 40 dudes at Summer Jam and causing all that commotion. When Summer Jam was going on, I showed up with all these motherfuckers. The Luniz' manager got knocked the fuck out, and KMEL cancelled the show.

"Two acts hadn't gone on yet: The Isley Brothers and E-40. And KMEL, the next day, they got on the radio and they had somebody fake like it was me. [They called] into KMEL and said: 'I don't give a fuck about Summer Jam. If I can't perform nobody can perform. I don't care if your name is E-40, E-1000,' all this shit, like it was a big fucking deal.

"I didn't hear the shit on the radio. I just heard all about it cause my fucking phone blew up. And E-40 was one of the people who called me, [and] he was a little upset, like, 'That's how we getting down?' And I was like, 'What you talking about man?' and he's like, 'You know, the shit on the radio.' I said, 'What are you talking about?'


 

If [E-40's] crew would've turned on my crew, and we would've went to war, like, Vallejo against Oakland, people would've got hurt.


 

“He immediately realized that it wasn't me on the radio, but what KMEL didn't know was that long before we rapped, me and E-40 had a lot of mutual friends in the street game, and we knew each other and we hung out a lot. Like we knew each other away from rap.

“So we talked on the phone...and we got down to the heart of what happened at Summer Jam and what happened with the radio station. And me and E-40 on the same conversation go, “You know what man? Let's turn this negative into a positive, let's get in the studio and make a song.” We had never made a song together.

"When we got in the studio we made a hit fucking record, “Rapper's Ball,” all because KMEL tried to make us go to war with each other. They really didn't know how much fire they were playing with. If his crew would've turned on my crew, and we would've went to war, like, Vallejo against Oakland, people would've got hurt. And KMEL was playing a game that was real life to some people. I never really respected them for that.”

9. Too $hort "I Need A Freak" (1997)

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Producer: Ant Banks
Album: In Tha Beginning...There Was Rap
Label: Priority

Too $hort: “[In Tha Beginning...] was a concept album. They wanted to get artists that were out at the time to do covers of any rap song they wanted. They didn't tell Snoop to do 'Freaky Tales'; he picked 'Freaky Tales.' And they didn't tell me to do 'I Need a Freak'; I picked 'I Need a Freak.' 'I Need a Freak' was the shiiiiit when I was in high school.

"It was like one of the first songs that would fuck the woofers up, like the woofers would just bust. I knew I could do a good little spin on it. I think back on that song, like people like that song, but a lot of the people that like the version I did, they don't even know the older version. I almost do the shit word for word, like I spin off a little bit.”

8. The Notorious B.I.G. f/ Carl Thomas, Puff Daddy, Too $hort "The World Is Filled" (1997)

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Producer: Deric "D. Dot" Angelettie
Album: Life After Death
Label: Bad Boy

Too $hort: “[We hooked up] through Bad Boy. Biggie had specifically requested me for his album, for a song [saying] 'the world is filled with pimps and hoes.' He said, 'I want Short Dog on this song.' B.I.G. knew what he wanted. Carl Thomas was on there. He had no name back then; he was just a guy with the hook. And Puffy hadn't rapped on a lot of songs back then—that might've been one of his first raps.”

7. Jay-Z f/ Too $hort "Don't Fight the Feelin"(1998)

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Producer: J-Runnah
Album: Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life
Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam

Too $hort: “When I did that first song with Jay-Z ['Real Niggaz Do Real Things'], he really wanted to do that song with Scarface. I don't think Scarface jumped on it fast enough. I don't know what happened. I have no idea, but he called me. and I knew the whole story he wasn't like trying to bullshit me.

"He was like, 'Man I wanted Scarface for this song, I couldn't get him, would you do this for me?' And I did it. Later on, Jay-Z called me. You know the song, 'Just a Week Ago,' I don't rap on the song. I just come in and jump on the hook. He just, he already had the words and everything. I don't know, he wanted my voice on that.”

6. Too $hort "Invasion of the Flat Booty Bitches" (1999)

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Producer: Erick Sermon
Album: Can't Stay Away
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “That's another song that [I redid]. There was a version from when I was in high school, there was another version from the '75 Girls' days, and another version from the Jive days. It's almost a true story but an overly exaggerated true story.


 

We went from our school to Berkeley High and we were smoking weed and shit. We just kept laughing because there were these flat booty girls everywhere we went. We really were on a mission that day, looking for a girl with a fat ass.


 

“We was cutting school one day and went down to Berkeley. We went from our school to Berkeley High and we were smoking weed and shit. We just kept laughing because there were these flat booty girls everywhere we went. We really were on a mission that day, looking for a girl with a fat ass and I was the one who wrote the song about it.

“Erick Sermon heard the shit somewhere, and he was like, 'Yo, you gotta make that song.' He really wanted me to. I didn't give a fuck about 'Invasion of the Flat Booty Bitches.' It was said and done. So that Jive version is an Erick Sermon beat."

5. Too $hort "Shake that Monkey" (2003)

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Producer: Lil Jon
Album: Married To The Game
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “You can hear me hanging out in strip clubs every night of my life, you can hear that in the song. You'll be like, 'This dude's around naked bitches.' Magic City Gentlemen's Club, that was my shit. Right there with everybody else.

“Lil Jon worked for Jermaine Dupri. He was in the A&R department and he also was producing So So Def All-Star songs. At night, Lil Jon would be a DJ at a lot of clubs around Atlanta and at one point he had this song out that was called 'Who You Wit?' and it was just like a chant song. Nobody rapped any bars on there, [it was] all these chants, and it was a really popular song around Atlanta.

"It used to get the dance floor moving. So I asked Lil Jon one day, I said, 'Can I rap on that song?' He was like, 'Nah, nah.' He was like, 'I'ma give you some new shit.' So he went by my studio one day when I wasn't there and he left four tracks, [including this one]."

4. Too $hort f/ Jagged Edge, Jazze Pha & Keri Hilson "Choosin'" (2003)

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Producer: Jazze Pha
Album: Married To The Game
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “You remember MC Breed, he made 'Ain't No Future in Your Frontin.' He had a house on the outskirts of Atlanta in Marietta, Georgia. At MC Breed's house you'd see all these beatmakers, freestylers, rappers that wanted to come up, and a lot of the people that I worked with over the years came from MC Breed's house.

"They were all like a little rap clique out there in Atlanta just doing the damn thing. Jazze Pha was one of those people. He was just living at MC Breed's house. But he had the talent cause he could make a beat that was hot as fuck andhe could sing the hook. I've done lots of songs with him. I called Jazze Pha, like 'I need one.'

“Jazze Pha makes songs for people. He would say some shit like, 'Man I made this song for Snoop Dogg.' [And] he didn't even know Snoop Dogg! But he'd play it and it would sound like a song Snoop Dogg would want.”

3. Too $hort "Burn Rubber" (2003)

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Producer: Lil Jon
Album: Married To The Game
Label: Jive

Too $hort: “You gotta know something about Lil Jon. He's got a hell of an ear. Not just an ear for music but an ear to the streets, cause he's a DJ. He knows DJs and shit. He knows what's going on in the DJ world. So Lil Jon knew that when hyphy started being called hyphy they were including Lil Jon songs. Hyphy was not only Bay Area artists 'cause it was a lot of people's songs that weren't from the Bay that were part of the hyphy [movement]. Ying Yang Twins, they had some songs that was in on it. Lil Jon had some songs that was in on it. And Lil Jon knew that his sound was part of the hyphy movement. E-40 was smart enough to get affiliated with Lil Jon on some of that shit.

“Even though [Lil Jon] wasn't an insider, you know, neither was I. But you know we dabbled in it. By the time we got to 'Burn Rubber,' Lil Jon was saying shit like, “I'm gon' make you one of them joints, one of them hyphy joints.”

2. Too $hort "Blow the Whistle" (2006)

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Producer: Lil Jon
Album: Blow The Whistle
Label: Up All Nite/Jive

Too $hort: “[Lil Jon's] exact words were, 'I'm gonna make you a song that sounds like it was made years ago and it got lost and we found it, and we pulled it out the crates, off the shelf.' [That record was 'Blow the Whistle,' and it was a big hit. Later Jay-Z jumped on the beat.]”

1. Too $hort "Dum Ditty Dum" (2007)

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Producer: Too $hort, Young L
Album: Skateboards 2 Scrapers
Label: Up All Nite/Jive

Too $hort: “I was on the way to do a show in Santa Rosa—somewhere up there in the mountains, Petaluma or something—and the guy who was driving us up there, he was a promoter, and he played The Pack's whole CD.

“And I was listening to these kids rap. They was having a good time, every beat was hot, and the bass was hitting. We got to the end and I said, 'Play it again.' He played it again. And we drove up there, we did the show, on the ride back, I said, 'Man, play that shit again.' He played it again.

“I said, 'Who are these dudes?' He said, 'They're from Berkeley, they're from where I'm from.' I was like, 'Man, I need to meet those dudes.' So the driver arranged for me to meet with The Pack. But instead of hooking me up with The Pack, they got a great idea, like fuck The Pack, we gonna hook him up with our homeboys.


 

The only reason it didn't really work out the way it was supposed to work out was because [The Pack] were underage. Their parents weren't really into it.


 

“So I went to have a meeting with The Pack, and we were gonna meet out in Richmond. But some other dudes showed up. [Laughs.] [I was like], 'Wait a minute, you ain't The Pack!' They said, 'We're not The Pack but if you gone sign The Pack you gotta sign us too, cause we're all from Berkeley.'

“I got offended by the whole thing. It was kinda foul. So I did a little research and realized that [Lil Uno] from The Pack is the son of somebody I had been knowing since we were teenagers. Me and his dad used to run together back in the day. I got in touch with his daddy and I was like, 'Man, I was tyring to hook your son up, listen to his music, and they out here playing games.'

“So I met with his father, and his father called him over there and was like, 'Look y'all can't be playing with Short like that.' [We talked] about the other dudes trying to middle man him and cut him out the hook up with Short dog and we just got to the point.

“The fact that his father was an old friend of mine, that made everything work out alright. Got 'em in the studio, got 'em a deal, got 'em out there. The only reason it didn't really work out the way it was supposed to work out was because they were underage. Their parents weren't really into it. The parents were all in the mix, you've got four dudes, everyone's got their opinions. It was just too much.”

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