Bitemarks: Jay-Z Uses Biggie’s “Any Mike” Line on “Ni**as in Paris” Posted by Aric Linkins on 09/13/11 | Filed under Top Stories, Features, Bitemarks

What do the King of Pop, arguably the best basketball player of all time, and the former undisputed heavyweight boxing champion of the world have in common? Yes, they’re African American icons of the late 20th century, but, as you should learn, the real value of any connection is whether Jay-Z can rap about it or not. Fortunately for these three, Hov makes the link on ‘Niggas In Paris’- from "Watch the Throne" - discovering, among all things, that they share the same first name. Duh!



“I’m liable to go Michael, take your pick; Jackson, Tyson, Jordan, game 6.”

Jay’s bar cleverly exercises his own braggadocio - what else is new? - while insinuating that anyone named Michael is inherently badass. And you gotta hand it to him, the effort stands out among an album-wide performance that is shaky and, at times, even awkward. I mean, who would have ever thought the words “Kanye killed Jay on that one” would be even semi-relevant. But, I digress. As good as the “name a Michael” rhyme is, I couldn’t help but think when listening to it that I had heard it somewhere before...



“I perform like Mike, anyone Tyson, Jordan, Jackson”

Damn, seriously? Biggie’s line undoubtedly sounds doper, especially since ‘Victory’ came out when all three stars were still ruling shit. In fact, his entire first verse in the song is incredible, but not incredible enough to disguise the line to a point where its ok for Jay-Z to borrow.

Now, if you know anything about biting, you know that, among his plethora of other accolades, Jay-Z takes the crown for unapologetically lifting lines from other rappers. His favorite target? Biggie himself. While Hova maintains that he is only paying homage to his big brother, his biting of the Notorious B.I.G. - which is so bafflingly common he wrote a verse defending it - would make Tyson himself proud.



To make matters worse, Jay-Z has often been chastised for riding off Biggie’s style and success after he died. While I disagree, it doesn’t help Jay’s cause to continuously look to predecessor in order to complete his 16s. There’s one question that we’re inevitably led to in this situation: Is this line a big-up to Notorious, or is it straight lyrical robbery?

There are a few arguments in Jay-Z’s favor here: He doesn’t truly bite Biggie’s line word for word, an instead paraphrases it using the names in a different order - the game 6 Jordan reference is a nice touch, by the way. He uses a line that is commonly known, at least by hip hop heads, as Biggie’s. Finally, biting is so prevalent in hip hop - Jay-Z is a victim as well as a suspect, that its often acceptable and even praised. The fact is, borrowing lyrics often is passable, like when Kanye references Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth in ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’: “when they reminisce over you, my god”, but only when the artist attempts to show credit to their origin. For example, in Ye’s line above, he inflects “my god” to mimic C.L. in ‘T.R.O.Y.’.



Conversely, Jay-Z seems to almost disguise the fact that he’s biting Biggie in ‘Niggas in Paris’, with no credit given whatsoever. His paraphrasing attempt ends up coming off as an effort to steal Biggie’s idea with slightly different lyrics. Think of it as taking a famous painting and drawing over it; no matter how skilled your recreation is, you effectively have hurt the original artist’s reputation as well as your own credibility. We’ll always be perplexed as to why Jay-Z feels the need to borrow lines when he has more than enough stockpiled in his thoughts, but I guess we’ll always perplexed as to how Jay-Z does what he does. By the way, the worst part of the whole situation? We’ll never know how Biggie feels about it.



VERDICT: GUILTY

As always, we'll have to see what RefinedHype Nation thinks as well.




(This is Aric's first article for RefinedHype. He also runs his own blog, willblogforhiphop.wordpress.com, which digs beneath the surface of hip hop covering news and past, present, and future discussions. You can also follow him on Twitter: @THEmissingL1nk. Consider yourself peeped!)

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