Ain’t No Nigga

Ain’t No Nigga

JAY-Z (Ft. Foxy Brown)

JAY-Z puts his own twist on The Four Tops' “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got)” to create the second single off Reasonable Doubt. The clean version is “Ain’t No Playa.”

The song got JAY-Z his earliest taste of national recognition when Irv Gotti and Lyor Cohen got the song used in The Nutty Professor. This is also the song that caught Def Jam’s attention and led them invest in Roc-A-Fella.

The music video features a genuinely stoned JAY-Z (who’s really not much of a pot smoker), a cameo from the The Notorious B.I.G., and an opening scene based on a scene from Scarface.

This song is the first episode in the progression of Jay’s portrayal of women in his raps. As he told NPR:

I mean, a song on my first album was “Ain’t No Nigga.” […] It was like, this careless relationship. And then that went to “Big Pimpin” in ‘99. And on that same album was a song called “Song Cry,” and then “Song Cry” became “Bonnie & Clyde” on 2004, which became “Venus vs. Mars” on my last album. So there’s a steady growth in the conversations – that’s being had as it pertains to women, you know, as I grew.

DJ Premier provided some background information to Spin magazine regarding a claim Jaz-O made regarding the song’s production:

I’ve heard Jaz-O say that there were a couple producers that were there that couldn’t loop up the “Seven Minutes Of Funk” sample [fast enough] and that’s not true. I got the call to come there and cook that song up and I couldn’t make it down there that day.

I just didn’t get there in the time frame that they wanted to, so I just didn’t like the fact that he kept saying in interviews that some other producers, who are really famous for what they do, couldn’t do it. And that’s bullshit. I told him, “Stop lying, man,” and he was still doing the same thing in interviews. I’m over it now. I’m too grown to be upset with people over that, but I just want that to be clear that that is an outright lie.

But that’s one of the most amazing records [Jay’s] ever done and to this very day the crowd goes crazy. And Foxy killed it. She made her debut and from there, next thing you know, she got a big record deal.