The reason why Pimp C hated UGK’s ‘Big Pimpin’ collab with Jay-Z: “I didn’t want to do it”
‘Big Pimpin’ is an iconic Jay-Z song. Produced by Timbaland, it appeared on Hov’s 1999 album Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter, where he collaborated with UGK. The song was a commercial success, peaking at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, it almost didn’t happen because Pimp C outright hated it.
Jay was coming off the success of Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life when he called up Bun B, who initially thought he was being prank called. Eventually, he realised it was actually Hov, who wanted to collaborate with UGK on his new album.
Pimp was initially supposed to appear on ‘Just a Week Ago’, but he refused to fly to New York City to record the song. Then, Bun convinced Pimp to hear the beat for ‘Big Pimpin‘ and he immediately disliked it. Bun knew the potential the song had, and eventually persuaded him to spit on the record.
“I said that’s cool, eight bars, no problem, just get on the fucking record,” Bun on the Hypemen Podcast. “This song’s gonna be a big deal. He sent it [his verse] back to me and I listened… eight bars. I just rapped for something like 20 bars trying to out rap Jay-Z, and this motherfucker just did it in eight bars.”
In Pimp’s eyes, the song was too commercial and he didn’t want to sell out. “It sounded like a pop record to me,” he told MTV. “I didn’t want to do it. It scared me, because I didn’t know how people was going to take us going in that direction. But I remember Jay telling me, ’Look, family: It’s going to be the biggest record of your career. If you don’t do it for yourself, just do it for me.’ That was good enough for me, so I jumped on it.”
Jay-Z went all in with a Hype Williams-directed music video that cost $1 million, and it paid off. “That was my third single,” he said in his album booklet. “Took the album to three million. Kyambo ‘Hip-Hop’ Joshua was with me in the studio with Timbaland; he knew I was a UGK fan and he suggested we put them on the record. We called Bun and then Pimp C was like ‘The horns, them shits are too fruity.’
“He was concerned with alienating his audience. When Pimp first sent his verse, I didn’t get it—but then the genius of his cadence hit me. Back then, MTV’s ‘Making of the Video’ was really impacting record sales and I had to have that. I got Hype and we had all the legendary ‘video vixens.’ I doubled down at the right time, and it took off.”
Despite the success of ‘Big Pimpin’, Jay has gone on record as admitting he regrets some of the lyrics, with the first verse featuring degrading lyrics about women. “Some [lyrics] become really profound when you see them in writing. Not ‘Big Pimpin’,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s the exception. It was like, ‘I can’t believe I said that. And kept saying it. What kind of animal would say this sort of thing?’ Reading it is really harsh.”