Gangsta Rap, mainly thanks to the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy knowing the power of shameless Pop song samples, gradually sanded down its edges to become a non-stop aspirational luxury genre that could bum-rush the charts whilst still carrying a veneer of danger that allowed even suburban White America to tourist their way through street lifestyles. Despite the fact that both strands couldn’t have been further apart from each other in terms of musical intent and vibe, even with LaFace’s rolodex featuring little-known rap groups Outkast and Goodie Mob, they nonetheless set about forcibly reshaping the face of Pop music across America to their own desires. The story of Black music – or, as it was then reductively and racially-coded, “Urban music” – throughout the 1990s primarily exists in two parallel narrative strands: the rise and evolution of Gangsta Rap and its offshoots (mostly pertaining to the monolithic Bad Boy Records), and the gradual dominance of upstart label LaFace Records. Beginning a quarter century back from this column’s inception (March 2019) up until whenever the Present Day comes about.

Inspired by Tom Ewing’s “ Popular” (which traces the history of UK #1 singles) and Tom Breihan’s “ The Number Ones” (which does the same for US #1s), “We’re #2!” looks at the history of those songs which almost but not-quite managed to reach the summit of the UK Singles Chart.

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