Today in Hip Hop: November 12

Few dates on the rap calendar carry this much first week weight. November 12 is a debut day, a coronation day and a leak survival story at once.

OMYGOTTI

Toronto hip-hop artist | 730K+ Facebook

1996

Lil Kim Drops Hard Core At 30

Lil Kim released her debut album Hard Core on November 12, 1996 on Undeas, Big Beat and Atlantic, with The Notorious B.I.G. as executive producer. Thirty years on, the numbers still speak plainly. The album debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the Top R and B and Hip Hop Albums chart, sold about 78,000 copies in its first week and went on to double platinum certification in the United States.

The singles run rewrote a record book. No Time and Crush On You both topped the Rap Songs chart, making Kim the first woman rapper with two consecutive No. 1 singles on that chart, according to the anniversary coverage. Albumism, pairing Hard Core with Foxy Brown Ill Na Na a week later, notes the two Brooklyn debuts made Kim and Foxy the first women artists to release platinum albums in the same year, a door that has never closed behind them.

My take: My take: Hard Core was not Kim fitting into rap as it stood. It was rap adjusting to Kim, and the chart history proves the adjustment was permanent.

1996

Snoop Answers With Tha Doggfather

The same day Kim debuted, Snoop Doggy Dogg released his second album Tha Doggfather on Death Row and Interscope. Noise11 anniversary coverage records a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of 479,000 copies, eventually reaching double platinum in the United States. It was his final studio album released under the full Snoop Doggy Dogg name.

Context is what makes the number impressive. The album was recorded between February and October 1996, after Snoop acquittal in a murder trial, after Dr. Dre departure from Death Row, and weeks after Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas. The closing track Outro even carries a Shakur credit under his Makaveli name. Tha Doggfather is a No. 1 album made while the world that created Doggystyle was coming apart around its star.

My take: My take: people rank this record below its predecessor and stop thinking. A chart topping album held together in that year, under that pressure, is its own kind of classic.

2002

Sean Paul Takes Dutty Rock Worldwide

Sean Paul released Dutty Rock on November 12, 2002, and DancehallMag marking 24 years since the album landed describes a Jamaican record made in Jamaica that the whole world learned by heart. Gimme The Light opened the mainstream door, helped by the Pass the Dro-Voisier remix with Busta Rhymes that carried Sean Paul directly into hip hop rooms.

The receipts followed the reach. The album climbed to a No. 9 peak on the Billboard 200, topped the Reggae Albums chart, reached No. 1 on Top R and B and Hip Hop Albums, and won Best Reggae Album at the 46th Grammy Awards in February 2004. The Bounce November 12 history also stacks this date with Jay-Z The Blueprint 2 and Missy Elliott Under Construction in 2002, which makes the Sean Paul run stand out even more. He was not in an empty field. He won a crowded one.

My take: My take: Dutty Rock is the proof that dancehall never needed translation, only distribution. The riddims did the talking in every language at once.

2004

Eminem Rushes Encore Past The Leaks

Eminem fifth album Encore was set for November 16, 2004 and moved up to November 12 after the album leaked, a four day scramble that still produced 710,000 copies sold in its first three days and a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200. The RIAA certified it quadruple platinum a month after release. There is a neat symmetry buried in the date, too. Eminem debut album Infinite had also been released on November 12, back in 1996, exactly eight years earlier.

Encore is the most argued over record in his catalogue, and Eminem himself has since called it one of his weakest, pointing to the leaked songs that forced late replacements and to the addiction he was carrying through the sessions. Both things can be true at once. The album can be a compromised piece of work and its release week can still be a demonstration of how large his audience had become, large enough to move three quarters of a million copies in a long weekend for a record its own maker had reservations about.

My take: My take: Encore is a lesson in leaks before streaming made leaks ordinary. The internet moved his date, and his fanbase moved faster than the internet.

1984

Omarion Is Born In Inglewood

Omari Ishmael Grandberry, known as Omarion, was born on November 12, 1984 in Inglewood, California. The Bounce history notes his path from B2K, the boy band behind Girlfriend and Bump Bump Bump, into a solo career launched after the group split in 2004, with his first two solo albums O in 2005 and 21 in 2006 both becoming major commercial successes.

Omarion solo run is worth remembering on a date dominated by rap debuts, because it shows the other lane November 12 built. The singer who fronted a teen group at the height of the TRL era grew into one of the smoothest R and B performers of his generation, and his catalogue aged better than most of the era ringtone stars around him.

My take: My take: birthdays in this column usually belong to rappers. Omarion earns his line. B2K to a durable solo career is a harder trick than it looks.

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