That’s My Jam is a weekly feature where one person from the Selective Hearing staff goes to wax poetic about music that is pivotal to their musical tastes. Whether that would be an album, a song, or anything in-between. We all had to start somewhere.
Release Date: May 2, 1995
Track Listing
- I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By (Puff Daddy Remix) feat. Mary J. Blige
- I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By (Puff Daddy Remix Instrumental)
- I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By (Razor Sharp Mix) feat. Mary J. Blige
- I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By (Razor Sharp Mix Instrumental)
- What The Blood Clot (LP Version)
Review
This Grammy award-winning duet is a mix of Method Man’s All I Need (from 1994’s Tical) and the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell duet You’re All I Need To Get By with Mary J. Blige singing the chorus and backing vocals.
Packaged with two different versions, there is the Hip-Pop flavoured Puff Daddy remix sampling The Notorious B.I.G.’s Me & My Bitch and the grittier sounding Razor Sharp Mix produced by the RZA.
I’m sure many of you have heard Hip-Hop love songs before but they were all kind of sappy. With I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By a new type of love song was born. Thug Love.
Thug Love takes the love song away from the bedroom and puts it firmly in the streets with a combination of swagger and soul. Who would have expected a Wu-Tang clan member to come out of the box with this?
But hey, it broke the monotony of the typical collaboration between MCs and R&B singers and (along with Biggie’s One More Chance Remix) ushered in an era of new musical possibilities.
Unfortunately, the sub-genre of Thug Love Hip-Hop has been watered since the many moons that Method Man & Mary J’s collaboration was released and is a shell of what it once was.
But if you long for the days of yore or just want some damn fine Hip-Hop, look no further than this song. Just skip the ending track on this single; it’s not worth your time.
