Do you remember when the airwaves in the summer of 1997 were absolutely dominated by a hastily put-together, somewhat maudlin tribute to a much loved figure who died in suspicious circumstances? Yes, that's right, it's
I'll Be Missing You - Puff Daddy and Faith Evans featuring 112
the monster hit about the Notorious BIG, who lived his life like a candle in the wind.
I first heard I'll Be Missing You when I was sitting on a balcony in a hotel in Nairobi overlooking the city bus station, drinking martinis and smoking menthol cigarettes, on the day before the night I took a flight back to faraway London town after six months and twelve days away.
I still have a photograph Wieland took of me sat on the balcony, looking skinny and grimey, in my UsedCo Blue sweatshirt, hadn't had a haircut for six months, but it's not long, it's just ... formless. I am finally able to admit to myself that all I've wanted for most of the time I've been away is to go home, watch sport, listen to music, make a good cup of tea and bacon sandwich.
That song was, possibly, apart from the Blur and Paul Weller albums I'd be sent in the post, the first new Western pop music I'd heard in those six months. I think it played three or four times over the course of that long afternoon on the balcony, mine and Wieland's last bit of time together as he was staying on another week or so, as we couldn't book the same flights. It was a nice idea to spend that day drinking, eating and smoking in a fancy Nairobi hotel, a way to acclimatise a bit to western ways after half a year on a hillside (though, previously, my western ways had not involved smoking menthol cigarettes and drinking martinis).
I was puzzled by what it was I was hearing that day. What's this ropey Police cover, I thought? I found out when I got home that this was the worldwide smash Number 1 single.
I did know about the Notorious BIG by that point. My mother had sent me the NME pretty much week. I knew the news if not the tunes. But ... well ... here's a thing. Biggie Smalls died in March 1997. I read about it in the NME. I hadn't heard of him up to that point. I wasn't a hip-hop guy but I followed music fairly closely. Tupac Shakur had died in September 1996. Everybody had heard of him. He was very famous in his lifetime - I knew what he looked like, what he sounded like, his life story.
I have never been able to let go of the suspicion, no doubt entirely unfounded, that Christopher Wallace's death created a false equivalence, a need for their to be "Tupac and Biggie" which elevated the latter's impact, life story and art far beyond its natural status. Really, it's a suspicion born of my ignorance, but still I haven't let go of it. BIG is cited as one of the greatest rappers of all times, his first two albums hailed as timeless classics, and I just ... don't know.
Is it all the marketing genius of Puff Daddy/Sean Combs, who became utterly ubiquitous and infinitely wealthy in the late 90s? The main thing I remember reading about him was that he wasn't much of a rapper himself, just a businessman. Be that as it may, I quite enjoyed some of his later singles like 'All About the Benjamins' and 'Come with Me'. He certainly knew how to make hip-hop that crossed over.
I'll Be Missing You was one of the biggest hip-hop songs in the UK up to that point, maybe the biggest. After the initial 90/91 breakthrough of rather silly rap-adjacent hits like Turtle Power and Ice Ice Baby, the only big UK hip-hop Number 1s had been Boom! Shake the Room, Gangsta's Paradise, Killing Me Softly (and Ready or Not). I'll Be Missing You felt like a big moment for the dominance of hip-hop. In particular, it put the biggest rock band in Britain in its place.
What with getting sent the NME every week while in Mbale, I knew all about the coming Oasis. It was going to be the biggest. And the best. When my time in Kenya was cut short by visa issues, I would have the opportunity to be here now, pretty much, for D'You Know What I Mean?
It was released on 7th July. I returned on, ! think, 13th July. Even by the time I returned, I think, the truth was slightly out that it was ... not that good ... kind of a mess. Nevertheless, it did go straight in at Number 1 in its first week.
I remembering hearing a new Oasis song on the radio, I guess as soon as I got back on the plane. and thinking "I'm surprised people don't like this. This is really good", but it turned out that was Stay Young, the b-side, and, to my mind, the last true Oasis song when their youthful vigour could still be bought into. I soon heard D'You Know What I Mean, and it was poor, and, of course, despite the hype, I'll Be Missing You, which had already been Number 1 for three weeks before, returned to Number 1 after a one week intermission, for another three weeks.
So, that was the sound of the summer of 97. Then there was Men in Black by Will Smith, then there was The Drugs Don't Work (all pretty doomy, isn't). There was a car crash in Paris which drove everyone in Britain nuts forever and then there was the grace that placed itself where lives were torn apart.
... then there was Spice Up Your Life and Barbie Girl .... weird year, all in, 1997.
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