The first single from Big L’s posthumous Harlem’s Finest: Return Of The King album is here. Today, Mass Appeal released “u ain’t gotta chance,” pairing Big L’s bars from a 1997 freestyle with a fiery verse from Nas. The song, gradually crafted by seven people, is the first glimpse of what listeners can expect from the Big L album, which drops on Halloween. Big L’s brother Donald Phinazee says the project is comprised of “mostly the updated songs from [2010’s] Return of The Devil’s Son and a few freestyles the team built into new records.” The Return of The Devil’s Son album, spearheaded by Phinazee and SMC Recordings, was removed from streaming services in 2021 due to licensing issues.
The project, co-executive produced by Big L’s estate and Royce Da 5’9”, is part of Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It… series, following albums from Slick Rick, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Mobb Deep, with forthcoming work from De La Soul as well as Nas and DJ Premier. Of the song, Mass Appeal co-founder Nas tells Rolling Stone, “even though Big L’s not here with us now, to get on the song with him is still pressure. He left an outstanding amount of serious rhymes. So just approaching it is like, ‘Damn, I wish we were doing this together, but it’s still an honor to do it.’”
Big L starts off “u ain’t gotta chance” with bars pulled from a freestyle on UK’s TK, which includes an alternate third verse of his “MVP” single that he performed in London in 1997. He rhymes with characteristic fury and precision on the beat, rhyming, “Cash I got plenty, Microphones? Rock many / Everything I touch is in the top twenty.”
Mike Herard, the head of Big L’s estate (who helped craft L’s 1999 posthumous The Big Picture album), says the beat came together in a six-step process: DJ Critical Hype created the acapella, which was sent to producer G Koop, who programmed the drums around L’s verse. Herard sent that skeleton to producer 2One2, who added the song’s sample. Producers Al Hug and Zach Niess added layers onto the song’s chorus, while DJ Rob Swift made the hook from Big L acapellas. From there, the song was sent to album executive producer Royce Da 5’9” “for a few tweaks” before Nas jumped on.
Nas follows L with his own multi-syllabic bars, rhyming urgently about being “the first Carlito of rap — well after G Rap,” on a verse that masterfully references Big L’s knack for horrific bars (“I’ll hold your skull with my fingers in your eye sockets”) and penchant for two-syllable rhyme sprees. In the verse, Nas proclaims, “I kept the doors open in them surplus army stores in ‘94 and up for certain,” and notes, “This year is the year of disrespectful comparisons / they jack anything on the internet.” The bars certainly seem related to Harlem rapper Jim Jones’ viral assertions that he surpasses Nas’ cultural impact among younger generations. On the track, Nas references artists “making funny music, it’s doodoo, caca,” and raps, “gun to your head, tell the truth: Nas the monster that live under your bed.”
But when explicitly asked about the verse and his thoughts on Jones’ comments, Nas completely sidesteps the latter. “I don’t remember my rhyme on the Big L [song]. I remember the line that I started with. I don’t remember what I was talking about other than trying to tap into the era of me and L,” he says (Nas spoke to us on September 30 in a wide-ranging discussion). “It was about my experience and the pain of not having him here. My verse was totally focused on Big L. Anything else? If it’s not music related, then it doesn’t even…[it’s] not even anything that matters.”
Regardless of who the verse may or may not be about, “u ain’t gotta chance” is a strong setoff for Harlem’s Finest: Return Of The King. The project comes after Herard became the steward of L’s estate in 2020 and attained a proper accounting of what’s owned by, and owed to, the late rapper. In 2021, he told Rolling Stone that he “didn’t think [L’s] legacy was being handled properly” in a report that chronicled him never being paid royalties by Columbia Records for his debut Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous, and L’s brother Donald Phinazee selling The Danger Zone and The Big Picture to RBC Records co-owner Brian Shafton for $20,000 due to medical bills. Shafton later purchased Big L’s rhymebooks from Phinazee for $14,500, promising to put them in a “rap Hall of Fame” — while also acquiring ownership of the books’ “compositions.”
Via text, Phinazee admits, “When I released Return of the Devil’s Son back in 2010, I had just come home from prison in 2008. I didn’t know anything about the music business back then, so I leaned on people I met who I thought were handling the parts I didn’t understand.” He says that his work on Return of the Devil’s Son was an attempt to preserve L’s legacy, but he “didn’t think much about the business side at the time.” Since then, he says he’s learned “alot about estate law, producer agreements—and those damn samples.”
Phinazee views Harlem’s Finest: Return Of The King as “a gift for the day-one Big L fans,” noting that dropping the Nas collaboration first is “only right” for fans. “[Big L] and Nas came up when emceeing was a full-contact sport—lyrically and in real life. They were young warriors who pushed each other, but it was all respect,” he says. “Like any code of honor, the living salute the fallen. That’s what this movement is about.“
