Juvenile’s third studio album 400 Degreez is a Cash Money Records classic. It’s the best-selling album in Juvenile’s solo career, and it made the New Orleans legend a household name thanks to songs like “Back That Azz Up” and “Ha.” However, one of the most memorable moments about the album comes on the last track, a rare remix to “Ha” that features JAY-Z.
During his visit to VladTV, Juvenile spoke about the record and how important the original was to his career. Although “Ha” was a breakout hit, it didn’t propel album sales. Juvenile explained “Ha” did numbers, but it was another record that took off.
“You ain’t lyin,” Juvenile said in response to Vlad calling “Ha” a game-changer. “But the record that really started to make my album take off with record sales, and you probably wouldn’t believe it, was ‘Follow Me Now.’ ‘Ha’ came out, that was the first release. The album sales weren’t doing too great when ‘Ha’ came out.”
Even though album sales were lukewarm at first, Juvenile and the Cash Money Records camp would receive an unexpected boost from JAY-Z, who was recording a remix to “Ha” that they didn’t even know about.
“So when JAY-Z sent the remix to us, it was kind of unexpected,” Juvenile said. “We didn’t know he was going to do that anyway. He did it on his own. So the idea came to go back and put the JAY-Z song on the remix. Cause JAY-Z wasn’t on the album originally. We gon’ put the JAY-Z song on the album, and I recorded ‘Follow Me Now’ — not knowing that it was a Carlos Santana sample, and not knowing it was already big before I said anything on it. It blew up.”
400 Degreez went on an impressive run, selling over six million copies and establishing Cash Money Records as a Hip Hop powerhouse. Thanks to Juvenile and the success of 400 Degreez, New Orleans received a surge in attention from the wider Hip Hop community.
On April 13, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell invited Juvenile to City Hall and presented the key to the city to him. As a gift, Juvenile gave the mayor one of the industrial lamps from his Made By Juvie luxury furniture brand.
Cash Money Records Legend Juvenile Receives NOLA City Key
“In recognition of his contributions to the music industry and being known as one of the pioneers of Hip Hop music in the South,” read the plaque Juvie received with the key on it. “Known as a creative genius and homegrown talent that has made him a hip-hop legend and known worldwide.”
Y’all forgot. 400 Degreez received a very surprising and damn near questionable 5 Mics in the Source Magazine at the time of its release. Ha had HEAVY rotation in the clubs out here in Houston. The reaction to that record when it was played was insane. Ha and that stamp of approval in The Source is what made alot of people including me go get that album and was tuned completely into the lyrics and production. Nothing on that album was skip worthy. Straight classic indeed?
No it didn’t. 400 degreez did not get a 5 mic review.
The Source didn’t have shit to do with anything. The only people paying attention that shit back then was New York people. The West sure wasn’t, and the South never gave a fuck. It hit because the album was hot. Follow Me Now was on the radio and blew up first.
You know not what you speak of, sir. The south was well aware of Cash Money long before 400 Degreez. U.N.L.V. saw to that.
When did I say the South didn’t know about them? I think you meant that for the dude talking about The Source blew them up. I had heard all of the Hot Boyz, Big Tymaz, and BG albums by the time 400 Degreez came out. Juvenile also had hit with Soja Rags on the radio in the South by then, so everybody knew who dude was. Follow Me Now was the first single, and it was a radio hit way before Ha took off in the clubs.
You right, I misread you.
The evolution of the south come to Arkansas where it is the Dirty of the Dirty quite is kept hmm ?
Isn’t NYC still/was the biggest city in the country?
Considering New Yorkers to this day will shit on Southern rappers, let alone back then when they wouldn’t even fuck with their music when dudes in the South from Face to the Cash Money Rappers to Outkast and others were rapping for real with some bars, what would a magazine that dick rode New York artists over dudes who were putting out better music have to do with blowing up a Southern rap album? I’m telling you because this didn’t happen. Nobody was gathering around to see if an album got five mikes by the late 90s. Hell, fools from NY lost their shit on The Source when Outkast got it, and I think in hindsight, any objective hip hop fan has to admit Aquemini deserved it.
New Yorkers we will shit on our own if the music is whack. If you represent our city you gotta come out hard! If we didn’t support you it wasn’t because you were from the South, it was because you were WHACK!
Riight. New Yorkers supported a lot of questionable wack shit because that was their mans and them, and the Source used to fuel that shit. Makaveli got like 1.5 mikes when it came out, and they gave that disappointing Life After Death album five mikes, which was funny then and funny now. All the Death Row shit that was heat. All of the heat coming out of the South. Lots of albums that they shit on. Some of us remember. They only gave Cube five mikes because he had East production. It wasn’t objective, and New Yorkers used to eat that shit up.
the makaveli album wasn’t given a source rating; they never reviewed it. to this day, it still doesn’t have a mic rating. gotta have accurate facts to raise a valid point. you can google every album that ever received 5 mics. it’s not there.
Mixing up your albums. All Eyez on Me was the one that didn’t get a rating, and they claimed it was because Suge didn’t send it to them, which was bullshit too since we all know Death Row didn’t distribute their albums. Interscope did at that time. But The Source used to say a lot of questionable shit back then for their dick riding NY fan base. They shit on Makaveli and then revised it years later.
It got a 4.
Revisionist history has it that Jay was that dude back then. Truth is that he used to do a lot of southern dick riding from Master P putting him on a lot of projects to this and a few other instances of the South showing him love that got him a lot of sales. Also, Vlad also shows how little he knows about the genre when you have to point out shit like that Follow Me Now was the breakout hit for that album. He’s like oh yeah. I forgot about that. Like he’s grabbing notes for his interviews from Wikipedia or some shit.
What Master P projects are you talking about?
He’s exaggerating. Jay only appeared on two No Limit releases, “I Got the Hook Up” soundtrack and Silkk’s “Made Man” album.
How is that exaggerating? He used to do a lot of dick riding the South when he first came in the game to get sales. But let New Yorkers tell it, Reasonable Doubt was that album all of them were bumping when some of us remember how they would be like turn that shit off if you played it. It’s why his style changed so much from Reasonable Doubt to Volume 1.
“a lot of dick riding”
Please, do tell.
He has maybe 10-12 songs with Southern rappers, and of those, they are the biggest rappers of their area / era (Outkast, Scarface, UGK, Cash Money, No Limit).
10-12 songs out of his entire catalog is a pretty low percentage for someone who evidently did “a lot of dickriding”.
He got a placement on Got the Hookup.
400 Degrees did not get 5 mics in the source.
400 Degreez was my shit back in the day
JAY-Z IS GARBAGE PERIOD ALWAYS BEEN GARBAGE
400 degreez did NOT get 5 mics in the Source…it may have gotten 4 mics tops….no where near 5 that’s for sure…the only 5 mic album from the south around that time period was aquemini….facts….
The fix by scarface also got 5 mics