Sometimes art gets in your head and frames how you see yourself. When I meet with success, I most often think of one thing:

Now, who's hot, who not?

Tell me who rock, who sell out in the stores?

You tell who flopped, who copped the blue drop?

Whose jewels got rocks?

Who's mostly Dolce down to the tube sock?

Now I always need to pause here to think for a second because, like, why does he say stores and not shops? But that brief discordant moment of reflection, Ma$e and I end up with the same answer to the questions: we are hot^1 and, presumptively, you are not. We merit our success and it springs eternal.

The same old pimp.

You know ain't nothing changed but my limp

Can't stop till I see my name on a blimp.

Success often breeds ambition, breeds confidence. But contained within the same frame is its antipode, the fall that theology teaches us comes after pride. Knowing what we know now, you can't think of Ma$e's idle boasts, without thinking of Puffy's prediction slightly later in the verse:

I know you thinking now, "When all the ballin' stops?"

Nigga never home, gotta call me on the yacht

Ten years from now, we'll still be on top

Yo, I thought I told you that we won't stop.

Ten years from now, we'll still be on top. This song was recorded and published in 1997. Ten years later, the group of people involved in making it was nowhere near the top. The Notorious BIG was killed March 9, 1997, before this single was even released (July 15, 1997) or the famous video (peak Hype Williams) was filmed. Ten years later, what about two months later?

Dramatic irony, or cosmic irony, emanates from situations where the audience knows something that the character doesn't, where the audience's understanding of the world of the work exceeds that of the characters'. Oedipus Rex's self-fulfilling prophecy. Romeo (spoilers) killing himself when he sees Juliet "dead", though we know she is merely in a deeply drugged slumber--thereby causing her death when she awakes to find him dead. Us knowing how the Animal Farm really works, why they really sold Clover. Our knowledge of events differs significantly from the characters',and therefore, our understanding of the meaning of their words and actions differs sharply from their own.

It's hard to call real life dramatic irony, to treat these men like fictional characters, but that's how it seems in the clear light of retrospect.^2 Biggie was of course dead by the time you heard this song talking about "ten years from now". Mo' Money brought Mo' Problems, but it's unclear if these were new problems, or the same problems that he'd be rapping about since Ready to Die catching up with him.

Ten years, nothing. Less than two years after this single dropped, Ma$e retired from rapping. Unsatisfied with the excess of that "being on top" afforded, he retired to serve God. Unsatisfied with that, he returned to rapping five years after his "retirement", but never enjoyed the same success he did in 1997. By about 2007, he was relegated from the spot light to merely being a member of 50 Cent's posse. He said at one point, long after that, "in order to get people where I'm at [in terms of Christianity], I have to go back to where I once was [in terms of rapping success]," but it seems like he never achieved what he once was or had tremendous success bringing people to where he was, or at least wanted to be, at, and remains trapped between two worlds.

Sean Combs's life was of course marred by tragedy from almost the moment this song was recorded. Mo' money surely brought him mo' problems. First, his best friend (and the pillar of his business) was murdered. A mere two and a half years after this song came out, he and his then-girlfriend were suspected of attempted murder (his then latest protege, Shine, ended up getting ten years in prison while Combs went free). Puff Daddy became P. Diddy and then Diddy in the question for reinvention in apparent recognition of his declining relevence . "Ten years later" was a lull in his career. Though his 2006 release Press Play was certified gold, his career was nowhere near the heights he was at in 1997. He had to reinvent himself once again, this time as reality star in Making the Band, to find success again, though I doubt that's the vision of "on top", alone, he had in 1997.

"Ten years later, we'll still be on top," becomes, in retrospect, a very sad line. Puffy asks, "When the ballin stop?" and we know the answer is, "Much sooner than you think, you sweet summer child." Biggie's couplet, "bruise too much/lose too much," becomes more prescient than Puffy's predictions or Ma$e's boasting.

In hindsight, the song acts as a modern memonti mori, an unintentional update of Shelly's "Ozymandias". We knew "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems" as soon as we hear the hook, but on reflecting, we must also recall, "Look on their Raps, ye Mighty, and despair!" The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Notes:

1: Of course, the questions of why we are hot would not be fully addressed for a full decade. MIMS's 2007 banger "This is Why I'm Hot" would bring clarity to the situation: "I'm hot cause I'm fly/you ain't cause you're not/this is why/this is why/this is why I'm hot". For MIMS, myself, and I believe Ma$e as well, hotness seems preexist success: "This is why I'm hot/how I gotta rap/I can sell a mill saying nothing on the track," cf. Ma$e's "Guarantee a million sales, call it level up".

2: Rap, where the distinctions among on stage and off, personality, person, and persona, are the least clear of any artistic media, is rife with similar cases. The sharpest example of this "real life dramatic irony" has to be the Game's first album, the Documentary. Even while the Game and 50 Cent (who ran the G-Unit imprint the album came out under) were still promoting the album, while it was still on the charts, major parts of what the album stood for--the solidarity and brotherhood of G-Unit--was falling apart as Game and 50 feuded. The Game was left artistically successfully but personally alone. The new found hope and happiness of the album ("I used to see 5-0, throw the crack by the bench/now I'm fucking 5-0 all starting to make sense/My mom's happy she ain't gotta pay the rent/and she got a red bow on that brand new Benz"), its celebration triumph over adversity ("10 g'z will take your daughter out of Air Forces/Believe you me homie I know all about losses/I'm from Compton where the wrong colors be cautious"), finally finding friendship and belonging and mentorship ("New York, New York, big city of dreams/I got my LA Dodger fitted on, I'm doing my thing/Got me fucking with G-Unit, you know the drama that brings/I gotta nigggas in Westside Compton and Southside Queens/And Buck told me in Nashville, I'm good when I come through/So I ain't gotta tuck in my chain like DJ Pooh") seem so effervescent in light of the reality of Game's return to loneliness despite material success. Knowing that, there's something tremendously sad about the whole album. Even here, he recognizes that success can bring struggle ("I'm feeling like Puffy when Life After Death hit/Mo' money, mo' problems and I lost my best friend"), but he doesn't know the half of what's to come. This is a man who chose to name his next album The Doctor's Advocate, even the titular Dr. [Dre] chose his 50 and G-Unt over him. The Game's pain is clear over his next several album.

But at the moment he's recording this album, he finally has the success that he's dreamed of, he knows he's going to become peers with the peerless ("I'm Ready to Die without a Reasonable Doubt/Smoke Chronic and hit it Doggystyle before I got out/Until they sign my Death Certificate, All Eyes On Me/I'm still at it, Illmatic, and that's The Documentary"), but he has no idea what's about to happen, and how he'll never recover. The New Testament and R. Kelly's video for "I Wish" (by far his greatest track not about having sex) both ask:

What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and loses his own soul?

Congrats to all the wieners winners

Mega congrats to the winners! And thank you for answering my questions!:)