7. “Dolly My Baby (Hip Hop Remix)”
A collaboration with Super Cat offered a huge boost to credibility in ’90s hip-hop and this one, from 1993, certainly paid off for a then little known Biggie Smalls and Puff Daddy. “Dolly My Baby” was many people’s first introduction to Biggie’s revolutionary lyrical style, and also spawned one of his most famous lines— “I love it when you call me Big Poppa,” later sampled in Ready to Die‘s hit by that name— while a pre-jiggy Puffy raps in a cartoonish style cribbed from Onyx. Without Super Cat’s classic original and his larger-than-life presence, things probably would have moved a little slower for that dynamic duo—and for that we named this one No. 1 on our Toppa Top 10 list of best rapper/deejay collaborations. Watch the video here. —Jesse Serwer