“99 Problems” by Jay-Z

"99 Problems" was the third single from Jay-Z's The Black Album, released on April 27, 2004, and it's the sound of a rap kingpin handing the controls to Rick Rubin and letting him crank the amps. Rubin, back on a hip-hop record for the first time in years, went straight to his old tricks: a bare-knuckle beat and a rock guitar riff, stitched from Billy Squier's "The Big Beat", Mountain's "Long Red" and Wilson Pickett's "Get Me Back On Time", which is how Squier, Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi landed in the credits.

The hook comes from Ice-T's 1993 song of the same name, but the verses are Jay-Z's own: a three-part tale of tangling with rap critics, getting pulled over by a cop who wants to search his car in a textbook case of racial profiling, and squaring off with somebody spoiling for a fight. It reached 30 on the Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.