This Is How We Do It

"This Is How We Do It" gets our vote for biggest party jam of the '90s. It was a #1 hit for seven weeks in 1995 and has shown remarkable staying power, connecting with listeners decades later. The song was crafted to be inclusive - everyone is invited to this party. "I came up with this universal idea," Montell Jordan said in the Billboard Book of #1 Hits. "If you're in China, this is how they do it here. If you're from the ghetto, this is how they do it. If you're from New York, you do it like this. I think the reason the song was such a big smash with everybody was because everyone from different countries, gay, straight, whatever color, everybody has their individual way of doing what they do."

The song is built on a sample of Slick Rick's 1988 single "Children's Story," an old-school hip-hop classic. (That's why Montell is flipping the track and bringing the old school back). "Children's Story" is one of Jordan's favorites. When he was in college he would improvise his own lyrics to the song, which developed into "This Is How We Do It." He wrote the verses as rap lyrics, then figured out how to sing them, giving the song a distinct flavor. Typically, a rapper would sample a track with sung lyrics, but this was the other way around: a singer sampling a track with rapped lyrics. The biggest rap hit from this era was "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, built on a sample of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise." If you could find a way to merge a familiar sung track to a rap vocal or vice versa, you could cross over to a huge audience.

The song takes place in South Central Los Angeles, where Jordan is from. The line, "Hit the Shaw cause I'm faded" refers to Crenshaw Boulevard, which runs through the city.