In his extended career, Layzie Bone has penned many bars, but when asked to give his “most meaningful” verse, he didn’t think twice about choosing it or going into it bar by bar.
On the 2023 BET Awards red carpet, HipHopDX approached the Cleveland rapper, who when asked to offer some of his best verses quickly launched into the lyrics to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “East 1999.”
Layzie Bone started her song with the lyrics, “Thinkin’ ’bout back in the days when the year was ’89/ Little n-gga on the grind, gotta get mine, doing my crime/ With Toot and Hen, steady stacking my ends/ Putting my serve down on the Clair 9-9.” “Hitting up the Graveyard Shift with Ren/ Little Will, Big Wally, and Wish Bone/ Little Wally High Rollerz and he wonders why n-ggas are so strong/ Krayzie Bone, Stack, and Rod Jay, much love/ It’s commonplace to let your nuts hang; kept an n-gga on his toes in the game.
Layzie read the remaining verse before explaining that he penned it about 30 years ago in the “traphouse” on “East 99 and St. Clair.” I wondered, “How else could I write that?”
From their album E. 1999 Eternal, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony released “East 1999” as their second single. From December 9, 1995, to March 23, 1996, the song appeared on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart each week.
On the BET Awards red carpet, rappers other than Layzie Bone have also shared their favorite verses with HipHopDX. HipHopDX asked Remy Ma and Papoose to share their favorite verses from one another at the event last year, and the happy couple stunned one another with their selections.
Remy Ma’s 2008 diss single “When I See Her,” which was recorded before she was sentenced to eight years in jail for assault, is the source of Papoose’s opening verse.
He rapped, “Seven days a week, alternate sides of the street/ I’m a drag that bitch like the muthafuckin’ beat/ Sixty seconds to a minute it’s a problem when I see her.”
Remy Ma acknowledged that she has never witnessed Papoose “act it out like that.” She then chose “The Underground King,” a 2005 song by her husband, shocking the “Heat 7” hitmaker.
“That’s crazy, yo!” Papoose declared, “I want you all to know that I never knew that. “I’ve never even heard that information before,”
Remy explained, “I have to play the songs inside when I’m in the car by myself because he gets mad gassed.”
