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Ahmad
Los Angeles rapper Ahmad Ali Lewis was only 18 when he burst onto the scene in 1994 with the laid-back groove of "Back in the Day," based around a sample of the Staple Singers' "Let's Do It Again" and produced by Berry Gordy's son Kendal. With its images of playground foolery and junior-high discovery, "Back in the Day" depicted Ahmad's South Central neighborhood in an idyllic, wistful light -- a Norman Rockwell painting in rap. In the years after Dr. Dre's G-funk masterpiece The Chronic, West Coast hip-hop found other voices in Ahmad, Montell Jordan, and MC Hammer. Songs like "Back in the Day" or Jordan's "This Is How We Do It" were G-funk lite. They were more about the partying than the thugging, and in doing so tapped into what's always made California pop music successful nationwide -- everyone knows the party's always better out there in the sunshine. Ahmad rode "Back in the Day"'s sunlit vibe to the top of the charts, and saw Giant release his self-titled debut in May of 1994. Unfortunately, Ahmad learned of hip-hop's fleeting celebrity the hard way, and soon dropped off the radar, relegating the one-hit wonder of "Back in the Day" to mixtape gem status forevermore. ~ Johnny Loftus, Rovi
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