Reception
On July 6, 2008, more than four years after the song's initial release, "99 Problems" entered at #35 (after reaching #12 on initial release) in the United Kingdom. This was attributed to Jay-Z's appearance at Glastonbury and the O2 Wireless Festival, two popular British summer music festivals.
On January 21, 2009, Jay-Z performed the song as part of his set at the Staff Ball, the last official event of Barack Obama's inauguration. The ball was exclusively for 4,000 staffers who had worked on Obama's campaign. Jay-Z tweaked the lyrics to suit the historic atmosphere, and the crowd sang along: "I Got 99 problems but a Bush ain't one", replacing "bitch" with the name of the former President.
On September 3, 2012 Jay-Z performed the song with the band Pearl Jam at the Made in America festival in Philadelphia.
The song was listed at #14 on Pitchfork Media's top 500 songs of the 2000s (decade).
The song came in at #2 on Rolling Stone's top 100 songs of the '00s. On the updated list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the song was added and came in at #172.
The song won Best Rap Solo Performance at the 47th Grammy Awards.
In October 2011, NME placed it at number 24 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".
In 2011 Southwestern Law School Professor Caleb Mason wrote an article with a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of the song from a legal perspective referencing the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, citing it as a useful tool for teaching law students search and seizure law involving search warrants, Terry stops, racial profiling, the exclusionary rule, and the motor vehicle exception. The article notes the song lyrics are legally incorrect in indicating that a driver can refuse an order to exit the car and that the police, when searching a vehicle during a stop, would be prevented from searching the glove compartment and trunk because they were locked.
Read more about this topic: 99 Problems
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)