He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper
27
Will did not have to wait long to see results. Just a few
weeks before Will graduated from high school, he and Jeff
released a record on the Word Up label. It was a single,
“Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble.”
The song was pure party rap. The rappers had fun
exploring the problems involved in teenaged dating life and
then putting them to music.
“Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” was first played on
Philadelphia-area radio stations. Then radio stations
elsewhere in the United States picked it up. Before long, the
song crossed the Atlantic Ocean and could be heard on
radio stations in England. Teenage boys understood the
problems Will sang about, and even teenage girls could have
a good laugh. Kids did not need to be African-American to
relate to the lyrics. Perhaps that fact, along with the catchy
backbeat, is what made the song popular. While it was not a
monster hit, it made the top-twenty hit list in England and
sold more than one hundred thousand copies worldwide.
3
That summer, the rapper and the DJ went on their first
concert tour, playing in cities across the United States and
England. When their plane landed at Heathrow Airport in
London, Will and Jeff noticed masses of cheering teenage
girls. At first they did not realize the girls had come to see
them. Will said, “There were screaming girls at the airport,
and we thought, ‘What is this? What are they screaming for?’”
4
Still, not everybody loved their record. It might seem that
a song as lighthearted as “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble”
would be unlikely to ignite controversy. That is especially true
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