Get It How U Live!!

Get It How U Live!! is the debut album by the Hot Boys, released by Cash Money Records on October 28, 1997, with every track produced by Mannie Fresh.

The story

Cash Money put the Hot Boys together in 1997 from four of its artists: Juvenile, B.G., Turk and Lil Wayne, who was still in his mid-teens. The album was issued independently on Cash Money, which at the time sold records largely through New Orleans and regional outlets. All fifteen tracks are credited as written by the four members, with guest appearances from Big Tymers and Bun B. After Cash Money signed its distribution deal with Universal Records in 1998, the album was reissued for wider release.

Sound and production

Mannie Fresh produced and mixed the album at Cash Money Studios, with Bryan “Baby” Williams and Ronald “Slim” Williams as executive producers. The record runs just over an hour and sets the members’ trade-off verses against Fresh’s drum-machine programming and keyboard lines, an approach that draws on the local bounce style while leaning toward street-level gangsta rap. The cover art came from Pen & Pixel Graphics, the Houston design firm behind much of the era’s Southern rap packaging.

Legacy

The album peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and on the Heatseekers chart. Reviews were mixed, but it introduced the group lineup and the house sound that Cash Money carried into its national breakthrough two years later with Guerrilla Warfare and the members’ solo albums.