The block (and the coffee) is hot
Rapper Lil Wayne reportedly did not have blockchain in mind when he wrote "Tha block is hot."
This month's contest winner is Mark Anderson of Industrial Kinetics. He knew that our blockchain explainer "The block is hot" echoes Lil Wayne's "Tha block is hot". (The story is published online under the title "No, sir, you won't be getting any blockchain!")
We would also have accepted "Give a little bit," by Supertramp. It was also the title of an item in our Inbound section about an Amazon ad in which boxes moving along a conveyor sing that song.
Lil Wayne started life in 1982 in New Orleans as Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. He accomplished a great deal at a young age: He wrote his first rap song at age eight, according to an Associated Press interview. By age 11, he had talked his future record label, Cash Money, into letting him do odd jobs. Within a year he was drafted to record an album, True Stories, with the rapper B.G., who was then 14 years old; they were billed as the B.G.'z. And according to the AP interview, it was Lil Wayne who coined the now-familiar phrases "bling bling" and "drop it like it's hot"—and that he had yet to turn 25 at the time.
After True Stories, Lil Wayne worked on a few more collaborations. One of them, Guerilla Warfare by the Hot Boys, hit number one on the Billboard top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In 1999, he released his first solo album, Tha block is hot, the title track of which is our January solution. The album was an immediate success. It sold more than 200,000 copies within a week, putting it at number three on the Billboard 200 chart, and went platinum by the end of the year. In 2005, Lil Wayne became president of the Cash Money record label and started his own imprint, Young Money Entertainment. In 2016, he published a book, Gone 'Til November, about the eight months he spent in prison in 2010. Also in 2016, he announced his retirement—reportedly due to legal issues with Cash Money's founders, although he had hinted about retiring as early as 2011.
Supertramp was a British group founded in 1969 by vocalist and pianist Rick Davies. The band took its name from a book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by Welsh poet, writer, and vagabond William Henry Davis. Supertramp was most popular in the 1970s and '80s; "Give a little bit" was released on their 1977 album Even in the quietest moments. Some of their most well-known songs came from their 1979 album Breakfast in American, which had hits in the title track, "The logical song," "Goodbye stranger," and "Take the long way home." The band has had several breakups and reunions over the past decades. A planned 2015 tour had to be canceled when Davies was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
Submit February-issue responses by midnight
Have you combed through our February issue and found the song title in the headline? Submit your answer to dcvrocks@dcvelocity.com by midnight Pacific time tonight.
For a hint, turn to page 11 of that issue, our digital edition, or our mobile version. If you guess correctly, you'll be entered into our drawing for a three-pack sampler of Joey Kramer's Rockin' & Roastin' Organic Coffee.
