In a studio called Dangerous, a rapper from Oakland was building a record with a small army behind him. Too Short, the West Coast hip-hop veteran, released Get in Where You Fit In on October 26, 1993, and the album became his most commercially powerful statement. It was his eighth solo studio album and his fifth for Jive Records, the label that had helped turn his blunt street tales into a regional empire.
Ant Banks and the G-funk sound
The answer to why this record hit so hard starts with the sound. Production came from The Dangerous Crew and Quincy Jones III, with Ant Banks doing the heaviest lifting as a producer, mixer, keyboardist, and drum programmer. Banks was also a featured artist, and his clean, precise arrangements gave the album a G-funk sheen that pushed Too Short's usual dirty rap into smoother territory.
Too Short did not make the record alone. The sessions pulled in a long list of guests, including Ant Diddley Dog, Father Dom, FM Blue, Mhisani, Pee Wee, Rappin' Ron, Ronese Levias, and Spice 1. Guitarist and bassist Shorty B worked across the album, while Stan "The Guitar Man" Jones played on "Just Another Day," a track Quincy Jones III also produced and played keyboards on.
Chart numbers and the platinum plaque
Get in Where You Fit In reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 and went all the way to the top of the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. That success had a long tail: on November 16, 1994, the album was certified platinum by the RIAA. The lead single, "I'm a Player," had arrived on September 27, 1993, giving the record an early push with its Bootsy Collins-sampled bounce. The album's second single, "Money in the Ghetto," arrived on January 17, 1994, and leaned on a sample of Kool and the Gang's "Hollywood Swinging." Its release kept the record in rotation well into the new year, just as the RIAA certification was approaching.
The album sat squarely in West Coast hip-hop, gangsta rap, G-funk, and dirty rap. It followed Shorty the Pimp from 1992, and by the time Cocktails arrived in 1995, Too Short had cemented a run of albums that turned Oakland street talk into national chart business. The platinum plaque showed that the formula was working, even as the music got longer and more layered. The album's runtime stretched past an hour, a sign of how much material Too Short and his collaborators were willing to stack onto one release. That length gave the record room for a wide range of samples, from Funkadelic's "Freak of the Week" on "The Dangerous Crew" to Silver Convention's "Heart of Stone" on "Oakland Style."
Critics were not all convinced. Rolling Stone gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, and The Source matched that rating. Entertainment Weekly was cooler, handing out a B− and noting that Ant Banks used sterile arrangements without the grit of the original records. Robert Christgau simply marked it "neither," while AllMusic called the album overlong and musically tangled. The sample choices also reached into reggae and soul. "Blowjob Betty" was built on Tenor Saw's "Ring the Alarm," while "All My Bitches Are Gone" used Wilson Pickett's "Shameless." Those touches showed the album pulling from far beyond the usual West Coast funk palette.
For Too Short, that mixed reception did not slow the momentum. Get in Where You Fit In proved he could stretch his sound with a bigger crew and a cleaner mix without losing his core audience. The album's hour-plus runtime and dense sample work showed an artist trying to grow, even as the charts rewarded him for staying exactly who he was.
The album's hour-plus runtime and dense sample work showed an artist trying to grow, even as the charts rewarded him for staying exactly who he was.