"This Is Why I'm Hot" by MIMS

Shawn Mims was born in Washington Heights in 1981 to a Jamaican-American family and lost both parents by the time he was 13; his mother had given him his first DJ equipment shortly before she died. He rapped as Mr. Mims around 2000 and picked up some attention in Canada on a Baby Blue Soundcrew compilation, but the song that changed everything was one he co-wrote with a Long Island DJ and producer called BlackOut, and released independently in 2006. Its trick was structural: in the first verse the beat switches with the geography, borrowing Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones Part II," E-40's "Tell Me When to Go," Dr. Dre's "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" and Kanye West's "Jesus Walks," each sample playing as Mims names the part of the country its artist comes from.

The record gained steam over a few months on New York radio, a bidding war followed, and Mims signed with Capitol, which released it in December 2006 as the lead single for his debut album Music Is My Savior. In early March 2007 the digital release sent it from No. 32 to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in one week, then the third-biggest jump to the top in the chart's history; it debuted at No. 1 on Hot Digital Songs with 140,874 downloads and held the Hot 100 for two weeks before Fergie's "Glamorous" replaced it. It went double platinum and reached No. 18 in Britain. Rolling Stone called it "a catchy little thing with a cool, minimalist beat and some goofy charm," and the chorus, which insists he is hot because he is fly and you are not because you are not, became a national joke that everyone sang anyway.

The album arrived days after the song left No. 1, and nothing on it followed. "Like This" stalled at No. 32; the second album, Guilt, in April 2009, was led by a single that barely scraped into the Hot 100. Mims later said the samples that made the song had "cost me a lot of money," that his first royalty check was "my first taste of disappointment," and that even then "I didn't really want to be an artist anymore." His last release was a 2012 mixtape, and he moved into technology, co-founding the RecordGram app with Erik Mendelson in 2016; it won TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield in New York the next year. The name doubles as a backronym: Mims, Music Is My Savior.