"Victory" is a song recorded by American hip hop recording artist Puff Daddy. The song was originally written by The Notorious B.I.G., Jason Phillips and Steven Jordan for his debut studio album No Way Out (1997). It features heavy use of mafioso-style lyrics, as was popular at the time. It features The Notorious B.I.G., who raps two verses, and Busta Rhymes, who raps the song's chorus. The song also heavily sampled the Bill Conti song "Going the Distance", which featured on the soundtrack to the movie Rocky making it a darker start to a rap album that featured many (at the time) club-standard singles. The song was released as a single in 1998, peaking at number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. This song featured the last verses recorded by The Notorious B.I.G. before his 1997 death as these verses were recorded a day before his shooting. The song was used for the EA Sports video game, Fight Night 2004, and the 2K Sports video game, NBA 2K13 by Puff Daddy and the Family featuring The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes. This was re-used for the soundtrack of NBA 2K18. It was also used on professional wrestling, for Masahiro Chono's Team 2000 faction in New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
Music video
The music video for the song was directed by Marcus Nispel on March 31, 1998 (although he was supposed to remain anonymous at the time of premiere) and is an homage to The Running Man. The almost eight-minute-long video featured cameos from Dennis Hopper as a New World Order dictator ("President Victor Castiglione") and Danny DeVito as a live action reporter. Tamara Beckwith was also in the video. Hopper and Devito reportedly appeared in the video pro bono as a favor to Combs.
Sean Combs' character (known as "Contestant #5" or codename "PD") runs through the dark streets of the year 3002AD, chased by armed gestapo-esque forces of Chase TV. At one point, Contestant #5 is cornered on a rooftop, where he decides to leap off instead of submitting to the armed troops.
Footage from Biggie's "One More Chance" video was used in "ghost" images, representing a flashback for Sean Comb's character. Busta Rhymes, dressed in black feathers, raps atop a statue representing Victoria, the goddess of victory. The Victoria statue overlooks the chase scenes. Biggie appears in the video only through archive footage due to his death a year earlier.[1][2]
In 2010, another unofficial remix titled "Legends" leaked which featured Diddy, 50 Cent, 2Pac and an unknown artist. The original "Victory" beat was replaced with a motivational-emotional Piano and String instrumental.
In 2010, British rapper Lowkey used the instrumental for his diss track The Warning which was aimed at Chip. The freestyle was a result of an altercation on Twitter between the pair.[4][5]
In 2019, Shaquille O'Neal made a diss track against Damian Lillard called Second Round Knockout. Victory was used as a sample song.[6]
Track listing
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