Songfacts®:

• "Player's Anthem" was the first single from Junior M.A.F.I.A. (Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes), a Brooklyn-based group led by The Notorious B.I.G. It dropped in 1995, a year after he released his groundbreaking solo debut, Ready To Die.
  
  The song appears on Conspiracy, the only Junior M.A.F.I.A. album issued while Biggie was alive. He died in 1997 just weeks before his second solo album, Life After Death, was released.
• This song lays out the Junior M.A.F.I.A. lifestyle: living the good life outside the law. Like many of Notorious B.I.G.'s songs, it finds him armed and dangerous, ready and willing to enter battle. Unfortunately, this wasn't just posturing. He was shot and killed when he was just 24.
• "Player's Anthem" marks the debut of Lil' Kim, the female rapper in the group. She was just 19 when the song was released.
  
  Kim and Notorious B.I.G. grew up on the same block and were a couple for a time. Bringing her into the group established her as a new voice in hip-hop, a woman who could hang with the boys, dishing it out and getting down and dirty when she had to. Kim got a solo deal with Atlantic Records the following year, when she issued her debut album Hard Core, which features Notorious B.I.G. She was on the vanguard of a new wave of female rappers that included Eve and Foxy Brown. In 2001, she became the first female rapper to appear on a #1 Hot 100 hit when "Lady Marmalade" went to the top.
• The song was produced by Clark Kent (Rodolfo Franklin), who later produced "Super High" for Rick Ross.
• Junior M.A.F.I.A. had two more hits: "I Need You Tonight," which features Aaliyah, and "Get Money." Group member Lil' Cease later appeared on tracks with The Notorious B.I.G., Lil' Kim, SWV and several other artists.