The 2010s File Feature
I Hit It First
I Hit It First: Creation, Recording, and Chart History Ray J, the stage name of William Ray Norwood Jr., had maintained a presence in the rhythm-and-blues re…
01 The Story
I Hit It First: Creation, Recording, and Chart History
Ray J, the stage name of William Ray Norwood Jr., had maintained a presence in the rhythm-and-blues recording industry since the 1990s. A younger brother of recording artist and actress Brandy, Ray J had released several albums and charted singles over his career, navigating the intersection of the entertainment industry and celebrity culture that surrounded both his family connections and his own public profile. By 2013, his most visible moment of cultural notoriety had come not from his music but from his personal life, and it was that context that gave "I Hit It First" its cultural charge upon release.
The track was produced and released in early 2013 through Knockout Entertainment, Ray J's own label imprint. Bobby Brackins, a Bay Area rapper and songwriter who had worked as a collaborator with multiple recording artists, contributed a verse that complemented Ray J's central performance. The production aesthetic of the track drew from the contemporary R&B and hip-hop production styles dominant in 2013, featuring processed vocal effects, a rhythmic beat structure informed by electronic dance music influences, and a polished studio sound that fit the mainstream pop-R&B template of the period. Operating through an independent imprint gave Ray J creative control over the timing and presentation of the release, which proved strategically important given how rapidly the media environment responded to the track's cultural subtext upon its arrival.
The song was released in April 2013 and generated immediate public attention because of its widely understood biographical subtext. Ray J had appeared in a widely distributed video with Kim Kardashian in 2003, and Kim Kardashian had since become one of the most prominent celebrities in American popular culture following the launch of the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians in 2007 and her subsequent marriage to rapper Kanye West in 2014. By the time "I Hit It First" was released in April 2013, Kim Kardashian was engaged to West and the subject of enormous media coverage. The song's title and lyrical content were interpreted by virtually all media coverage and listeners as a direct reference to this history, making the track one of the most discussed celebrity-context songs of that year.
"I Hit It First" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 27, 2013, entering at position 51. This debut position was notably strong, reflecting the immediate media attention the song had generated through press coverage of its apparent biographical references rather than through conventional radio promotion. The track's debut at 51 was its peak position on the chart, making it one of those relatively rare instances in which a song's maximum chart performance occurred during its first week of eligibility.
The following week, the single fell to position 90, before returning at position 74 for a third charted week on May 18, 2013. The total chart run of three weeks on the Hot 100 was brief, reflecting the nature of its commercial appeal, which was driven substantially by cultural curiosity and media coverage rather than by the kind of sustained radio rotation and streaming activity that maintained songs on the chart for extended periods.
The music video for "I Hit It First" was produced to accompany the single and featured visual elements that reinforced the song's connection to its cultural subtext. The video's imagery and casting choices generated additional rounds of media coverage and social media discussion, extending the song's moment of public visibility beyond what its chart performance alone would have suggested.
Radio programming departments handled the track cautiously given its explicit biographical framing and the potential for controversy, which limited the kind of broad airplay support that might have sustained a longer chart run. Nonetheless, the combination of streaming activity, download purchases, and the limited radio play it did receive was sufficient to produce a chart presence that registered meaningfully on the Hot 100.
In retrospect, "I Hit It First" occupied a significant position in the early history of celebrity-driven viral music in the streaming era, representing an early clear example of a song achieving chart success primarily through cultural notoriety and social media amplification rather than through traditional promotional channels. The track demonstrated how the changing mechanics of chart eligibility in the early 2010s had created pathways to chart success for songs that generated intense but brief periods of public attention.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Meaning in "I Hit It First"
"I Hit It First" by Ray J featuring Bobby Brackins operated on two distinct levels simultaneously. On the surface, the song presented itself as a straightforward exercise in contemporary R&B braggadocio, with the narrator asserting romantic and physical precedence over a rival male figure in relation to a shared female interest. This narrative of claiming priority and superiority in a romantic competition was a well-worn theme in popular music broadly and in R&B specifically.
However, the song's cultural reception was almost entirely shaped by its broadly understood biographical subtext. The details embedded in the song's lyrical content, including references specific enough to be understood as pointing toward a particular individual, led virtually all listeners and media commentators to interpret the track as a direct address to the personal history between Ray J and Kim Kardashian, who had become one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world by the time the song was released. This subtext transformed the song from a conventional R&B track into a form of public commentary conducted through the medium of popular music.
The cultural phenomenon surrounding the song raised questions about the ethics and norms of using popular music as a vehicle for assertions about one's personal history with other public figures, particularly when those assertions involve intimate matters. Critics and commentators who engaged with the song often discussed it as a notable example of celebrity culture and music intersecting in ways that prioritized notoriety and controversy over musical artistry.
Bobby Brackins's featured verse contributed a secondary perspective that reinforced the track's central themes of male competitive assertion and pride in romantic conquest. The Bay Area rapper's contribution situated the song within a broader tradition of collaborative hip-hop and R&B tracks in which featured artists amplified the central artist's narrative through complementary lyrical content.
The song also participated in a long tradition of R&B and hip-hop tracks that address romantic rivalry between men, a lyrical framework that dates back through decades of popular music. However, the specificity of its apparent biographical references shifted it from the realm of universal romantic narrative into something closer to a public statement about a particular situation, which fundamentally altered how it was received and discussed.
In media coverage, the track was frequently analyzed less as a musical text and more as a cultural event, a piece of celebrity behavior that happened to take the form of a song release. This framing, while reductive from a purely musical standpoint, accurately reflected the primary terms on which most of its audience encountered and processed the material. The public discourse the song generated was, in many respects, its primary artistic and commercial output, with the musical recording serving as the vehicle for that discourse rather than as an end in itself.
Within the broader context of early 2010s popular culture, "I Hit It First" became a notable data point in discussions about celebrity, social media, viral attention economies, and the changing relationship between personal life and public persona in an era of unprecedented media saturation.
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