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Recording
In 1992, Uptown Records and MCA Records signed a $50 million deal, which lead to Uptown producing the soundtrack for the movie Who's the Man? (1993). Puffy, who was responsible for the soundtrack, decided to include his new artist, Biggie.

"Party and Bullshit" was recorded at Soundtrack Studios in New York. According to the song's producer Easy Mo Bee, it was recorded in one take. Biggie brought his friends from the group Junior M.A.F.I.A. for the recording session, they ordered food and were resting in the studio. Anxious about wasting expensive studio time, Easy Mo Bee kept asking him when they would start recording. "And he kept telling me, 'Yo, I got you, man.' Ordering food, eating burgers. And then he just jumped up and went right into the booth and just spat three verses. I was like, 'Yo, who is this dude?' I thought he was playing the whole time", said the producer.

In an interview with Vibe magazine, Biggie revealed that the original version of the song differed from the released version. The rapper explained that Andre Harrell, CEO of Uptown Records, asked him to record a party song.

Composition
"Party and Bullshit" is an East Coast hip hop song.

The main melody of the song is a loop, made by blending two samples: the siren from the song "UFO" by the band ESG and the organ from Johnny "Hammond" Smith's cover of "I'll Be There" by the Jackson 5. Nate Patrin of Stereogum wrote that the samples "melt into each other to sound richer", resulting in a track that "sounds amped and mellow ".

The song begins with Biggie describing his childhood: calling himself a "terror since the public school era", talking about skipping classes and smoking marijuana daily. After that, he describes a modern day party, where he and all his friends brought guns. Throughout the song, he references numerous alcoholic beverages. Towards the end of the third verse the music stops and a small skit is played, portraying a fight at the party. After the fight ends, Biggie continues rapping with the phrase "Can't we just all get along?", alluding to the quote from the victim of police brutality Rodney King.

The song's chorus is built around the "party and bullshit" chant, which is an interpolation of the phrase from the 1968 song "When the Revolution Comes" by the spoken word group the Last Poets. However, Biggie altered its meaning: the original song sarcastically criticized young black people who ignored the fight for equality in favor of leisure and meaningless activities, while his song emphasized these activities, turning into what Sia Michel of Spin magazine called a "good-time anthem". Discussing the use of the phrase, Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets said: "When we rapped, it was all about raising consciousness and using language to challenge people. When I wrote [about] 'party and bullshit' it was to make people get off their ass. But now 'party and bullshit' was used by Biggie, used by Busta Rhymes, but in a non-conscious way." In his book Unbelievable, Cheo Hodari Coker argued that "Party and Bullshit" had a deeper meaning. The journalist wrote that the lyrics provided a social commentary, highlighting the problems of young men who grew up during the crack epidemic and desired to get rich.

Legacy
In the 1999 book Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists, the editors of Ego Trip magazine placed "Party and Bullshit" at number 20 in the list of the best singles of 1993.