Q Tip benefited because this was the biggest song he was featured on. It wasn't for his album, but he could still claim he was a part of a song that made history.
Duh, of course people didn't know about the original "Hot Boyz" song, it wasn't the single. That isn't the argument. The argument was people actually blindly buying the album en masse thinking the remix was on the album. I'm sure some people blindly bought the album thinking the remix was on the album. Considering the cost of an album vs the cost of the single, many bought the album because they wanted the album and those who just wanted the single and were hip to it not being on the album, only copped the single.
"Hot Boyz" also dropped in the Fall of 1999, weeks ahead of Nastradamus.
Breh, there is no clear way of measuring chart performance vs cultural significance. One thing is definite though and that is the song had staying power(more so than "Love Is Blind"), which is a testament to its cultural significance.
Mase had a #1 single in "Feels So Good", "What You Want" was #6, and "Lookin' At Me" was #8. All of these songs were getting massive airplay. "24 Hrs. To Live" was the only one that wasn't a hit. And these were bigger than Puff's "bottom feeder singles". Mase was featured on Puff's first two singles and one of Big's singles and debuted on 112's "Only You" where Biggie also had a verse. Mase was getting the same amount of promo from Bad Boy if not more than Puff and Big. Mase was pushed. Puff wasn't even selling his own album on his own merits. It was Puff Daddy & The Family. Pretty evident that Mase was being pushed to the forefront. Biggie isn't even pictured on the front cover of the album, but Mase is. Biggie is on the back cover in a separate photo with Puff. Clearly he was pushing Mase to the forefront even while Biggie was alive. There's even a nice shout out from Biggie on "Victory" in the form of a slick double entendre (we just masing them /Mase & them) where he name drops each member of the family.