READY TO LIVE: The "Ready To Die" 20th Anniversary Thread

[Rapmastermind]

March 9th will be a day that lives in Hip Hop Infamy forever as that’s the day we lost the great Christopher Wallace. Canibus made the date even more Iconic with his Legendary bars on “2nd Round K.O.” But another date also holds that significance. September 13th has become one of the most famous dates in the history of Hip Hop. It’s the day that Iconic Rap Legend Tupac Shukar died from his gunshot wounds from the Las Vegas Shooting. This year in 2014 we celebrate the 18th Anniversary of his passing. Ironically this date is another Anniversary.

2 Years before Pac’s death, an up and coming underground emcee from Brooklyn New York unleashed his debut album on the world. “Ready To Die” was released September 13th 1994 and Hip Hop has never been the same sense. This thread is give a full history on the lead up to the album. It also features the amazing XXL “Making of Ready To Die” and why 20 years later it can be debated as the greatest rap album of all time.

(At a young Age Biggie proved to be gifted and a natural rapper and emcee)\

"Considered a Fool cause I dropped out of High School, Stereotypes of black male misunderstood, but it's still all good" - Juicy

*READY TO SUCCEED: Biggie was an underground Legend before Puffy even met him. Rapping on Video Music Box as a teen to Battling cats on the corner. The streets of Brooklyn knew Christopher before anyone else did. But it was Big Daddy Kane’s DJ Mister Cee and DJ 50 Grand that got the ball rolling for Big. After Matty C got the Biggie Demo and featured it in the Source Unsigned Hype. He got a call from Puffy looking for new artist. Matty then passed on Big’s demo to Puff and the rest is history. Biggie meanwhile was on the streets selling drugs still after being kicked out of his mother’s house.

(In the beginning Biggie did use to write lyrics down but during the "Ready To Die" recording process he learned to memorize his bars in his head. This technique is now being used by many popular rappers in the game)


"I'm doing rhymes now, F*ck the crimes now, Out on the Ave, I'm real hard to find now, cause I'm knee deep in the beats" - Machine Gun Funk


*READY TO RECORD: After Big’s demo was a hit it was time for him to get in the studio and put some songs on wax. Biggie was originally signed to Uptown but Puffy was fired and he was in limbo. He did record almost Half of "Ready To Die" while on Uptown. He was still selling drugs cause “Nicks move for 20’s down south” and ended up getting locked up in North Carolina and did a 9 month bid. While behind bars he decided he would pursue his rap career full time. Once Puffy got his Bad Boy Label everything changed. Biggie’s earliest solo recording on record is the underground cut “Biggie got the Hype Sh!t”.

He would follow that up with a series of collabos starting with a feature with Aaron Hall called “Why you trying to play me” where he was credited as “Christopher Wallace”. By 93 he would release his very 1st single on the “Who’s The Man” Soundtrack called “Party and Bullshyt”. That song got the streets hot but didn’t perform on the charts. Biggie also appeared on title track of the soundtrack “Who’s the Man”. His 1st album feature came on Heavy D’s “Blue Funk” on the track called “A Bunch of N!ggas” which featured Guru and Busta Rhymes as well.

Next thing you know artist were contacting Biggie to get on remixes and that proved to be a success. He got on a remix for Neneh Cherry’s “Buddy X”. He would finally enter the charts when he was featured on the remix to Super Cat’s “Dolly My Baby” which was his 1st Hot 100 appearance. He followed that up with the remix to the Mary J Blige Classic “Real Love”. By the end of 1993 Biggie was one of the hottest underground rappers in New York. During this time he got the attention of another New York born Emcee by the name of Tupac Shakur who took him on shows and even recorded with him. "Flava in Ya Ear" Remix also fueled the buzz for Biggie's debut as his verse is considered the most memorable on the posse cut.

(The Westcoast dominated Hip Hop Critically and Commercially until "Ready To Die" brought the final shift)

"Your Face, My Feet, They Meet, With Stomping, I'm Ripping Emcees, From Tallahassee to Compton" - Machine Gun Funk


*READY TO COMPETE: “The Chronic” and “Doggystyle” were still burning up Hip Hop Airwaves and charts. On the Eastcoast there were a few groups still selling but there was no dominate New York act that could compete with The West Coast. By the time 1994 rolled around New York had dropped Masterpiece’s from both Wu Tang and NaS with “36 Chambers” and “ILLmatic”.

Wu’s album was able to go Platinum within a year and propel them as one of Hip Hop best new groups. NaS “ILLmatic” got the critical acclaim but wasn’t able to have the same commercial success. Quality wasn’t an issue for New York at the time as many rappers and groups dropped great albums. It was sales. No Eastcoast album could compete with Dre and Snoop. Then out of nowhere came other hit West Coast album with Warren G’s “Regulate”. By this point it seemed the West Reign on the Top was never going to end. That was until a certain Single dropped.

(Biggie climbed the ladder to success escalator style after his debut came out)

"Put the drugs on the shelf, knaw couldn't see it. SCARFACE, KING OF NEW YORK, I wanna BE IT" - RESPECT

*READY TO TAKEOVER: “Juicy” was released on August 8th 1994. The song was an INSTANT Hit burning up the charts and radio not just in New York but all over the country. The single had a sample from the Classic RnB song “Juicy Fruit” by Mtume. It was a rags to riches story about Big’s life from street corners to interviews by the pool. The song felt autobiographical. With Pop Culture references and shout outs to Hip Hop DJ’s and Pioneers. Biggie made a single everyone could enjoy. The Single was a success going Gold and by the time the album was released it had set the streets and the charts on fire.

Within 2 Months the album was Gold, with in 6 months it was Platinum. By 1995 it was multi-Platinum. “Juicy” got the fire started but “Big Poppa” took Biggie even further up the charts. The Overweight Lover anthem with the Classic Isley Brother’s sample set clubs ablaze and took Biggie from a regional New York Underground Act to a Pop Sensation. The song ended being a Top 10 hit for Biggie and went Platinum. It earned Biggie his 1st Grammy nomination. The last single from the album ended up making history. The Remix for “One More Chance” tied Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream” as the highest debut for a single in History breaking The Beatles record. The single ended going Platinum and earned Biggie two Billboard Awards for Biggie Rap single and Artist of the year.

(Before Biggie called himself "The Hitchcock of Hip Hop" he proved his storytelling abilities on his debut. HIs name Biggie Smalls is from the Film "Let's Do It Again". His alter ego Frank White is the name of the character from "King of New York". Biggie love movies and you could tell in his storytelling. Ironically one of Hitchcock's best and famous films was called "Notorious")

"I know how it feels to wake up f*cked up. Pockets broke as hell another rock to sell. People look at you like you the loser selling drugs to all the users mad buddah abusers" - EVERYDAY STRUGGLE

*READY TO TELL A STORY: What made “Ready To Die” work was the fact it plays out like an audio movie. You could literally “SEE” Biggie’s words in your mind. From the beginning of the album “Intro” Biggie was in Storytelling mode as it starts from his birth. The baby on the album cover actually symbolizes Biggie‘s birth, through his teens up until his prison sentence. As he’s leaving Jail you hear a Snoop Dogg Classic “Da Shizit” playing in the back. As the 1 song “Things Dun Changed” began you hear a sample from “The Chronic” “Lil Ghetto Boy”. It was if Biggie was subconsciously or consciously telling us there’s a New Sherrif in town after the West’s Dominance.

He even ended the Intro with “I got Big Plans”. The album then goes on to give you stories like “Gimmie The Loot”, “Warning” and “Me and My B!tch”. Even on songs that weren’t stories Big always told them in story form. “Everyday Struggle” is a story of the trails and tribulations of the Drug Game. “Respect” Biggie gives us a 3 act story about his life before and after birth. Even “One More Chance” is a story of Biggie’s sexual exploits. To accent the audio movie concept even more is the fact the album ends with the haunting “Suicidal Thoughts”. You really felt Puffy was terrified on the other line and the “THUMP” at the end accepts that shot himself. “Ready To Die” isn’t just a Classic album cause of the great rhymes, production and songs but because it told a cohesive story. In that story Biggie explained that this lifestyle has two endings. Dead - Suicidal Thoughts or In Jail - The Intro. He gave you a moral lesson that his surroundings made him feel that death would solve his problems cause life was hell on those streets.

"Damn right I like the Life I live, cause I went from Negative to Positive, and it's ALL GOOD" - JUICY

*READY TO INSPIRE: By 1995 Biggie was on top of the world and crowned The King of New York (Which is also his nickname). Touring the globe. Collaborating with rappers from the underground to commercial. To Pop Acts as big as Michael Jackson. “Ready To Die” dominated the charts, airways and the streets. Because of this the album created a new Blueprint for Hip Hop. Biggie made an LP that appealed to not just his boys at the bodega in Brooklyn but also that white kid in the suburbs. The album gave the streets what they wanted but it also gave the clubs something too. What LL did in the 80’s and early 90’s. Biggie took it to another level. His success lead to bringing out his crew Junior Mafia which lead to discovery of one of the greatest female rappers ever in Lil Kim. It also made Bad Boy records one of the most Successful and historic labels in rap History.

20 Years later “Ready To Die” is one of the most sampled rap albums of all time. “Juicy, Warning, Big Poppa and One More Chance” are still all staples on radio. Lyrics have been sampled from this album from rap, pop, rnb and even rock stars. The album as been on several of greatest of all time list including Time Magazine Top 100 albums ever. It even spanned the Blockbuster Diamond Selling Classic Masterpiece follow up “Life After Death”. Which literally acts as a sequel to “Ready To Die” which it begins at the end of “Suicidal Thoughts”. So on this Legendary Anniversary. What's your favorite song from the album and what's your opinion of it all these years later? 20 years ago Biggie may have been “Ready To Die”, but the music he made was Ready To Live. FOREVER.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_to_Die

The Making of ‘Ready To Die': Family Business - XXL

 

[Rapmastermind]

THE VIDEOS:



"JUICY"





"BIG POPPA"






"WARNING"





"ONE MORE CHANCE: STAY WITH ME REMIX"

 

[intilectual recipricol]

 

[prophecypro]

Classic album

 

[Rapmastermind]

THE SINGLES: One great thing about the new formula that Puffy and Big created was their singles were not just pop fluff. Biggie made sure to lace the streets on all of his hits singles. Check out the Track Listing for each single:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicy_(The_Notorious_B.I.G._song)

A-Side

1. Juicy (Dirty Mix) (5:05)
2. Unbelievable (3:45) (Produced by DJ Premier)
3. Juicy (Remix) (4:42) (Produced by Pete Rock)

B-Side

1. Juicy (Instrumental) (5:05)
2. Unbelievable (Instrumental) (3:45)
3. Juicy (Remix Instrumental) (4:43)

For "Juicy" Big gave the streets the underground gutter Premo Classic "Unbelieveable" as well as a remix from the Legendary Pete Rock himself (Pete claims he should of gotten the original credit as he gave Puff the Idea. The reason I believe him is Puff gave the Remix as an apology to me. Nothing against the Trackmasters and Puff, they definitely produced it but it's clear Pete had the original idea)

1. "Big Poppa" (radio edit)
2. "Big Poppa" (remix radio edit)
3. "Who Shot Ya?" (radio edit)
4. "Big Poppa" (remix instrumental)
5. "Big Poppa" (club mix)
6. "Big Poppa" (remix club mix)
7. "Who Shot Ya?" (club mix)
8. "Warning" (club mix)

On "Big Poppa" Big gave us the hard album cut "Warning". As well as a smooth southern remix of "Big Poppa" produced by Jermaine Dupri. He even threw a left hook by throwing in the reworked now two verse "Who Shot Ya" which was original on Mary J's album with Keith Murray.

1. One More Chance / Stay With Me (Radio Edit 1) (4:15)
2. One More Chance (Hip Hop Mix) (5:05)
3. One More Chance / Stay With Me (Radio Edit 2) (4:35)
4. One More Chance (Hip Hop Instrumental) (5:08)

1. One More Chance (Hip Hop Radio Edit) (4:24)
2. The What (Radio Edit) (4:08)
3. One More Chance / Stay With Me (Instrumental) (4:35)

With his Classic Single "One More Chance" Biggie gave us a more street remix of it as well as adding "The What" with Method Man. The only thing I will say is Puffy should of included the original "One More Chance" as many people now think this is the main version when it's not even on the album technically.



So again he had a Street Bangers to match his mainstream tracks. They always threw in some remixes and instrumentals. No wonder all 3 singles got certified.

 

[oO J Smooth Oo]

Classic album

 

[patscorpio]

i always felt unbelievable should have been a single/music video

 

[Rapmastermind]

Yo check out this Comic Strip Complex Magazine did for the 20th Annniversary of "Ready To Die". It's for "Gimmie The Loot" they did a fantastic job. Just accents how visual Big was:

http://www.complex.com/music/2014/09/notorious-big-gimme-the-loot-comic/



Ironically a Critically Acclaimed motion picture used the title but it didn't use the story from the song:

 

[Mike Otherz]

http://thequietus.com/articles/16213-the-notorious-big-ready-to-die

this is great

 

[Mike Otherz]

Anniversary
Separate The Game From The Truth: Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready To Die
Angus Batey , September 11th, 2014 08:27
On March 10, 1997, Angus Batey was due to interview Biggie Smalls, a conversation that never took place after the rapper was fatally shot a day earlier. Here, he takes an in-depth look at the "masterpiece" that was the debut album from the hip-hop luminary

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If Biggie Smalls' murder hasn't been described as "hip-hop's JFK moment" that may only be because the music has been spoiled for choice. But the way the untimely deaths of major figures in rap history have been reported have also perhaps meant that a globally unifying moment hasn't been possible. I read about Scott La Rock's killing weeks after the fact, in two very similar pieces that Frank Owen wrote for both NME and Melody Maker; what turned out to be 2Pac's fatal wounding had an air of "here we go again" to it - it wasn't the first time he'd been shot, and as he clung on in that hospital room most of us probably expected he'd pull through again; Jam Master Jay's murder, a little later, seemed the cruellest blow, but he hadn't truly been in the limelight for a while and the details seeped out like a rumour, a credible account taking days to emerge, the details accumulating only gradually, like a view from a hilltop that you can only piece together through gaps in thick cloud. But when Biggie was gunned down outside a car museum in Los Angeles after a star-studded post-Grammy party, there was that "I remember where I was when I heard" immediacy.

In part, this may have been down to the particular set of circumstances. In March 1997 I was working at the monthly music magazine Vox, and had managed to persuade them to let me write a four-page feature on Biggie for our edition that came out at the beginning of April. His second LP, Life After Death, was due out late in March, and he was coming to the UK to do interviews and promotion for it at the beginning of the month. The interview had been put in for the Monday morning. I was at home on the Sunday when the phone rang.

In the wider tragedy of Biggie's demise, the fact he was supposed to have boarded a plane and flown to London some hours before the four shots - three non-fatal - ripped through his unarmoured car door probably just seems like a footnote. To me, though, it's always felt crucial. Why didn't he make the flight? The possible explanations rarely rise above the banal. In what proved to be his final interviews he said that he'd been having such a good time in California - he'd been there a month, making videos, recording, enjoying himself - that he just couldn't tear himself away. Following a car accident a few months previously he was walking with a cane; perhaps a long-haul flight just seemed too daunting a physical undertaking. He was enjoying the weather: back east it was cold, in Europe it wouldn't be much better. He even told people that he didn't fancy eating European food (of the many American-rapper stereotypes recognisable to the European journalist, this one is a hardy perennial: it's made all the more depressingly nonsensical when you spend any time at all in the company of American hip hop artists in cities like London and realise that pretty much everything they eat while they're here comes from McDonald's or Pizza Hut).

Less understandably, and more troublingly: he'd been warned, both informally and though somewhat more official channels, that he and his Bad Boy Records family's high-profile presence in Los Angeles wasn't perhaps the safest strategy considering the specific tensions that were evident in the city in those months following 2Pac's murder. Perhaps he was emboldened by the realisation that his and his labelmates' every move was being shadowed by FBI agents: you could perhaps understand some sense of indomitability that might spring from that. Who would be the fool who'd try something with the Feds looking on? The irony - and the tragedy; not to say the horror - of the situation is, that we may never know the answer.

So instead of interviewing Biggie I spent that Monday writing the inevitable piece about the conflicts his work embodied, and the crisis that was enveloping the music as another of its most iconic characters and conspicuously gifted creators was lost. Instead of speaking to the former crack dealer about the blurring of the lines between life and art, I talked to some of the music's elder statesmen (Rakim, Kool Herc) about what this all meant for the culture. Few people would go on the record: one person I was able to refer to only as a "prominent east-coast music business figure" made the point that "If you're an ignorant low-life motherfukker you still will be after you got paid from your rap album - money doesn't buy you a new state of mind." But it would be years later - reading it in Cheo Hodari Coker's book, Unbelievable - that I first came across the sentence that perhaps best summed up what was going on at that time. It came from A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip, who had been speaking to the New York rap radio station Hot 97 in the aftermath of Biggie's death. He had told them that: "if we say we're ready to die, we're going to die."

Ready to Die was a difficult album to listen to while its maker was still with us, but it's impossible to hear now without your knowledge of what happened to him two-and-a-half years after its release fogging your vision and altering its context. What it meant and what it has come to mean are two completely different things, but the former is so obscure as to be irrelevant, so elusive we can no longer track it. All we're left with is the latter: and that's difficult and conflicted enough as it is.

For starters, what this record appeared to be, and what it stands revealed as today, are two subtly but significantly different things. The LP that no less experienced a judge than KRS-ONE was moved to proclaim the greatest hip hop album of all time is great in no small part for the way it - mostly - frames a broad, filmic narrative. The opening introduction fills in the back story, with the timeframe sketched through music: we hear a child being born to the strains of Curtis Mayfield, family arguments with 'Rapper's Delight' in the background, and as Audio Two's still shockingly minimal 'Top Billin'' fast-forwards us to 1988, the child is now a stick-up artist. By the time he emerges from prison in 1993, Snoop in the background, and proclaims he has "big plans", the scene has been set. And what follows - broadly - sticks to the tale of a hoodlum who tries to make moves in the rap game, but, like that perennial gangsta-rap archetype, Scarface, he can't help but get pulled back in. And yet, despite the trail of angry former lovers, bested criminal rivals and dead bodies he leaves in his wake, what seems his inevitable end comes not from an adversary seeking payback but at his own hand, as the dismal state of his life and the beginnings of a sense of remorse combine to reveal a purposeless future with what he has come to feel is an unlovable and irredeemable soul at its heart. And as we hear his considerable frame hit the studio floor at the conclusion of 'Suicidal Thoughts', there's no mistaking the craft and verve Biggie has displayed while taking us on this hour-long journey.

But the structure of the album, the introduction of the various scene-setting interludes, and even the subject-matter of some of the tracks (the final one among them), were not necessarily part of a single coherent vision by the man whose name is printed on the sleeve. Just as he had to be persuaded to record the tracks that turned him from the underground's next man to a mainstream pop star (the smoothly aspirational and broadly autobiographical 'Juicy', the Snoop/Dre-patterned 'Big Poppa'), so the idea of a narrative was something Biggie did because his mentor, Sean "Puffy" Combs, suggested it would add depth, and Biggie felt he owed it to Puffy to put a bit of what he wanted in there. Biggie trusted his mentor's instincts, and was right to do so: but it means that what some of us have spent 20 years thinking of as his grand ideas may not always have been.

The record was pieced together from recordings made over a lengthy period. There is no indication that Big had planned the majority of the tracks as episodes in a larger story. This helps explain how the narrative loses direction and focus about halfway through the album, and may also offer some indication as to why there's so much time given over to the depressing objectification of women: if he was just trying to set up the "I'm a piece of shyt, it ain't hard to fukkin' tell" line in 'Suicidal Thoughts', then 'One More Chance' and 'Friend of Mine' are both surplus to requirements when the far more nuanced 'Me & My bytch' shows that the protagonist uses women for sexual gratification but is still capable of feeling real and deep emotions, even if in his relationships with men he's unwilling to allow that side of his personality to show.

The storyline idea is a masterstroke: as well as lending greater resonance to what are otherwise self-indulgent pieces of gangsta-rap posturing and machismo (take 'Gimme The Loot' out of its context and, as bravura a display as it is - Biggie rapping in two personas, with two different voices, having an animated conversation over Easy Mo Bee's killer track - it's just a fantasy about robbing people), it meant that there was plausible deniability for the views expressed in the music. The reception the album was afforded - critically, commercially, by fans - tended not to dwell on the moments where Biggie laid bare the parts of a soul so damaged and dysfunctional as to terrify: and when the focus did land on those elements, it was usually to praise the way the narrator of the story didn't flinch from dealing with the worst aspects of the character he was portraying, or allowed listeners to reflect on the way societal demands or political mendacity had contributed to an environment that abetted the dehumanisation of a generation. Still, there were moments of curious coyness: given the toe-curling explicitness of '#!*@ Me (Interlude)' - Biggie and real-life lover Lil' Kim simulating sex on a piano stool in the studio - and the depths plumbed during 'One More Chance', where the humour, if such it is, fails to rise above the puerile, it's baffling that the only word censored on the record is the one that reveals Big's character wouldn't be averse to robbing a pregnant woman. Clearly there were some concerns, albeit minimal, about some of the things that are going on in these lyrics. And if they weren't written as chapters in a longer saga, how can we even guess at what these songs actually mean?

 

[Mike Otherz]

As well as an obsession with sexual gratification regardless of its cost on the people used to provide it, the other problem with the construction of an overarching narrative is the way Biggie weaves the rapper/dealer dichotomy in and out of the song cycle. If you listen to Ready To Die as if it were a film, this is probably its most confusing aspect. Clearly, as he schemes in 'Gimme the Loot' or plans bloody pre-emptive vengeance on rivals he is told are coming for him in 'Warning', we're not supposed to take this as documentary. Biggie dealt drugs and spent time in prison, but he wasn't a killer. Yet the character he plays in 'Juicy' is based all too vividly on his own life, while the birth scene brilliantly rendered at the start of 'Respect' is his own - mythologised and amplified, obviously, and with a doff of that Kangol in the direction of Ice Cube's 'The Product', but still drawn from the life that he actually lived. Big and Puff wanted to have their cake and eat it: the narrative conceit allows a method of excusing the graphical excesses while the fragments of verifiable autobiography mean that the record succeeds in keepin' it real. It's quite an achievement, and it works: up to the point where you want to, as it were, separate the game from the truth.

And so Ready to Die remains simultaneously one of the greatest albums of all time, and an often repulsive document of the kind of personality you hope you'll never have to spend any time dealing with. It's brilliant and awful, a record you hate yourself for loving. This, too, is one of its maker's greatest strengths: he could sell a story so completely you couldn't see the join between the fiction and the reality that inspired it, leaving you in awe of the artist even as you are horrified by the thought that the reason it convinces is probably because most of it is based in truth.

There's something compelling going on in every track, and at times, what Biggie does with the art of rap manages to be unprecedented, formally daring and, even two decades on, unbettered. 'Gimme the Loot' has attracted much praise over the years for the vocal dexterity Big showed in playing the two characters, but as a piece of writing it's eclipsed by the album's other solo two-hander, 'Warning'. Over a track Easy Mo Bee originally made for Big Daddy Kane (the older artist, inexplicably, wasn't interested) out of Isaac Hayes' version of 'Walk On By', he gives us two sides of a phone conversation in which a friend calls to advise the dealer/rapper of what is either going to be a plot against his life, or - in some ways even worse - a scheme by rivals to take him down by attacking his family or targeting the parts of his empire he thought had been sufficiently well hidden. It's the detail that makes it work, and even the parts that at first glance seem a bit overdone are absolutely essential. Take, for example, the piece early in the conversation where the caller - Pop from the barber shop - is explaining where the information is coming from:

[Pop] "Remember them nikkas up in Brownsville that you rolled dice with, smoked blunts and got nice with?"
[Biggie] "Yeah - my nikka Fame up in Prospect. Nah, they're my nikkaz; nah, love wouldn't disrespect."
[Pop] "I didn't say them. They schooled me to some nikkaz that you knew from back when, when you was clockin' minor figures…"

At first you think, why devote all that time to preamble? It's a short song - the 3'40" run time includes a good minute of sound-effect-and-narrative outro - so why didn't he make every word count? And then, as you listen again, think on it some more and let it all sink in, you realise that's exactly what he did. The call has come in, as we're told in the first line, "at 5:46 in the morning." You're not awake properly, and it might take a while to be thinking straight, but one of the first things you're going to do is establish the veracity and provenance of the information. Who told you? How do they know? And - just as vitally - how do I know that I can trust the person who's told you? In those lines, we not only get given all the information the recipient of the call needs to answer those questions, we get it in a form that we can believe in too. If you're the friend or underling who needs to wake your boss up at "crack o' dawnin'" to tell him some bad news, you're going to want to phrase it in a way that works. Not only that, but, chances are, you want to give him the answers before he asks the questions. So in those lines we're not just receiving narrative detail, we gain insight into the characters and motivations of both men on the call. By any rational set of measurements, this is sensational, astonishing writing.

[An aside: on the utterly bonkers No Way Out tour (headliners: Puff Daddy and the Family, featuring a huge orchestra, Puffy suspended over the front rows in a metal cradle, and Lil' Kim writhing on a heart-shaped bed; main support Busta Rhymes; top of the undercard - The Firm, the group formed by AZ, Foxy Brown and Nas; before them, a Brooklyn rapper promoting his second LP, some guy called Jay-Z; and if you got in really early, you'd have caught Puff's latest protegee plying his slick R&B trade while everyone was trying to find their seats - some kid called Usher. The between-sets DJ was Kid Capri) that hit a mass of basketball arenas towards the end of 1998, Puffy played this song in the middle of his set. Biggie was there, on a giant screen, his performance culled from the video. The caller's part was played by Puff, as he had done in the video, but here he joined in on the vocals. He played the part with enough hysteria and desperation to convince that, whatever his shortcomings may have been as a thespian, when it came to channelling his own life and pouring out the pain on stage in front of an audience, he had - has - few equals.]

Not everything is great. 'Suicidal Thoughts' has often been praised for its vulnerability, but I'm not sure those claims stack up. For all its jolts of self-awareness (the aforementioned "I'm a piece of shyt, it ain't hard to fukkin' tell"; "I know my mother wished she got a fukkin' abortion") there's a lot of excuse-making and self-pity (the imagined vignette of heaven is rendered as depressing, not because Biggie's character thinks he won't end up there, but because he thinks he will, and won't be allowed to carry on being a thug; the payoff couplet - "I'm sick of nikkas lyin', I'm sick of bytches hawkin'/matter of fact, I'm sick of talkin'" - is close to making out that all his problems were caused by other people). This is one track where we can be certain that Big is playing a role - it's a piece he did at Puff's behest and it's clearly part of the grand design for the plotline concept - so none of this should be read as autobiography. But that means there's even less reason to excuse his failure to put more into the song to engender sympathy in the listener. For all the shock at the self-loathing and the unexpected denouement to the album's storyline, it's easier to agree with the character's assessments of himself than it is to feel loss at his demise. Maybe that was the point: maybe the pain we're meant to feel is at recognising that such nihilism can be born, raised and nurtured in our society. But as a piece of art, it misses its target, despite aiming higher than most.

Yet more or less everywhere there's something going on that's noteworthy, vital, energised - and none more so than on the final track recorded for the album. 'Unbelievable' was all Big - he had to beg a time-starved Premier to craft him a banger, quick and dirty, even suggesting not just the R Kelly track to scratch for the hook but which breakbeat staple to use (chopping up The Honeydrippers' 'Impeach the President' was by no means a revolutionary act in hip hop production by 1994). Premier has recounted how the session took place at his then hit factory, D&D Studios, in Manhattan; and how, initially, he was concerned Big wasn't taking it seriously. For most of while Primo built the beat, adding stabs of organ pitch-shifted and played manually through a sampler, Biggie wasn't even there. Occasionally he'd be seen, nodding his head, mumbling under his breath, the expected rap-writer's equipment - notebook and pen - conspicuous by their absence. Then he'd disappear again. The producer found him in the studio's tiny back-room lounge, his trousers round his ankles, enjoying the attentions of two women. Minutes later he ambled back into the vocal booth with the entire song written in his head - "chickenheads be cluckin' in my back-room fukkin'" and all. He'd worked with the best, but Premier was dumbstruck. As well he might be: the whole track is great, but verse two - with a nimble dexterity to the delivery (in a detail that makes the track soar, the big man with the bigger voice proves more limber with the wordplay than Primo's two-finger method on the sci-fi sample-organ could ever be; the keyboard is off beat sometimes, woozy, uneven - but the vocal has the precision and poise of ballet), some rapper boasts turning to darkly sinister threats with a subtle but clear echo of a scene in The Godfather, and what seems to be a play on words conflating a gun with Heinz food products - could be the best thing Biggie ever did:

"Bee-eye-gee, gee-aye-eee
aka, B.I.G.
Geddit? Biggie
Also known as the bon appetite
Rappers can't sleep - need sleeping'
Big keep creeping'
Bullets heat sea kin'
Casualties need treat in'
Dumb rappers need teaching'
Lesson A: Don't fukk with B-I - that's that
'Oh, I thought he was wack!'
Oh, come come now:
Why y'all so dumb now?
Hunt me or be hunted!
I got three hundred and fifty-seven ways
to simmer, sautee -
I'm the winner all day,
Lights get dimmer down Biggie's hallway.
My forte causes Caucasians to say:
'He sounds demented'.
Car weed-scented;
If I said it, I meant it -
Bite my tongue for no-one:
Call me evil, or unbelievable"

Biggie was one of the greatest to do it, of that's there's no question: and Ready to Die remains his masterpiece. Whether it would have been a better album if he'd been able to make just the record he wanted is unlikely: it works not despite its concessions to the marketplace or Puffy's instinctive flair for creating something that audiences would gravitate towards, but because of all that. Nevertheless, it leaves as many questions open as it provides answers to. And it remains a record that is perhaps more to admire than to enjoy. Listening to it was always a difficult experience, not just because of what happened to its maker all too soon after its release, but because of the conflicted and often unpleasant characters that he created to inhabit it.

It's a record that marked an absolute full stop, a turning-point in the music's fortunes, and a stark warning. Malcolm X was excoriated in certain quarters for saying that JFK's assassination was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost", and something similar would later be argued about Biggie's death - wasn't this the guy who blurred the lines between crime and rap so much that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began? Has this music about violent crime disappeared so far up its own backside that it's impossible for even the people making it to tell where fact ends and fiction begins? Isn't it time to take a step back?

 

[Mike Otherz]

Yet instead of heeding the lesson, the hip-hop industry turned the pressure up: before Snoop and Biggie, a criminal past wasn't a prerequisite for rap stardom, but after them, it became a badge of honour. Instead of learning the difficult lessons from Biggie's brief life, the rap business - and its attendant media, and its consumer base - bit ever more deeply into the fiction that a life of crime was a necessary part of establishing authenticity as an artist. Big had already told us that 'Things Done Changed' - and after his passing they would never be the same again. The traditional marker of the close of rap's Golden Age is usually cited as the release of The Chronic at the tail end of 1992, but there's a case to be made that Ready to Die, a record that couldn't have been made without Dre's magnum opus as a signpost but which is nevertheless founded on the sample-based aesthetic of the great New York records of the turn of the decade, is the last gasp of that era. Certainly, The Chronic, for all its difference, is part of a continuum: Ready to Die is a closer, an end point, a dramatic and sudden full-stop.

You get used to cancelled interviews if you've been writing about rap for more than a couple of weeks, and I don't keep any notes or records of the opportunities missed, flights delayed, people who didn't turn up, or whatever. Life's too short, in absolute truth. But the one that I always think of, the one I wish had happened, was that Biggie interview on March 10th, 1997. Not because I'd have written something particularly brilliant, or because I'd have been able to say that I met him: but because, if he'd been in London that day as planned, he'd probably still be here now. Look at his contemporaries and only real peers - Nas and Jay-Z - and you'll notice that, after dazzling debuts, they only really hit their stride around album number five or later. What would Biggie have done by now? Life After Death was a palate-cleanser, a series of ideas (some good, some less so) that pointed in exciting new directions, some lines drawn under the drama: we see it as a prophetic tombstone because he died before it came out, but if he'd lived it would have more clearly stood revealed as a place-holder, a waypoint on a journey to somewhere else. So I don't miss the conversation I never had with him, but I miss the seven or eight albums he'd have made by now if he'd lived. And most of all what I regret never having had is the chance to hear one of hip-hop's most compelling voices and most gifted writers acquiring the depth and maturity his art would surely have grown into as his wisdom expanded to match his ambition and his legend.

 

[Knicksman20]

Can't believe it's been 20 years. @Rapmastermind You gotta add that verse he did on Total's Can't You See back in 95 when he was riding the wave of success off RTD. I remember when that hit & Big's verse set the time for that song.

 

[Rapmastermind]

Can't believe it's been 20 years. @Rapmastermind You gotta add that verse he did on Total's Can't You See back in 95 when he was riding the wave of success off RTD. I remember when that hit & Big's verse set the time for that song.

Well I was mostly focusing on the lead up to "Ready To Die" up till about 95. But his verses "Can't you See" and "Only You" definitely helped stay on top after "Ready To Die" was released. I did forget to mention "Flava in Ya Ear" Remix was also very important to his buzz. That was the song that set Bad Boy Records off and Biggie got on there and murdered not only Craig on his own sh!t but everyone else including Legendary LL Cool J:

 

[MartyMcFly]

One of my favorite albums. I was a kid wen it came out but still felt its impact