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grimelords · 7 years ago

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Hello I forgot to post my July playlist when July ended so here it is now! It turns out it’s incredible easy to write 1500 words when you’re writing about songs you love so sorry about that. Four hours of top quality bops that range from russian choral music to classic !!!, please enjoy.

Signs Of Life - Arcade Fire: Everyone hated the new album but in my opinion it's not only not bad, but Signs Of Life is one of their best songs yet. Also the video is incredibly good. The Man - The Killers: The Killers are back and they're making good songs again! This song sounds like the bicep emoji! Hung From The Moon - Earth: Accidentally listened to this album a lot in July and kicked off a drone thing that has lasted through august. Elevation - Television: Everyone always talks about the guitars in Television but nobody ever talks about how good the rhythm of the chorus in this song is. Taman Shud - The Drones: Good song to yell along to and the only song I know that uses the word 'inchoate' Mountain Of Air - Ellen Arkbro: I really can't recommend this album enough if you like the sound of having a dream made of brass. South Point - Grizzly Bear: Grizzly Bear are a prog band. Apache (Jump On It) - The Sugarhill Gang: Not only groovy, but racist too. There's a good part where he explains that maize is just corn. What’s A Girl To Do? - Bat For Lashes This is a good song and a great music video Glass - Bat For Lashes: Bat For Lashes does better worldbuilding in this song than most novels. Offering - Cults: I may be the only person in the world who is absolutely gagging for a new Cults album but thank god they're back. Return Of The Mack - Mark Morrison: THE song about being back on your bullshit. Baller Of The Year - ESG: If you play this in your car it automatically starts ghetto swerving AND you start crying. You Know I Wantcha! - Devin The Dude: Incredibly gross song about being very horny by yourself in a strip club for you to listen to. Crawling After You - Bass Drum Of Death: After all this time, this song may be the only thing I love about GTAV. Bad Liar - Selena Gomez Maybe the only Selena Gomez song I've ever heard and it's so SO good. Seven Eight Nine (Part 2) - Kenny Wheeler: I developed a bad habit of listening to ABC Jazz when I couldn't sleep but thankfully I found some real gems doing it. Fine Di Cobb - Originale - Stelvio Cipriani: Yet another fantastic find from spotify's Best Of Eurocrime playlist. A Fifth Of Beethoven - Walter Murphy: It is so funny that Beethoven wrote one of the biggest disco hits of all time. Between this and Wendy Carlos' Switched On Bach there's a very funny history of classical music causing a big stir. The Lighthouse - Amon Tobin: It's crazy that Amon Tobin's best album was the soundtrack to Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory but he really elevated video game music as a whole with this one. If The Brakeman Turns My Way - Bright Eyes: The concept of an opium den with a periscope is very nice to think about. Hold Music - Architecture In Helsinki: Places Like This is an all time classic that nobody respects because people think Heart It Races is a novelty song instead of a masterpiece. I Found A New Chapeau - Jo Jones: "The world's greatest jazz drummer Jo Jones!" goes absolutely off for nine minutes against an organ that sounds like farts. It's Real - Real Estate: [beckons you closer and whispers] it's real real estate Obvs - Jamie xx: In Colour was truly the album of the year cause baby it is simply breathtaking start to finish! Blue Train Lines (feat. King Krule) - Mount Kimbie: I hope King Krule joins Mount Kimbie as a full member because they have such a good thing going. This song took a while to grow on me but now I really cannot wait for their new album. The video for this one is also extremely good even though it required me to read an artist's statement from the directors and a whole wiki article to understand it. Six Days Remix - DJ Shadow: Last month I attended a 17 hour Fast And Furious marathon that has permanently affected my brain chemistry (which I've been meaning to write a long post about) and at the end I was certain of only one thing: the Six Days Remix was the best thing about Tokyo Drift by a country mile and it's easily a top 5 DJ shadow song. Nandi - Jlin: I can't say enough good stuff about this album and this song is an absolute standout. 3 Freaks - DJ Shadow: Everyone's always saying 'oh it was such a mistake for DJ Shadow to abandon his sound after making two critically acclaimed albums pushing sample based music in a new direction and make a hyphy album that everyone hated' but consider this: Turf Talk And Keak Da Sneak Fight For Peace - Frank Klepacki: I developed a brain parasite this month that forced me to become completely obsessed with the 15 year old RTS game Command And Conquer Generals, and then I found out that the soundtrack was on spotify. Sultans Of Swing - Dire Straits: Everyone's always talking about Mark Knopfler being good at guitar or whatever but for my money the drummer is the real mvp of this song, and the part where he just goes ham for like half a bar at about 4:20 really cracks me up. Strangest Thing - The War On Drugs: Literally every song The War On Drugs have released from their upcoming album so far I have absolutely loved and I cannot wait to hear the whole thing. Kyanite - Jlin: Jlin baby!! This is like traditional music from an alien civilisation or something, it's incredible. Sophisticated Lady - Art Tatum: Speaking of music from another planet I firmly belived Art Tatum was touched on the brain by God. Romance Without Finance - Tiny Grimes: Please enjoy this 70 year old song about not dating broke girls, the backing vocals really make me laugh. All Is Written - Matana Roberts: Matana Roberts is a very specific feeling but if you're in the mood for confrontational experimental jazz please get into this whole album. Start with Coin Coin Chapter One if you want the full experience. Time For Us - Nicolas Jaar: I love when Nicolas Jaar does funny voice. In the world I dream of this song is a dancefloor classic. Blanket Me - Hundred Waters: I love Hundred Waters and this song make me so emotional to the point where i'm almost afraid to hear their new album. When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing - Lana Del Rey: Lust For Life is incredible and hearing Lana sing 's it the end of an era? is it the end of America?' is like.. directly targeting my brain stem. I cannot describe how much I instantly fell in love with this song when I first heard it. Jane - Jefferson Starship: The new season of Wet Hot American Summer reminded me how good this song is. I spent like half an hour reading the wiki article about Jefferson Airplain, Jefferson Starship and Starship and how they came to be to my girlfriend this month and let me tell you: she hated it. Take You On A Cruise - Interpol: The instrumentation in this song sounds so much like the xx's first album it is insane. Vegas - Polica: I feel like I have a new favourite Polica song every week they are honestly the best band in the world. Woody's Roundup - Riders In The Sky: Hello, I woke up with the Woody's Roundup theme song from Toy Story 2 in my head one day this month and so I put it on my playlist. It's a good song, highly recommended thanks. All Night Vigil, Op. 37: No. 3, Blessed Is The Man "Beatitude" - Sergei Rachmaninoff: Accidentally got very heavily into this russian orthodox christian choral music this month. Magic Arrow - Timber Timbre: My friend texted me out of the blue saying how good this song is and he's absolutely right. Timber Timbre's self titled is an album i've continually returned to for years now, it's truly something special. Don't Say I Know - Tera Melos: Tera Melos are finally, finally back! And they're making incredible impossible music that's catchy as hell again! Keep The Car Running - Arcade Fire: Had a very intense moment with this song this month, listening to it on repeat and convincing myself that it was coming for me too. Hocus Pocus - Focus: Baby Driver is a good movie! And this song and scene was a real highlight. How Long - Out Hud: Thankyou to @popculturediedin2009 for introducing me to this great song from a !!! side project I never knew about and thankyou to the Lindsay Lohan film I Know Who Killed Me for introducing it to them in the first place. I Can't Turn You Loose - Sly & The Family Stone: The guy making noises into the microphone right at the start is really, really funny and I can't believe it's taken me this long of watching The Blues Brothers pretty regularly to look up the original version of this song. Oh Yeah - The Subways: Rediscovered this album this month after singing Rock And Roll Queen about 20 times in a row with my friends thanks to a Singstar glitch and remembered how I had an absolute breakdown about this song when I was about 19, listening to it on repeat for hours and fretting that I was going to die because I would no longer be a teenager soon. Me And Guiliani Down By The School Yard - A True Story - !!!: Bring back mid-2000s dance-punk we need it now more than ever!

#playlists

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rapuvdayear · 5 years ago

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1994: “Intro” The Notorious B.I.G. (Bad Boy/Arista)

Strap in, this is going to be a long post (even by my standards). Like, more than 5000 words long.

In the annals of rap history, there are certain periods that are just plain loaded. For example, between 1986 and 1988, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Boogie Down Productions, the Beastie Boys, Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Too $hort, and NWA all released absolute classics that not only redefined the genre, but have become touchstones for the rappers who followed them. 1992-1996 boasts a similar embarrassment of riches: The Chronic, Doggystyle, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), The Infamous, Soul Food, All Eyez On Me, The Score, Ridin’ Dirty, and ATLiens, among many, many more. Smack dab in the middle of that run, 1994 was arguably the apex of rap’s golden era. In any other year, The Diary would’ve taken the crown as the best/most important album. But Scarface’s opus gets unfairly ignored because 1994 also saw two releases that appear on any serious (read: not trolling) all-time top ten list, and are perennially in greatest-ever discussions. I already covered Nas’s Illmatic back in April. And today, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Christopher Wallace’s debut, Ready To Die.

Properly assessing Biggie’s impact and legacy is a near impossible task. No other rapper has burned as brightly for so brief a period. After doing a nine-month bid in North Carolina for crack dealing as a 19-year-old, he was featured in The Source’s Unsigned Hype column—back when it was the still rap’s undisputed publication of record—off the strength of a now-infamous demo tape, a recognition that also helped launch the careers of Eminem, DMX, Common, and others. Big’s come up after The Source nod was similar to that of his contemporaries, like Nas, in that he stole the show on a couple of posse cuts. But while Nas went the “lyrically lyrical” route for a time and, with Illmatic, made an album featuring a Who’s Who of boom bap era producers, Big’s style was harder to pin down. He recorded just two official full-length albums, and only Ready To Die was released during his lifetime; in fact, Ready to Die is now officially older than Big was at the time of his murder, a crime that is still unsolved (and if that’s not a depressing statement about rap, violence, and blackness in America, I don’t know what is). His debut was recorded at a time when the West coast g-funk aesthetic was dominant, and East coast rap still meant “NYC,” which was primarily divided into two camps: the Timbs-and-hoodies style of the so-called New School rappers who could trace their lineages back to the Def Jam superstars of the 80s and Queensbridge’s Juice Crew, and the more “alternative” and Afrocentric stylings of the Native Tongues clique (there was also Wu-Tang, who combined elements of both but were also just weird as fuck). Ready To Die, in this sense, is much more representative of the Timbs-and-hoodies crowd, but it also paved the way toward a much more introspective, darker style of rap focused on violence and material wealth in equal measures that would become the standard in New York for the remainder of the decade. It’s a gangsta rap record with a boom bap sound. And though Biggie was certainly no slouch on the mic—his internal rhyme schemes are complex, and his flow is versatile—he didn’t need to rap fast or sound like he’d memorized a thesaurus in order to distinguish himself, either. His greatest strengths were his lovable-yet-dangerous personality, bawdy sense of humor, and unparalleled skill as a storyteller, which he would showcase to even greater effect on 1997’s Life After Death. Add everything up, and it makes perfect sense why Big is remembered as one of the—if not the—best to ever do it: he emerged at the peak of the golden era, but was also an originator rather than an imitator.

The 2Pac beef, East Coast-West Coast war, and “playas vs. thugs” dichotomy in mainstream 90s rap have all been broken down in painstaking detail elsewhere, with conspiracy theories lurking around every corner (for anyone interested, I think that the best resource for understanding those stories and where Biggie, Pac, and LAPD corruption fit into it all is this 2001 Randall Sullivan article in Rolling Stone). Separating history from hagiography is tough enough in a culture that is built on braggadocio; no rapper worth their salt has ever “let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.” But Biggie’s tall tale/folk hero status is on a different level, arguably even more so than Pac’s, with whom he will forever be linked. Much of that is due to the fact that his career was so short and his talent so undeniable; as distasteful as it is to admit, Biggie’s legacy undoubtedly benefited from his early passing, leaving us with two outstanding, classic albums and a handful of loosies, guest appearances, and posthumous compilations that continue to fuel speculation about the heights that he could have reached. Just as Jimi never made an experimental jazz guitar album and Otis never made disco, Big never recorded Nastradamus or Kingdom Come.

In the final analysis, Biggie’s career is defined by death, but not necessarily his own. Many have observed that the title of his debut album, Ready To Die, was, in a way, a foreshadow of things to come, and that the second, Life After Death, serves as a chilling acknowledgement of what occurred just two weeks before its release. But on a deeper level, a careful listen to both records reveals Biggie’s obsession with death: what he sees happening around him, the ways in which he might die—possibly even by his own hand—and the unanswerable question of whether or not death is the end. Behind all of the jokes, tales of sexual escapades, and reflections on how enjoyable the playa lifestyle can be, at its heart Ready To Die is extremely nihilistic.

That nihilism begins with the cover art, which along with The Chronic is the first rap album cover I can remember noticing. Despite what Nas and Raekwon may think, Ready To Die’s cover probably owes more to Nevermind than it does Illmatic: Nas’s childhood photo laminated over the Queensbridge housing projects on his debut evokes nostalgia for his roots; Ready To Die, on the other hand, is a bleak statement about being born a black man in America. Here’s this cute baby with an afro and a diaper set against a stark white background, and we the viewers are invited to wonder what his future holds. In other words, the point is that every American black male is born “ready to die” because that’s what the statistics tell us (in actuality, the photo model is alive and well). As an 11-year-old American white male from rural Maine, this was completely lost on me at the time. Looking back on it now, I can’t help but feel goosebumps.

The cover also simply yet effectively communicates the album’s narrative arc, such that there is one. Ready To Die isn’t a concept album by any means, but it does chart the life of Christopher Wallace from the womb to the tomb, so to speak. The first sounds we hear on the intro are a heartbeat, a woman in labor, her partner urging her to push, and then a baby crying. The last sounds are of a gunshot, a body falling to the floor, a voice on the other end of the line pleading, and a heartbeat slowing to a stop. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go through it track-by-track; this is one album that is all killer, no filler.

Intro (link above): This is a classic rap album trope: the introductory skit that establishes where the rapper is coming from, sort of like a superhero’s origin story. Maybe this is symptomatic of having recently been listening to only mid-to-late 90s rap, but it seems to me that these sorts of intros used to be more common than they are now. There’s no actual rapping here. Instead we get something very similar to “The Genesis” on Illmatic, a mashup of different iconic sounds from “the culture.” Whereas for Nas it was an excerpt from Wild Style followed by a skit over that movie’s theme, Biggie’s intro is more personal, and more comprehensive in terms of situating him in a time and a place. It begins with Christopher Wallace’s birth in 1972 over the sounds of “Superfly,” followed by an argument between Biggie’s parents about his antics that turns quickly to violent threats while “Rapper’s Delight” (1979)—the birth of rap, officially-unofficially—plays, then Big and a friend discussing a plan to rob subway passengers set to “Top Billin’” (1987), and finally Big being taunted by a corrections officer as he’s released from prison and Snoop’s “Tha Shiznit” (1993) can be heard in the background (this last part is definitely pure fiction; Big’s only recorded stint inside was back in 1991). The point of the narrative is obvious, but the musical choices are also significant. Biggie was part of an emerging generation of rappers who could still remember a time before rap, but who also grew up alongside the genre, their lives’ milestones scored by a soundtrack featuring the likes of The Sugarhill Gang, Audio Two, and Snoop. By 1994, rap itself had changed several times over already, and with Biggie’s entry it was set to change again. This theme continues on the next track…

Things Done Changed: First of all, this is one of the few songs I can think of that takes full advantage of stereo sound as the beat jumps from right to left and back again before the first harmonies kick in. In college, my friends and I used to love driving around with Ready To Die in the tape deck and performing a ritual of sorts to this opening, nodding our heads and pointing to the speakers on one side of the car and then the other (Side note: after college when I moved to Prague, a group of friends rented a car one night for the express purpose of driving around the city and listening to this album in its entirety. We actually got pulled over when we accidentally found ourselves in a Czech police extortion trap and had to bribe our way out, but that’s another story…). “Things Done Changed” is exactly what the title declares: a mix of Biggie waxing nostalgic about the bygone days of his Brooklyn childhood and communicating the harsh reality of post-crack NYC. The “back in the day” rap is another trope, but whereas previous examples like The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” (1992), Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s “T.R.O.Y.” (1992), and even Nas’s “Memory Lane” (1994) all are accompanied by production that emphasizes the slow, sweet, happy remembrances of things past, “Things Done Changed”—with samples from 70s funk group The Main Ingredient—sounds downright foreboding. The message is that there’s no time to lament the past because it’s over and done with and the future is anything but certain. As if this point weren’t clear enough, the Dr. Dre sample on the chorus—“Remember they used to thump? But now they blast, right?”—and Biggie’s appeal to his contemporaries—“Motherfucker, this ain’t back in the day/ But you don’t hear me though”—eliminate any sense of ambiguity. There are so many great Biggie lines sprinkled throughout (e.g., “And we coming to the wake/ To make sure the crying and commotion ain’t a motherfucking fake”; “Back in the days our parents used to take care of us/ Look at ‘em now, they even fuckin’ scared of us”; and “The streets is a short stop/ Either you slingin’ crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot,” which incidentally was quoted in the cringeworthiest way possible in 2000’s Boiler Room), but one in particular stands out to me: “It make me wanna grab the 9 and the shotty/ But I gotta go identify the body.” A former roommate of mine always loved this part because it encapsulates not just Biggie’s moral dilemma, but in many ways the definitive contradictions of gangbanging and the drug trade: I’m so angry and in pain that I want to visit extreme violence upon the world, but at the same time I have to deal with the fallout of the violence around me in the most intimate of ways. Did I mention already that this album is nihilistic to the core?

Gimme The Loot: This song will always hold a special place in my memory. It was either this or Snoop’s version of “Lodi Dodi” that was the first rap I memorized word for word. In high school, my friends and I used to go out to the cross-country running trails after school to, uh, do what burnouts do, and more often than not would end up reciting “Gimme The Loot” in its entirety at the top of our lungs (I hope that we changed all the ****** to “suckas” or something…). Biggie voices two characters, both plotting small-scale robberies with grotesque levels of passion. For real, some of the lyrics for the album version had to be censored because, well, this: “I don’t give a fuck if you’re pregnant/ Give me the baby ring and the #1 mom pendant.” “Gimme The Loot” is also a perfect example of Big’s style: it’s played for laughs, but the subject matter is darker than dark. I like to think of this as a companion piece to “****** Bleed” from Life After Death—my all-time favorite Biggie track—which is about a much more ambitious robbery that is also full of jokes. In line with the album’s theme, “Gimme The Loot” ends with Big presumably dying in a hail of bullets during a shootout with the cops, “a true motherfucker going out for the loot.”

Machine Gun Funk: Ooh, this beat! As anyone who follows this account already knows, one of my favorite things about rap is how much great music I’ve been introduced to via samples. In this case, “Something Extra” by 70s funk band Black Heat. Easy Mo Bee, who produced this and five other tracks on Ready To Die, doesn’t get the acclaim of contemporaries like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, or Large Professor. But his bona fides are solid—coming up with the Juice Crew—and his work on this album is spectacular. As with “Gimme The Loot,” some of the lyrics in the second verse censored: “For the jackers, the jealous-ass crackers in the blue suits/ I’ll make you prove that it’s bulletproof.” This was, after all, around the time that NWA and Ice-T had provoked outrage—and FBI investigations!—for their anti-police lyrics. “Machine Gun Funk”’s overall gist is summed up in one line: “I’m doing rhymes now, fuck the crimes now.” In other words, Big is just as hard as he was on the ascent, but he’s transcended that life now and is making bank from rap. It’s another well-worn trope that’s become almost obligatory for rappers to talk about now.

Warning: Another funky Easy Mo Bee beat, this time with an Isaac Hayes sample. Biggie relates a story of being awakened early in the morning by a friend who has gotten wind that his enemies are plotting his demise (he also shouts out fellow Brooklynites M.O.P., which is a nice touch!). He demonstrates his capacity for catchy internal rhymes—“They heard about the Rolexes and the Lexus/ With the Texas license plates out of state/ They heard about the pounds you got down in Georgetown/ And they heard you got half Virginia locked down”—and penchant for clever metaphors—“There’s gonna be a lot of slow singin’ and flower bringin’/ If my burglar alarm starts ringin’”; “The criminals, tryna drop my decimals.” There’s also the continuation of the “ready to die” theme with a depressing statement about trust and paranoia: “It’s the ones that smoke blunts witcha, see your picture/ Now they wanna grab they guns and come and getcha.” “Warning” ends with a darkly funny skit of sorts that leads right into the next track…

Ready To Die: I mean, it’s right there in the title: this is the entire album in a nutshell. Big is defiant here and completely nihilistic: “My shit is deep, deeper than my grave, G/ I’m ready to die, and nobody can save me/ Fuck the world, fuck my moms and my girl/ My life is played out like a Jheri curl, I’m ready to die!” And why all the violence? It’s simple, really, a means to an end: “Shit is real, and hungry’s how I feel/ I rob and steal because that money got that whip appeal.” This Easy Mo Bee beat is appropriately eerie, too, flipping the organ from blaxploitation film score legend Willie Hutch’s “Hospital Prelude Of Love Theme.” “Warning” ends with Puffy reciting “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep,” similar to how he would start “You’re Nobody (‘Til Somebody Kills You)” on Life After Death with the 23rd Psalm: both are prayers about death and the afterlife.

One More Chance: This was one of the tracks that Big recorded during the second half of the Ready To Die sessions at Puffy’s urging. While Big allegedly didn’t want to make any concessions to commercial tastes, being the ever-calculating businessman that he is, Puff encouraged him to include a few tracks that weren’t just about robbing and killing. As such, the tone here is a little different from the album up to this point. However, it does give Big a chance to explore another of his signature topics and themes: sex, but in the lewdest way possible (I mean, he raps about shifting kidneys, shattering bladders, and “fuck[ing] her ‘til her nose bleed”). As my friend Jason pointed out to me recently, the skit in the intro is more interesting than it would appear at first, too. Ostensibly, it’s recordings of women on Big’s answering machine who he’s ghosted. However, the second caller doesn’t seem to be someone he’s slept with, but rather a female friend chiding him for being inconsiderate. Who knows whether this is meaningful or not, but maybe just maybe it’s a small subversion of the “g’s up, hoes down” mantra pervading rap? Eh, it’s a stretch. “One More Chance” was remixed and released as a single in 1995, becoming one of Big’s biggest hits. The original version is far superior, though, IMHO. Another minor note: verse 2 contains a cool shout out to Houston’s Geto Boys and the “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” video, complete with the beat switching up briefly to index that song.

Fuck Me (Interlude): A skit featuring Lil’ Kim. I usually don’t like rap skits, but this one is notable for making “Oreo cookie eatin’, pickle juice drinkin’, chicken gristle eatin’, biscuit fuckin’ suckin’ … V8 juice drinkin’, Slim Fast blendin’, black greasy muthafucka” into passable dirty talk. And that’s all I have to say about that.

The What: When Nas said, “My first album had no famous guest appearances/ The outcome: I’m crowned the best lyricist” on Stillmatic, this is the song he was talking about (well, either this or “Brooklyn’s Finest”… yeah, it was probably the latter). Given how rappers have stuck to the formula of paying for the services of more accomplished figures to drive interest in their debuts, it’s a testament to Nas’s and Big’s greatness that both Illmatic and Ready To Die only had one feature apiece: AZ on “Life’s A Bitch,” and Method Man on “The What.” With all due respect to AZ, no one’s mistaking him for a “famous” guest. Meth, on the other hand, had only really been famous for a couple of years at this point, but he was far and away Wu-Tang’s breakout star and would become the first group member to drop a post-36 Chambers solo just two months later. His participation here is also unexpected given the less-famous-yet-still-potent beef that existed between Wu-Tang and Biggie. Collabos and features are often underwhelming; either the guest feels like an unnecessary afterthought, or ends up “murder[ing] you on your own shit.” In this case, though, Meth is able to keep pace with Big and vice versa. Although his chemistry with Redman is legendary and their work together was super enjoyable, “The What” makes me wonder what a Meth and Biggie full-length would have sounded like. Easy Mo Bee laces the beat with the most stonerific production on the album, a laid back, fried melody that samples the outro to Leroy Huston’s “Can’t Say Enough About Mom” (1974). It works!

Juicy: It’s funny, this used to be my least favorite track on Ready To Die, entirely because of the chorus, which I thought was too “soft.” But now that I’m older, I appreciate its anthem-ness and the funky-ass Mtume sample. “Juicy” was, of course, the album’s lead single, but it was recorded toward the end of the sessions because Puff realized that they needed a radio-ready hit if Biggie was going to be a success. As a result, it’s the most discordant track on the album because of its uplifting tone, message of positivity, and nothing in the lyrics about death or dying. Along with “Things Done Changed,” this is the most autobiographical song on Ready To Die. And it’s chock full of quotables: “Time to get paid/ Blow up like the World Trade” (which has subsequently been censored in post-9/11 radio versions); “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way”; “Considered a fool cuz I dropped out of high school” (that one always resonated with me, haha); “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/ When I was dead broke, man, I couldn’t picture this” (which sounds hilarious now as far as stunting goes); “Birthdays was the worst days/ Now we sip champagne when we thirstay.” Also like “Things Done Changed,” “Juicy” is a nod to the past—the first verse is basically a list of 80s rap influencers—while signaling that a paradigm shift is happening; when Big says, “You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far,” he means for both himself and for the genre as a whole. He probably would have been a star anyway without “Juicy,” but its inclusion on Ready To Die definitely helped drive his early mainstream appeal.

Everyday Struggle: This anthem is still relevant today. They wouldn’t be brave enough (or stupid enough, depending on your perspective) to actually do it, but Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders could totally use this as a campaign song in 2020. The name of the game here is “precarity” and the choices people make just to survive. The sample, from Dave Grusin’s cheesy 80s jazz composition “Either Way” (1980), starts off in a vaporwavish muffle that makes the intro sound like a classic TV theme song. And then immediately we’re vaulted back into Biggie’s bleak, nihilistic take on contemporary life, and his suicidal ideations (a foreshadowing of things to come…): “I don’t wanna live no more/ Sometimes I hear death knocking at my front door/ I’m living everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle/ Another day, another struggle.” The whole song is about drug dealing, but it’s not all glorification: Big makes it quite clear that a) violence and the possibility (inevitability?) of death are ever-present, and b) it is an endeavor that is fundamentally about preying on one’s community. As he puts it, “Baggin’ five at a time/ I can clock about nine on the check cashin’ line/ I had the first and the third rehearsed, that’s my word,” all of which is to say that he had a clear understanding of the temporal rhythms of government assistance, wage payments, and the financial habits of the unbanked. It’s less of a lament than what appears in other rappers’ odes to “the game,” but I think it’d be remiss to ignore his discomfort with being a participant in an activity that clearly destroys lives and neighborhoods.

Me & My Bitch: Woooooo, talk about a problematic song! This is Kevin Gates before Kevin Gates. On the one hand, you could make a legitimate case for “Me & My Bitch” being the most romantic gangsta rap song ever (which is saying something in and of itself). On the other hand, Big would definitely be cancelled in 2019 for this. The opening line is classic Biggie humor: “I’ll admit when I first saw you my thoughts was a trip/ You looked so good, huh, I’d suck on your daddy’s dick.” But it soon devolves into your run-of-the-mill rap misogyny: “When the time is right, the wine is right/ I treat you right; you talk slick, I beat you right.” It’s all a fantasy—AFAIK Big never had a romantic relationship like the one depicted here—that’s the textbook definition of “ride or die.” Emphasis on “die” because that’s where the song ends up (because of course it does, this is Ready To Die after all). At first, Big tells us, “And if I deceive, she won’t take it lightly/ She’ll invite me, politely, to fight, G/ And then we lie together, cry together/ I swear to God I hope we fuckin’ die together,” which say what you will, that’s kind of a sweet sentiment. But alas, he doesn’t get his wish, as his lover is gunned down by his enemies, collateral in a war against him. Again, his eulogy for her is also kind of sweet, in a perverse way: “It didn’t take long before the tears start/ I saw my bitch dead with a gunshot to the heart/ And I know it was meant for me/ I guess the ****** felt they had to kill the closest one to me/ And when I find ‘em, your life is to an end/ They killed my best friend.”

Big Poppa: Another of the more radio-friendly, Puffy-inspired tracks, and consequently one of the album’s biggest hits (and second single). This is also the closest the Ready To Die comes to emulating 1994’s pop rap zeitgeist as the production on “Big Poppa” is clearly g-funk, complete with a high-pitched synthesizer straight out of Dre’s toolkit. It’s quite the contrast with the previous track, going from “ghetto soap opera” to “big willie playa fantasy.” Overall, “Big Poppa” is solid club song. Also, did Biggie invent the “weird flex” with this line: “A t-bone steak, cheese, eggs, and Welch’s grape”?

Respect: This one’s a nod to Biggie’s Jamaican roots, and introduces another chapter in the autobiography established through “Things Done Changed” and “Juicy.” “Respect” features Jamaican reggae/dancehall singer Diana King on the hook and reggae-ish beat from Poke of the Trackmasters that interpolates KC & The Sunshine Band’s “I Get Lifted” (1975). Even here Biggie pushes the “ready to die” theme as he narrates his birth!: “Umbilical cord wrapped around my neck/ I’m seein’ my death, and I ain’t even took my first step.” Verse 2 contains some more reflection on the uncertainties of the drug game: “Put the drugs on the shelf? Nah, couldn’t see it/ Scarface, King of New York, I wanna be it/ Rap was secondary, money was necessary/ Until I got incarcerated, kinda scary/ … Time to contemplate, damn, where did I fail?/ All the money I stacked was all the money for bail.”

Friend Of Mine: Easy Mo Bee does it again! Another of my favorite beats on Ready To Die. This one’s mostly Biggie-style sexual humor, similar to “One More Chance” only funkier and more misogynistic. It’s Big’s version of “g’s up, hoes down” or “Scandalouz.” The double standard regarding male and female promiscuity is in full effect. Even so, there’s a cleverness to the lyrics; Big’s descriptions are just plain different from other rappers’ (side note: the same argument can be made for Gucci Mane): “I don’t give a bitch enough to catch the bus/ And when I see the semen, I’m leavin’”; “Now I play her far like a moon play a star.”

Unbelievable: Scoring a DJ Premier beat for your album in the 90s was basically confirmation that you were someone worth paying attention to. Nas did it with Illmatic, and Big pulled the legendary producer’s card for this, the final track recorded for Ready To Die. Premo even gave Big a discount, charging him less than his usual fee because he’d gone overbudget already! The sample, from The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach The President” (1973), is well-traveled territory in rap, having been sampled in dozens of songs already by that point. “Unbelievable”’s content is mostly just Biggie boasting about his greatness at all things. And you’ve gotta respect the audacity of sampling yourself, from another song on the same album, giving yourself props (“Biggie Smalls is the illest!”). Even without a clear narrative or any deeper message, “Unbelievable” is a showcase of Biggie’s range of technical skills from internal rhymes—“And those that rushes my clutches get put on crutches/ Get smoked like Dutches”—to sly metaphors—“I got three hundred and fifty-seven ways/ To simmer sauté”—and original adjectives—“car weed-scented.” Big and Premier would link up again on Life After Death for two of that album’s standouts—“Kick In The Door” and “Ten Crack Commandments”—but three tracks still feels like far too few for such a potent combination.

Suicidal Thoughts: Dear lord, what an ending! If you doubted that Ready To Die was nihilistic up to this point, “Suicidal Thoughts” leaves no question as to the tone that Big intended. This is my second favorite of Biggie’s songs, and IMHO his most poignant. I almost feel as if he invented emo-rap here, letting the listener into his tortured psyche in a way that only Pac and Eminem have even come close to imitating. I’ve written about this track and my fondness for it already, naming it my “rap of the year” for 1994. The overall concept is Big calling up Puff to deliver what amounts to a suicide note. As Puffy pleads with him not to go through with it, Biggie enumerates all of the reasons that he’s “a piece of shit, it ain’t hard to fucking tell” and why the world would be better off without him: his criminal escapades, his sense that he’d let down his loved ones, his lies and infidelity. The key passages: “All my life I been considered as the worst/ Lyin’ to my mother, even stealin’ out her purse/ Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion/ I know my mother wish she got a fuckin’ abortion/ She don’t even love me like she did when I was younger/ Suckin’ on her chest just to stop my fuckin’ hunger/ I wonder if I died, would tears come to her eyes?/ Forgive me for my disrespect, forgive me for my lies”; “People at the funeral frontin’ like they miss me/ My baby mama kiss me, but she glad I’m gone/ She know me and her sister had somethin’ goin’ on.” Additionally, this is one of the things that truly separates Big from Pac when it comes to their musings on death and the afterlife: while Pac rapped about heaven and “thugz mansion,” Big seemed convinced that he was headed to hell both here and elsewhere: “When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell/ … It don’t make sense goin’ to heaven with the goodie-goodies/ Dressed in white; I like black Timbs and black hoodies.” If “Ready To Die” was a defiant declaration, then “Suicidal Thoughts” is Biggie proving that it was no lie, that he is, in fact, ready to pass on even if it’s his own doing. The beat is handled by Lord Finesse—another boom-bap veteran—and complements perfectly the tension that builds until the final moments: the gunshot, the thud, and the flatlining heartbeat (the sample is Miles Davis’s “Lonely Fire” (1974)).

There’s no denying Ready To Die’s place in the pantheon of rap history. People can debate whether or not it and/or Big are the greatest ever, which is fine, but ultimately meaningless. What we have here is an album that can be enjoyed on many different levels. And even if it is all about death, as with any work of art, it will live on as long as people keep listening to and loving it.

#25th anniversary #biggie #ready to die

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