Day 37: The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die
Album cover courtesy of Bad Boy Records
I feel like everyone is lying when they talk about their first albums. “Oh, what, me? Why, mine was Led Zeppelin II.” Sure, pal. Mine was either Spice Girls or a rap album for children, which for some reason was a big thing where I’m from. Pretty soon, me and my friend graduated from the children’s rap to secretly borrowing all her brother’s CDs that we were definitely too young to listen to at the time. My rap fan girl phase continued well into my late teens and early 20s, but I don’t listen to it much these days, so I thought I’d start getting myself back into it with a bit of Biggie.
Notorious B.I.G’s debut studio album Ready to Die was recorded between 1992 and 1993, and it was the last album that was released while he was alive. His second album, Life After Death, was released only two weeks after he died in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. He was discovered by Diddy after D.J. 50 Grand played him one of Biggie’s demos, but before making it as a rapper, he’d been dealing drugs since he was 12 years old and he’d dropped out of high school at 16 to sell crack.
The first part of the album essentially details his previous life as a criminal and a drug dealer its intersection with his new life. There’s “Gimme the Loot”, where he describes having mercilessly robbed and killed people, saying “Bitches get delgnarts [strangled] for their earrings and bangles / And when I rock her and drop her, I'm taking her door knockers / And if she's resistant: blakka, blakka, blakka”. Then there’s “Warning” where he details some of his old friends wanting to kill him for his money after he has found success.
After a brief intermission of audio of him banging Lil Kim while she creatively insults him, the comparatively more light-hearted and less stone cold second half of the album starts, with classic Biggie tunes like “Juicy” and “Big Poppa”. The record picks up a bit once the source material gets less harrowing and more focused on his current life. Could’ve maybe skipped the whole slobbering noise skit at the very least, but hey, that’s just my opinion, I’m a skit-hater.
I have to say, due to my previously mentioned weenie proclivities, I struggle sometimes to listen to all the callous talk about murder and violence, but the second half of the album provides a bit of a counterpoint to it. In contrast to the matter-of-fact way he raps about killing and crime at the beginning of the album, at the end of the album on “Suicidal Thoughts”, he struggles with who he is and what he’s done, like any other 22-year-old would but maybe at a different scale.
It’s just one of those albums that make you wonder what he could have done if he’d lived longer. The two albums he made changed music history, and he was only 24 when he died. Best not imagine what he might have been able to do lyrically if he’d have gotten older. It’s an 8.5/10.