Strictly talking music, I found the majority of the beats on this thing to be kind of antiseptic. I may not understand it, but it’s not for me to understand. This was Biggie coping and creating art of his pain and, as only the best can, making art a transcendent experience for the masses. In the same way, Biggie spoke to those in similar places as he was – in troubling life circumstances, be it in poverty or in places of unspeakable violence. Bowie, to the oddball trying to express themselves, Haggard to the rugged, looking for a story to end the day, Lemmy to the repressed, looking for a chance to let it all out, and Prince (among so many other things) to the outsiders, showing us that anyone could do anything, be it a kid becoming a producer, to the racially and gender-diverse being put in the forefront (something I hope gets talked about a ton in the coming weeks), and the stands against the man when it comes to protecting what really matters. The music of all of these individuals speaks to the souls of so many different people, and it resonates in so many different ways. Perhaps the knowledge that Biggie is speaking to us beyond the grave on this record is part of what makes this such a hard listen for me, especially in a year where we have lost so many musicians and creative souls: Phife Dawg, Merle Haggard, Lemmy, Bowie, and, most hard-hitting since it happened a day ago as I write this, Prince. But it’s a vivid enough picture that anyone can jump in.
#Notorious big life after death songs crack#
From the palpable anger on “My Downfall”, to the stark advice on “Ten Crack Commandments”, this is the experience of someone in a whole other world. And it’s here we find the anger, glib humor and desperation that fuels this album’s content. But it’s the context, I think, that puts the record on the 500 Greatest list.”I gotta talk about my life the way I see it,” Biggie yells in one of his sketch interludes. The gang-related violence (including pistol-whipping children)… it’s almost too much. The unconscious reflex of putting your hand over your mouth and closing your eyes is almost irrepressible. As I say, it’s hard to imagine that violence that Biggie talks about from where I sit. Life After Death is a hard, graphic, raw listen, and I’m not convinced that it should be listened to in the morning (I made that mistake twice). It’s almost spellbinding – hypnotizing, if you will. It’s like watching a car crash – it’s not something that happens every day, and it certainly isn’t something you ever anticipate will happen to you, but you can’t help and crane your neck as you pass. Right from the get-go, the album doesn’t mince any scenario that Biggie just floated away – the ER scene depicting the death of a gang-banger foreshadows the harsh realism that the record portrays.Īnd maybe that’s why it’s so interesting to a suburban middle-class white guy sitting in his basement drinking coffee. It’s especially hard given the senseless and tragic way in which he passed away. It’s hard to listen to this record and think about what could have been in terms of the volume of music. Over the course of his short time in the spotlight, Biggie helped cement the careers of Puff Daddy, Craig Mack and Jay Z, shepherded the introduction of Lil Kim, Mase, The LOX and his wife, Faith Evans, and delivered on iconic collaborations with the likes of Method Man (“The What”), Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (“Notorious Thugs”) and Jay (“Brooklyn’s Finest”), along the way proving over and over again that he was one of rap’s most vivid and dexterous storytellers.Remember the old days, when albums were like 10 songs long? Yeah, me either. Though he died at the almost impossibly young age of 24, the MC who came live from Bedford-Stuyvesant left a lasting mark on the rap game with two iconic, landmark albums - his 1994 debut Ready to Die and his double-album follow-up, Life After Death, ironically released two weeks after his own death - as well as the crew project Conspiracy with his group Junior M.A.F.I.A. Twenty years ago today, on March 9, 1997, the world lost one of the greatest rappers of all time in The Notorious B.I.G.