Having sharpened his teeth alongside some of the ravenous rap dogs in the pits of the New York underground rhyme scene, Biggie made it obvious by the summer of 1994 on the star-studded remix of label mate Craig Mack’s hit “Flava in Your Ear” that he had every intention of securing the role of Bad Boy’s top shotta with well delivered punch lines like “you mad ‘cause my style you’re admiring, don’t be mad UPS is hiring.”īy the time Ready to Die hit, B.I.G. His husky baritone transported you into his childhood classrooms and into the streets of Brooklyn for vivid episodes of his early mischief and delinquency. From proclaiming that he “was a terror since the public school era” over the Easy Mo Bee produced “Party & Bullshit” which opened the Who’s the Man soundtrack in 1993, he showed that his lyrical ability had already developed as an instrument capable of captivating audiences’ imaginations. Heralded among the elite group of potential saviors of East Coast rap in the early ‘90s along with Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan, B.I.G.’s flow revealed not one flaw between his debut as Biggie Smalls back in 1992 and his untimely death in 1997. With mixed emotions of enjoying B.I.G.’s signature lyricism and the expansive arrangement of the double LP, the experience of listening to the album was solemn, as the best moments solidified that we may have just lost the best to ever formulate rhyme schemes. Only two weeks after receiving the news of Christopher Wallace’s death, grief now accompanied the anticipation for the long awaited follow-up to B.I.G.’s classic 1994 debut Ready to Die. Twenty years ago, the concepts of hip-hop fact versus fiction intersected like never before with the posthumous release of the Notorious B.I.G’s sophomore album, eerily titled Life After Death.
The lines often blur on whether art imitates real life, or real life imitates art. Sadly, life beyond the lyrics of hip-hop music is sometimes filled with as much tragedy as the vivid street stories its artists recount about the harshness of life inside our inner cities. Happy 20th Anniversary to The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death, originally released March 25, 1997.