Story Time with Christopher Wallace, and he pulls it off like a charm. Also the song where he talks about "blow up like the World Trade", for those who also read the Jay-Z review earlier. The single that introduced Biggie to the masses. Method Man was his old-school grimy ass self, and Biggie more than held his own. This was a huge, huge collabo back in the day, especially since Biggie had beef with the Wu. Um.notable, as it's Lil' Kim who is faking the orgasm? (Or maybe Biggie fucked her in the booth, I don't know, and I don't care.) The album version is much, much better (and much filthier) than both the hip hop remix (bad name for a remix, by the way) and the slow-jam mix that Ashanti would later rape and pillage.sorry, I mean "sample". Even though he has his riches, his bitches, and his producer pretending that he's a trained actor in the video, ultimately, he was all alone. The video is even pretty good, especially for one shot that sums up the whole song: Biggie eating cereal (with the brand names hilariously hidden) at his table. Simply a great song about a rich man's overall paranoia regarding his so-called "friends". Not horrible, but I'm still waiting for that next shit.Ĭontains one of the best first lines in hip hop history: "Who the fuck is this?". (The controversial stuff was eventually edited out before the album's release, but it's not hard to figure out what he really said.) Hey, I never said there wasn't an intro to this fucker.Īn interesting first song, but not great.īiggie does a back-and-forth with a high-pitched version of himself, advising (in both hilarious and controversial detail) would-be victims to run their jewels and garments. Īs it stands, Ready To Die is one of only two albums that Christopher Wallace participated in recording, and is the only one to be released while he was still around to celebrate the success. Rumors of Biggie getting fucked over with his publishing aside, Ready To Die accomplished a lot for being just one album it introduced an artist who did not disappoint, it turned its record label into a household name it turned the white kids in the suburbs who actually buy all the hip hop records on to a rapper who was at ease with both the club-friendly jams and the gangster shit and, ultimately, it led to this. The second release on Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records label (the first being Craig Mack's Project: Funk Da World, an overall exercise in futility, albeit with one or two hits), Biggie would soon become Bad Boy Records, epitomizing the lavish lifestyle of a successful rapper (at least right until he was usurped by his boss ). Ready To Die was the debut album from the upstart Notorious B.I.G. (His songs had more emotion than you could shake a stick at, though.) I haven't seen this level of incompetence in the handling of a legend since Pac died, and I don't think Pac was even a good rapper in the truest sense.
Ready to die zip biggie full#
It's too bad that a certain somebody feels otherwise, repeatedly raping his corpse by releasing sub-par albums chock-a-block full with collaborations with rappers that Biggie probably would never have worked with otherwise. Gunned down during the heat of the "east coast/west coast" beef, Biggie was never truly able to create the catalog of music that would define his legacy. Ten years ago to this day, actually, and Christopher Wallace can still safely be considered one of the greats, with little to no argument. The overrated rapper Canibus once said, "The greatest rapper of all time died on March 9th".