In a culture where the lives of young, black men have become increasingly expendable, it's now necessary to state what once seemed obvious: Biggie Smalls did not want to die. Like 2Pac 's All Eyez on Me from a year before, an obvious influence, Biggie 's album made extensive use of various producers - DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee, Clark Kent, RZA, and more of New York's finest - resulting in a diverse, eclectic array of songs.
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There's a haunted sadness to the sung refrain, and beneath it a spoken plea is audible: "I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die. That's not really the case with Life After Death, however. Ready to Die is a milestone album, for sure, but it's nowhere near as extravagant or epic as Life After. Over the course of only two albums, he achieved every success imaginable, perhaps none greater than this unabashedly over-reaching success. Phone callers' issue threats: "I'm gonna kill you," "We comin' for you." On the closing "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," Smalls' world-weary delivery indicates that he considers the song title to be a perverted joke. An instant classic of 1990s hip-hop, Life After Death dropped two weeks later I’d already reviewed it for the now-defunct Rap Pages magazine, in an issue sporting photographer Barron Claiborne. In hindsight, Biggie couldn't have ended his career with a more fitting album than Life After Death. was murdered less than three weeks before its release, giving many of the songs and narratives a. The first two singles, Hypnotize and Mo Money Mo Problems became hits at number one. The album was released as scheduled after his death, entering the charts at number one and selling almost 700,000 copies in the first week. He acknowledges a vulnerability that verges on paranoia in "My Downfall," swathed in mournful strings and neo-operatic female voices: "Before I go to sleep, I check the bed and the closet." / 'Life After Death' (1997) Chillingly titled, The Notorious B.I.G. Biggie was supposed to release his second album, eerily titled Life After Death. Kelly, in preborn-again mode on You Tonight."īut near the end of the disc, Smalls is no longer the playful rogue, the marauding hustler prowling his ghetto kingdom. 1 on the Billboard pop charts on the strength of a mesmerizing party single, "Hypnotize." There's more raw fun in the "Hypnotize" vein with cameos by Too Short, Lil' Kim, Puff Daddy, Angela Winbush and R. Instead, Smalls and Combs have made a disc packed with hook-filled arrangements that straddle the worlds of hard-core hip-hop and mainstream rhythm and blues - even before Smalls' death, the disc almost certainly would have made its debut at No.
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But Smalls also avoids petty tit-for-tat posturing there are no putdowns of his late verbal sparring partner Shakur, no words to fuel the purported rivalry between East and West Coast. Too many tracks settle into pimp-gangbanger cliches with numbingly explicit language, casual misogyny and, in two instances, homophobic references. "Life After Death" has its share of filler. 'Life After Death Intro' Previously on Ready to Die.