Icon: The Notorious B.I.G.
It’s not that he was the first storyteller. Or the first vulnerable MC. Or the first fabulist. Or gangsta. Or lyrically lyrical lyricist. Or loverman. Or even the first fat rapper. But Christopher Wallace, while hardly the first anything, was often the best of those, and so much more. As time passes, he is remembered for his music, but with qualifications about his violent death and questions of what could have been. It’s true, at just 24, The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, died too soon and for no good reason. And his output during his short time – and into the afterlife thanks to posthumous releases – is small, and imperfect.
Still, Biggie, is among the three or four most important figures in hip-hop history. He fused art and commerce in ways until then unseen, making New York City hardcore hip-hop safe for radio and vice versa. He took multifarious perspectives in his songs. He was often a misogynist, but also – as so many are – a mama’s boy. He took his Jamaican heritage to logical extremes in his music. His persona typified Grand Guignol gangsterism, graphic in its portrayal of violence and sex, but he could turn on a dime and seduce you with the tiniest details of humanity. Biggie was teddy bear and terror, an evolutionary figure in rap, and a bridge that lead the ’90s rap-as-pop charge to dominance. These are his works.
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Hagiography has always been paramount to hip-hop. But what do you call death wish autobiography? Never before has a rapper been so knowing about the evil that men do, reveled in it, then ultimately lamented his mistakes to a fatal end. Across 17 tracks — this album revolutionized much, including the unfortunate notion of bloat on rap albums — we see a life lived in desperation, marked by fear, violence, glee and success. On just the first song, simply called "Intro," we hear Biggie Smalls born, witness his parents tear each other apart, plan and execute a heist, and ultimately exit prison. From there, a journey into crime verityé and open-hearted desire. Working with his ascendant mentor and label chief, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, Biggie used his globular, bellowing voice and needle-in-the-hay specificity to create a chilling portrait of drugs and death.
more »The front end of the album is nearly all tension and force. "Gimme The Loot" is a tete-a-tete featuring two robbers, one high-pitched and twitchy, the other sage and deep-toned. Biggie plays both, a fact that at the time of release stunned listeners, flashing a sense of structure and arc rarely heard. Much of this comes with the simultaneously warm and cold stroll of Blaxploitation-era soul. Dashes and snippets of songs by Ohio Players, Fred Wesley and Willie Hutch define the production here — these are odes to forbearers like Kool G Rap and Schoolly D, but the sound is clear-eyed and cleaner. Like that snikt sound of blood being cleared from a blade. Producer Easy Mo Bee, a crucial figure here, chops a dramatic moment from Isaac Hayes's "Walk On By" nearly beyond recognition for "Warning," another two-voiced conversation between a friend (again, he plays both parts) cautioning Biggie about some thugs with murderous intent. It's a conceptual masterpiece, dripping with details ("Who the fuck is this?/ Pagin' me at 5:46 in the mornin'," "They heard about the Rolexes and the Lexus/ with the Texas license plate, out of state."), that ends with a sweeping shift in perspective to his potential assailants, foiled by the forewarned Biggie. There are seven or eight songs like this — funk-infused, dead-eyed, funny, but morbidly so. And sometimes things are worse than all that. "My mother got cancer in her breast/ don't ask me why I'm motherfucking stressed," Big barks on the opening song, "Things Done Changed."
But it's not all pulpy realism. There is the other side of The Notorious B.I.G.: Pop star. When not delivering the boom bap album he'd been waiting to make his whole life, Biggie took directives, grudgingly, from Puff Daddy, about how to sell. So nestled into this severe, heart-stopping album — which ends with a song called "Suicidal Thoughts," wherein Big kills himself at song's end — are smash singles, particularly "Big Poppa" and "Juicy." The former is a smooth slab from the Isley Brothers that Chucky Thompson turns silkier than its source. The song is filled with pro forma loverman raps, but also different, because, well, Biggie weighed more than 350 lbs. "Plans to leave, throw the keys to Lil Cease/ pull the truck up front and roll up the next blunt/ so we can steam on the way to the telly, gon' fill my belly/ a T-bone steak, cheese, eggs and Welch's grape," he purrs to a prospective partner. On "Big Poppa," you'd be hard-pressed to hear an inch of insecurity. No one wielded girthy presence with the same slow, elegant promenade as Big. Visions of the rapper in a Jacuzzi with eager groupies in the song's video were far from hideous — they were envy-producing.
"Juicy" is not about that, though. It's where the myth becomes legend, and the legend gets rapped. Never has a song worked so beautifully as personal story and historical document. Biggie takes us through his youth, listening to early rap radio, leafing through magazines, eating sardines for dinner. Then in verse two he is a star, basking in poolside interviews and rewarding his daughter with diamonds. Throughout he is keenly aware of the stakes — "stereotypes of a black male misunderstood/ and it's still all good," he raps. That this song, produced by Puffy and an uncredited Pete Rock, was laced with an uncomplicated sample of Mtume springing "Juicy Fruit," helped make it a colossal hit and his most important work. It's also emblematic of an utterly original voice — equal parts outsize aspiration and retiring teddy bear. Welcome Biggie, generational compass.
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Released just 16 days after his March 9 death by drive-by shooting, there's an eerie prescience to the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death. Several things — that title, the hearse-featuring album cover, the crushing closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)" — gave Life After Death a bizarre resonance. But this is much more than paperwork from the morgue. In fact, rap stardom gave The Notorious B.I.G. a new lease; he attacks with testosterone-filled glee. The album's title is about second chances at money, fame and sex after a tumultuous youth; a true second life. The result, worth every second of its expansive double-LP running time, is actually more about light and wealth than its predecessor, which was defined by a grim fatalism. The hits say as much. Consider that old speedboat-riding chestnut of hip-hop opulence, "Hypnotize" or the Diana Ross-lifting exuberance of "Mo Money Mo Problems." The giddy, quite funny "I Got A Story To Tell" finds Biggie creeping with the lady friend of a New York Knicks player and then retelling the tale to his boys, embellishing like a grandfather serenading some awestruck tots. Biggie's desire to croon — really, croon — crops up repeatedly here, as on the goofy extended "Playa Hater" or the thudding Miami bass of "Another." Even "Ten Crack Commandments," a steely DJ Premier production and drug-dealing manifesto has a delightful service-y quality — memorable and useful! So many of his lyrics became sampled and repeated hip-hop aphorisms — "If you don't know, now you know"; "It was all a dream..."; "Went from ashy to classy"; and so on. This is a crucial part of the Biggie mythology, the stickiness of his writing.
more »After the success of Ready To Die Biggie used his follow-up to indulge his fantasies. Working mostly with Puff Daddy's in-house production crew, The Hitmen (Carlos "July Six" Broady, Nashiem Myrick, Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, Stevie J, Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence), it's surprising how many of the songs here are about sexual conquest; at times you may yearn for his debut's brutality. But over time, Life After Death reveals itself as a sensual work — the lyrics to the R. Kelly-featuring "Fuck You Tonight" are specific, attentive, lascivious in ways that might make Luther Campbell blush. Biggie is less rapid-fire throughout, whether rapping or singing, letting that charismatic, jowly burr traipse into Isaac Hayes territory. His reach is longer, too, featuring paeans to his beloved '80s R&B, production from distinguished contemporaries like Mobb Deep's Havoc and Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, and guest shots from stars old (DMC, Too $hort) and new (onetime paramour and protégé Lil' Kim, a young friend named Jay-Z, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony).
That collaboration with Bone Thugs, the whirring "Notorious Thugs," forced a flood light on rap's ever-expanding regional purview. Exposing — and paying homage by emulating their distinctive half-sung double-time flow — to Cleveland's own was just one more example of Biggie's almost perverse palm-reading — he simply knew where the genre needed to go. The song's reference to "So-called beef with you know who" anchors the album's more serious undertones. Biggie, of course, was feuding with ex-friend 2Pac for some time as he began recording the album. Pac was gunned down in Las Vegas six months before its release, but that didn't stop Big from including "Going Back To Cali," a perhaps too-braggadocious act of defiance in the service of an insatiable ego.
The backend of the second disc is the most tremulous and grandiose. The underrated single "Sky's The Limit," a defiant turn on "My Downfall," and RZA's "Long Kiss Goodnight" are all mythmaking songs that ultimately sting in light of Big's fate. And the closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," is the hazy epilogue to a cinematic reconfiguration. That it all doesn't end in death is its own sort of optimism, tragically inaccurate though it was.
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By 1999, Bad Boy Records had begun a slow descent, from the mountaintop of the surging pop-rap revolution to a settled space as a reliably unreliable house of hits. That's relevant because Born Again, the first Notorious B.I.G. album that featured no input from the rapper, dead for four years since its release, is often more about Bad Boy than Biggie. Mining a surprisingly small amount of unreleased vocal recordings — compared to 2Pac, Biggie left just a smattering on the cutting room floor — this album lacks the thematic clarity or emotional tenacity of his celebrated first two albums. But there's valuable music here, too, like "Come On," featuring Brand Nubian's Sadat X or beloved B-side and one-time inflammatory chest-beater "Who Shot Ya?"
more »The elegiac "Biggie," featuring his protégés, Junior M.A.F.I.A., has an elegant, reflective tone. It's nestled between two rampaging lyrical exhibitions, "Dangerous MCs" and "Niggas." And that's what ultimately determines Born Again — commercial sensibilities colliding with deeply lyrical excursions and several guest stars. None is more impressive, or worrying, than "Dead Wrong," a duet with suddenly ubiquitous superstar Eminem. Big raps bracingly about robbing women of their Fendi bags and subsequent rough sex. Eminem takes things to an even darker place — murder, mutilation, cannibalism, drug-fueled anarchy. That two of the finest technicians ever, almost blacking out with macabre joy, deliver the song obscures the dark subject matter. It makes the case for a lifestyle — glamorized and unrealistic though it may have been — that is indefensible. But, such is the power of talent.
There are also the occasional stretches made in service of commerce. Biggie is actually quite at home on "Hope You Niggas Sleep," a collaboration with Cash Money Records' Hot Boys crew. Hearing him smash a Mannie Fresh beat is a delight, something that likely would have happened more regularly had he lived to see the South's rise to prominence — though how thoroughly that rise would have been had Biggie lived is up for debate. The album's first single and perhaps worst song, is Bad Boy's sensibilities at their most grating. "Notorious B.I.G." samples Duran Duran's "Notorious" in hopes of amping up the late rapper's glamour factor. But Biggie was never about such vacuous fulfillment. His story always had stakes, consequences. Born Again is a useful album, but its flaws said more about its exhumers than the artist himself.
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The case for letting sleeping dogs lie. This final posthumous release garbles Biggie Smalls's artistic intent by overloading on guest stars, many whom couldn't hold the rapper's sweat rag, and a schizophrenia of sound that damages credibility time and again. Many of Biggie's verses are recycled from previously released songs, and even the most credible of guests are rarely at their best. But, hey, there are still wondrous Biggie Smalls raps here and there is a bizarre curiosity in hearing Harlem's Diplomats rap alongside him on songs like "I'm With Whateva" or the virtuosic Virginia MCs Clipse take a shot at matching the intensity of a Biggie verse from "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)." Dre and Vidal's gorgeous "1970 Somethin'" is a particularly noble entry here — warm, evocative, a genuine chance at evolving Biggie's sound to modern times. Still, artists like Akon, Big Gee and Bobby Valentino, and producers like Jazze Pha and Scott Storch have no business here and simply shouldn't be messing with these originals. That slotted between these duets are crass testimonials from Christopher Wallace's adolescent children gives this outing a creepy, unforgivable aura.
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In case you're wondering, that acronym stands for Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes, a suspect construction considering the bludgeoning force of Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s debut album, Conspiracy. But Biggie Smalls's loyal foot soldiers, including childhood friends Lil' Cease and Nino Brown, is a crucial, often-overlooked piece of history. Recorded between his first two albums, it finds Biggie on four songs, and marks the emergence of Lil' Kim, one of the most stunning female artists of the '90s. Conspiracy is best-remembered for its two singles, "Player's Anthem" and especially the joyous "Get Money," produced by Ez Elpee. And those songs are brilliant party cuts. But there's more to this album: Kim's insinuating verse on "Back Stabbers"; Biggie crushing ESG's "UFO" on "Realms of Junior M.A.F.I.A."; the all-in baton-passing on "Lyrical Wizardry." The grandiloquent Mafioso themes rarely hold up — after all, Junior M.A.F.I.A. were hardly drug kingpins — but there's enough to Conspiracy to warrant a search.
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The Notorious B.I.G. famously romanced the diminutive spitfire retail clerk Kimberly Jones. During their affair he encouraged her to pursue her own music career with tough love, sometimes too tough. But aggression had its rewards, and eventually Kimberly became Lil' Kim, rap's Queen Bee, a brassy, dynamic counterpart. But Big was not an invisible collaborator. He also wrote several of her lyrics — recently leaked demos featuring Biggie delivering some of Kim's more explicit sex raps are a truly startling thing to hear.
more »Biggie's greatest influence, though, may have been the slow, confident tone Kim adopted. Throughout Hard Core, not just one of the best female hip-hop albums of all-time, but also one of the finest documents of East Coast rap, Kim is almost insouciant about her prowess. "I used to be scared of the dick/ Now I throw lips to the shit/ handle it like a real bitch," she raps on "Big Momma Thing." She demands oral sex left and right, pops off about the power of her own gifts, and stands toe-to-toe with Jay-Z, Lil' Cease, and, on three songs, Biggie. Musically, Hard Core picks up where Ready To Die left off, with languorous snatches of '70s funk and soul, stretched out thin and swathed in heavy snares. Her voice is hard-edged, Brooklyn-ethnic, over-enunciated, rarely sultry — her sexuality was all about aggression, almost needling partners into action. But on songs like the oscillating "Drugs" she pulls the façade of recorded sex away, becoming archly reflective. "Never a flaw, never before have you seen such magnificence in a black princess, yes," she purred, mirroring her mentor's languid tone. No arguments here.
