At the height of the gangsta era, the Notorious B.I.G.'s debut responded to Dre with a different kind of shock value. Ready to Die is the rare hardcore hip-hop album on which a gangster expresses real remorse about his tumultuous lifestyle, the drugs that have ruined his neighborhood, and the pain he's caused his loved ones. His solution for absolution? On "Suicidal Thoughts," he pulls out a gun and blows his brains all over the room. "[When I wrote that song] I felt that if I were to die, not too many people would miss me," Biggie said in 1997. "Having to wake up every day and sell drugs and do what I had to do was wack." The best rapper to emerge in the '90s, one with a cinematic sense of description and a wicked sense of humor, Biggie was a charismatic contradiction, the kind of MC who could laugh about robbing pregnant women of their "#1 Mom pendants" in "Gimme the Lot," then lament the roots of street nihilism in "Things Done Changed" ["Back in the day our parents used to take care of us / Look at them now, they fuckin' scared of us"]. "I'd never worked on an album that dark before," says Easy Mo Bee, who produced several tracks. "One time in the studio, he was rapping, 'Fuck the world, fuck my mom and my girl,' and I had to stop and ask myself, 'Do I want to be a part of this?' But the whole thing isn't just 'murder, murder.' Biggie had raps that could make you cry, make you reexamine who you were." And smash singles such as "One More Chance" and "Big Poppa" are backed by a catchy mix of gritty funk and R&B velvet. Tragically, on March 9, 1997, just as Biggie was celebrating the birth of a son and the impending release of his second album, Life After Death, he was murdered in a still unsolved Los Angeles drive-by. But in a genre of here-today-gone-tomorrow superstars, Ready to Die assures that Biggie will live on. - Spin Magazine (9/99). Revisit the classic debut album from the late great Notorious B.I.G. below...
The full review in Spin Magazine, and original album sticker are below...
