Nowhere was this more apparent than “Juicy,” Ready to Die’s first single and its most beloved track. Smalls’ rhymes were frequently praised for their documentary realism-“his lyrics mix autobiographical details about crime and violence with emotional honesty,” noted the New York Times in late 1994-but like most great pop music Ready to Die was primarily a work of imagination. “I was a terror since the public school era / Bathroom passes, cutting classes, squeezing asses,” his voice booms in the song’s opening lines, and it’s all already there-the menace, the mischief, the mythmaking, the perfect convergences of music and language (“terror” and “era” rhyme perfectly in his Bed-Stuy patois).Įven in its darkest moments-perhaps especially in its darkest moments- Ready to Die was located squarely at the intersection of personal history and personal mythmaking. The song’s hook was a reworking of the Last Poets’ 1970 classic “ When the Revolution Comes,” a fiery prophecy of urban revolt, which closed: “But until then you know and I know that niggers will party and bullshit and party and bullshit and party and bullshit … some might even die before the revolution comes.” Biggie snatched the phrase and iconoclastically flipped it into a club banger, the opiate becoming the end in itself-altered consciousness might be false consciousness, but it’s also the most fun consciousness.
THE NOTORIOUS BIG READY TO DIE UNCENSORED MOVIE
Dré (the other one) and Ed Lover vehicle Who’s the Man? The movie was quickly forgotten, but “Party and Bullshit”-initially credited simply to “BIG”-became a sensation. The write-up grabbed the attention of an aspiring impresario named Sean “Puffy” Combs, and in spring of 1993 a solo track called “ Party and Bullshit” was released on the soundtrack to the Dr. A world without KRS-One or Ice Cube or Jay Z would be unimaginably impoverished, but a world without Biggie Smalls is simply unimaginable. Seventeen years after his murder at the age of 24, he is of a piece with Miles, Dylan, the Beatles, Aretha, artists whose influence is so immense it ascends into a sort of fundamental sonic iconography, the never-ending soundtrack to everything. is the greatest rapper who ever lived in the same way that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player who ever lived: Some people may argue but they are usually Luddite classicists, incorrigible homers, or hipster contrarians. Biggie Smalls didn’t alter the hip-hop landscape so much as crater it, leaving behind an unfillable void and an unhealable wound. Ready to Die is not the greatest rap album ever made, and probably isn’t even the greatest rap album made in 1994-it sags at times with superfluous skits, some of its production touches have aged awkwardly (congrats to that whistling synth hook on “Big Poppa” for owing 20 years’ worth of royalties to The Chronic), and Sean Combs’ somnambulant hype-man routine only grows more irritating with time.īut it is quite possibly the most important, if only for the reason that its maker transformed the music like no rapper before or since. Ready to Die turns 20 on Saturday, and even at a moment when hip-hop is particularly taken with such milestones, this is (fittingly) an enormous one. It’s sad, funny, bleak, brilliant, and then it’s over, and all that’s left is to play the whole thing again. But soon we have dark humor (“it don’t make sense going to heaven with the goodie-goodies / Dressed in white, I like black Timbs, and black hoodies”), deathbed sexual boasting (“My baby momma kissed me but she’s glad I’m gone / She knows me and her sister had something going on”), and cultish, kitschy references to New Jack City and Beat Street. Coming at the end of an album obsessed with death and all varieties of moral transgression, the opening lines-“when I die, fuck it I wanna go to hell / cause I’m a piece of shit it ain’t hard to fuckin’ tell”-seem to herald the most depressing piece of music in human history.
“ Suicidal Thoughts,” the closing track of the Notorious B.I.G.’s towering debut album, Ready to Die, is two minutes of rhymed confession that culminates in a self-inflicted gunshot. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Thelma & Louise-but it takes particular audacity to end with a suicide note. A lot of great art ends with suicide- Anna Karenina, Sgt.
0 kommentar(er)
