It was a struggle between N.Y.'s Bad Boy and L.A.'s Death Row records that surpassed label affiliation to become about coastal loyalty, arguments about commercialism vs. Beginning with the 1994 Quad Studios shooting of Tupac Shakur in New York City, the Notorious B.I.G-along with Combs, Shakur, and Suge Knight-was at the center of a multifaceted rivalry. When pressed by his friends as to the identity of the cuckold, he brushes it off: “One of them 6' 5” niggas-I don't know.”ĭouble albums tend to be overblown, self-indulgent cash grabs, but Life After Death warranted the approach. No names, no states, no boroughs, or other signifiers are mentioned. For his fictional tales, names and locales are doled out like characters in hardboiled pulp fictions: “Arizona Ron from Tuscon,” “Gloria from Astoria,” and “Darkskin Jermaine” who “nearly lost half his brain over two bricks of cocaine, getting his dick sucked by Crackhead Lorraine.” But, when it comes to the truth, he's shy on specifics. Inside his braggadocio, cars are colored with verve: a “cherry M3” BMW, a “marine blue 6 coupe” Mercedes, a “champagne Range” Rover. “Story” highlights Biggie’s gifts as a raconteur. It’s a tour de force-a time-shifting tale that devotes a whole verse to the backstory of a murderous misfit straight from an Elmore Leonard short who substitutes kerosene for gasoline because “fuck it, it's flame-able.”īut “I Got a Story to Tell,” the recount of an after-hours creep with an NBA player’s girlfriend that culminates in physical assault and robbery, may be the most absurd tale of the bunch, because it's reportedly true. He decides to call up his friend-a flashy and hard-hearted cutthroat from the Southwest who was once featured on America's Most Wanted-to partake in a heist that involves a female Puerto Rican hotel worker who used to be drug boss, and a Jamaican with long dreadlocks and a taste for Asian women. On “Niggas Bleed,” Big is a bagman sent to secure a large drug transaction, but his greed has him thinking about a double-cross: “I kill them all, I'll be set for life,” he imagines. This feat of storytelling is repeated two more times on the first disc of this double album alone. Big's reaction is immediate: “Is he in critical? Retaliation for this one won't be minimal ’cause I'm a criminal way before the rap shit, bust the gat shit-Puff won't even know what happened.” We’re settling into a bloody noir, complete with well-developed minor characters harboring demented pathos and subtle foreshadowing-all this before any hints of a radio single.
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It begins sometime within the last record’s timeline, with Big “sittin' in the crib dreamin' about Learjets and coupes, the way Salt 'shoops', and how to sell records like Snoop,” when a fellow small-time drug dealer and jailmate informs him that a mutual friend has been shot for robbing a crack dealer in a most ruthless manner (“pistol whipped his kids and taped up his wife”). The proper arrival of this album comes on “Somebody's Gotta Die,” a pure revenge tale. But where the first album started with a feeling of hope arising from the muck and mire of urban poverty, Life After Death announces itself in much starker fashion. Ready to Die, Biggie’s previous album, also began with heart-pulling cinematic flourishes, featuring a decade-spanning montage that played as a mini saga telling the tale of a small-time street thug who was raised in a dysfunctional home and turned into a formidably successful rapper.
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