had grown into a full-fledged imprint with B.I.G. Would he actually dead 90% of the rappers out now? Would he bless a certain few with features because he wanted them to receive the torch he passed? Would Junior M.A.F.I.A. It’s easy to hypothesize about what kind of rapper Biggie would be today. was alive 90% of rappers today would be working at McDonalds.” After getting over the alarmingly reductive options that presents for young black wordsmiths, I wondered if it was true. I cant believe this just happened!! #wemissyouBIG GOD IS THE GREATEST BIG FOREVER!!! Thank you /25gxlt9jamĪ particular T-shirt a fellow train passenger wore sparked more contemplation in me than any of the gestures I witnessed or described above. Through gestures big and small, fans celebrated his legacy in any way they saw fit, even with something as simple as a T-shirt, and everything felt right, mostly. Pieces about the significance of his life, death, music and legacy popped up all over the interwebs from the same publications that covered him two decades ago and many more. 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.Throughout the Bedford-Stuyvesant streets where Biggie grew up, candle-lit vigils flickered, freshly painted murals glistened on walls, Coogi sweaters were popping again, and his music wafted through the air as if a part of earth’s atmospheric makeup on his Fulton St. 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. 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. 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." 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. 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.
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