My President is Black

nothin to say Hov killed it and said everything. one.

Life After Death

Life After Death was released just 2 weeks after Biggie was murdered in LA leaving his record release party. The album in whole was a different look from Ready To Die with more mainstream tracks, but the lyrics and storytelling that Biggie is known for remained. "Hypnotize" was the first single released and followed with a video that at the time was different from anything done before. There was a car chase, boat chase, Big even had mermaids in his tank. We saw the playa side of him on "Fuckin' You Tonight" with R. Kelly then he turned around and came with "I Love The Dough" feat. Jay-z which sounds like a summer banger to me. "Mo' Money Mo' Problems" is a song that everybody loves (in my opinion) and always received well even today when played. "I Got A Story To Tell" is probably my favorite song on the 1st disc, the way he just tells the story is ridiculous. Disc 2 starts with "Notorious Thugs" which is one of those songs that when you hear the first note of the beat you stop what you're doing and say "that's my shit". The beat is crazy but when Big got on the track and flipped his style to match Bone Thugs that just took it to another level, I think I could of got on that and it still would have been a hit. On "Another" Big and Lil Kim go back and forth about what to do when your cheated and just another solid track from Big. "Going Back To Cali" was in the same catagory as "Hypnotize" to me, but "Ten Crack Commandments", man. I heard so much about the song and when I first heard it I was like what?, but after listening to it some more and the lyrics it wasn't hard to see what the all the fuss was about. I can remember my sister always playing and attempting to sing"Playa Hater", so when I was listening to it I couldn't help but laugh. Big's attempt to sing is slightly better than her's (I think Puff got her too) but its not something we expected to see from him and shows his versatility, his having fun at what he does. To me Disc 2 is better than Disc 1, not taking anything away from it but Disc 2 is just the shit, you feel me? Overall, I put this album in my top 3 Rap albums of all time, it was certified Diamond (10x platnium). I put the video for "Sky's The Limit" I thought this was a sick concept. Tomorrow is Born Again. One


Life After Death

Ready To Die

Ready To Die was considered to be the album that brought the east coast back, it dropped in '94 a time when the west coast had Snoop, Dr. Dre and Tupac. The west had control of the rap music scene, until Biggie dropped Ready To Die. With the first single Juicy, the album began to soar. Going into my listening process of this album I was expecting big things (no pun intended), and i was not let down. After the 2nd song "Gimmie The Loot" I could see the story telling ability that he was known for. The album has plenty of what I call hidden gems in, "Suicidal Thoughts", "Everyday Sturggles", "One More Chance" and "The What". The what features Method Man, and the way that he and Big Rhyme going back and forth is bananas. Lyrically they both bring, Big even said that he thought Method Man got him on the track. I call One more chance a hidden gem because I had never heard this (the original) version. When I first looked at the ipod to see what track was playing you should have seen my face when it read "One More Chance", after listening to it a few times I thought it was (lyrically) better than the remix which is the more popular version of the song. The album is filled with what I consider east coast beats, (duh, he is the king of NY) which made it a little harder for me to listen to at first but actually grew on me. Puff Daddy, is prominently on the album his voice is on 9 tracks thus starting his trend of jumping on his artists albums. The 4 singles that came off this album "Juicy", Big Poppa", "One More Chance" remix and though it isn't officially a single there was a video for "Warning". Most of your favorite rappers (cough, Jay -Z) use lyrics from this album in their own music. Overall it was very easy to see why this album received the accolades that it did, and was considered a timeless classic going 4x's platnium. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Stay tuned tomorrow is "Life After Death". One.

Ready To Die

The Greatest of All Time?

After watching the trailer for the new movie NOTORIOUS in which they proclaim that he is the greatest rapper of all time, i had to sit back and really think about the statement. Being that he was in his prime while I was in elementary school, he was ahead of my time so I felt as if i really had to listen to his music something that i never really did. So I decided to listen to all of his albums and each day this week will be a personal review of each.