Dre’s voice we hear between verses, dispatching from Compton.
It goes unmentioned here, but hip-hop’s region of choice had changed too: New York’s first generation of rap inventors had given way to the West Coast, so it’s Dr. Life used to be about funny hairstyles, curbside games, and lounging at barbecues, he says, but “Turn your pagers to 1993,” and the story has taken an inexplicably dark turn.
Its intro maps B.I.G’s life against the sounds of various eras-’70s “Superfly,” ‘80s “Top Billin’,” and ‘90s Doggystyle-before the 21-year-old launches into “Things Done Changed,” an opening monologue that sets the chaotic scene.
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Even then, the album was a reflection: an over-the-top, fisheye union address of the city’s waning crack era, and a reeling admission that something must have gone terribly wrong for it to have happened. opened Ready to Die by complaining about changes in the city around him over 20 years ago. The thrill is a combination of fear and gall, rooted in the security that the scene will likely never repeat itself.īut there may be something habitual in New York’s craned gaze backward. Young transplants and natives alike would rather hear old tall tales than experience anything near it firsthand distinct from nostalgia, it's more like moving into a home where a murder occurred.
The lawlessness it describes-robberies at gunpoint on the A train, open-air hand-to-hand crack deals on Fulton St., shootouts with the NYPD-land unfathomably to most New Yorkers today. But the shift has fossilized a certain kind of rap album, like The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut Ready to Die, released in 1994. This is undoubtedly a good thing-entrepreneurial city teens today hustle fashion trends to ogling editors instead of baggies to scraggly addicts. Sure, there are bike messengers that peddle weed packed in plastic jars and Russian mobsters who launder money through Coney Island auto-shops, but the kind of trap-house, dope-boy, Robin Hood archetype that still carries in cities like Atlanta has been wiped clean from tri-state folklore. What are you waiting for? Check that out here and watch the video below.New York City doesn’t sell drugs anymore. There is also a companion long-form audio documentary of the same name, available only on Amazon Music and available to Prime members, which is a deeper dive with longer interviews. The producers and Coker also talk about the album’s deft balance of hard, hard street tracks and sweeter songs like “Juicy” and “Big Poppa,” as well as the true meaning behind its ominous title, “Ready to Die.”
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(Also in celebration of the album’s 25th anniversary, Rhino and are releasing a limited-edition boxed set that features every album track – plus two bonus tracks, “Who Shot Ya”?” and “Just Playing (Dreams)” – on nine 7” colored-vinyl singles.) I’m really ready to sign you for some big money.’ Came down, let’s sign me, let’s put me to work.” “He was like, ‘Yo Money, this is a serious thing. “When Puff heard me, he got me to the office,” Big says in the doc. Puff Daddy), which led to his record deal with Bad Boy, and the recording of the classic album that made his reputation as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Similar to the way the Beastie Boys doc focused on the group’s five-year creative peak, this one zooms in on the period between when Big was transitioning from underground buzz to being discovered by Diddy (a.k.a.