Vinyl: Biggie Small's post-mortum success

By Siegfried Bilstein     3/10/11 6:00pm

"You're nobody (until somebody kills you)" sings Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G. aka Christopher Wallace while mocking Dean Martin on the posthumously released double-album Life after Death. Released just 16 days after Biggie's untimely death on March 9, 1997, at the hand of an unknown assailant during a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, CA, the album's ironic title symbolizes the career and personality of one of hip-hop's greatest legends. While in death Biggie's status has grown to monumental proportions, his fame and influence while he was alive were massive. In fact, footage of his funeral procession in Brooklyn includes images of Brooklyn erupting after someone plays his single "Hypnotize." With lyrics of frighteningly emotional depth that frequently contemplated his own demise, spelling out life's ills and even the material successes of a man who spent his teen years as a crack dealer, Biggie is one of the most complex, skilled and fascinating emcees of all times.Fourteen years after his death this week, Biggie is not under-appreciated: any rap fan's top five or even top 10 list includes him. He has several chart topping singles like "Juicy," "Mo' Money Mo' Problems" and "Big Poppa," despite only releasing one album while alive: Ready to Die. Not to cheapen his commercially successful singles (some of his best and most interesting songs are instantly accessible), if you listen closely to Biggie you'll learn a lot about a man who is much more than your average rapper.

I like to think about Biggie in a few different ways. He is an incredibly skilled rapper. For example, take "Brooklyn's Finest" off of Jay-Z's debut album, Reasonable Doubt. The way Biggie dances around the beat by sprinkling multiple rhymes in one line and only fragments of sentences in others is fascinating. Biggie is even better when he skips syllables, as he shows off in his alleged Tupac Shakur diss line "If fay' had twins, she'd have two pacs . get it? Tupac's?" He shows off more traditionally in his collaboration with Midwest rap group Bone Thugz N Harmony's "Notorious Thugs." He easily strings together five or six rhyming syllables in flows like "Y'all niggaz be scramblin, gamblin / Up in restaraunts with mandolins, and violins / We just sittin' here tryin' to win, tryin' not to sin / High off weed and lots of gin / So much smoke need oxygen, steadily countin' them Benjamins." In fact, National Public Radio reported Biggie learned his phrasing and diction abilities from jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison, who taught a teenage "Chris" about scat singing and rhythm.

For those who are more concerned with Biggie's lyrical content, he provides a fascinating window into the environment in which he grew up and the psychology of a man with an overwhelming sense of guilt for his hedonistic tendencies. Painting pictures of mob inspired crime sprees under the auspices of his daughter ("I'm seeing body after body and our mayor Giuliani/ Ain't trying to see no black man turn into John Gotti / My daughter use a potty so she's older now/ Educated street knowledge I'm gonna mold 'er now" -"Everyday Struggle"), Biggie is known for his storytelling and his raw unforgiving lyrics. The song "Suicidal Thoughts" is one of the heaviest songs in hip-hop. In the style of a desperate phone call to Puff Daddy, Biggie rambles for two and a half minutes with no chorus about how he considers his criminal activity a failure to himself and his family ("I know my mother wished she got a fuckin' abortion . I wonder if I died, would tears come to her eyes? Forgive me for my disrespect; forgive me for my lies"). Actually, Puff Daddy features on almost every Biggie track, sort of like his hype man. Some claim Puffy was trying to ride Biggie's coattail, which is not an entirely fair assumption, as Puffy was an established producer and record executive before signing Biggie.

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Some academics argue that gangsta' rap like Biggie's actually symbolizes a universal frustration of the promises of '60s era civil rights leaders. In fact, on his Bone Thugz track one of the other rappers claims "Beg my pardon to Martin, we aint marchin' we shootin'." An unrepentant product of the 1980s crack epidemic, most clearly on display in "Ten Crack Commandments," Biggie provides an unfettered, although at times fantastical, view of urban decay. Biggie, like most rappers, has some unmistakably sexist words for women, but songs like "Me and My Bitch" confuse the matter when he muses over how much he cares about his girl ("And then we lie together, cry together / I swear to God I hope we fuckin' die together").

I was about nine years old when Biggie died: the only rapper I was aware of was Will Smith, and I had no notion of Biggie's death. As I grew older, however, I found some very universal themes portrayed both in a beautiful and gritty way in his music. Life is a struggle, and it's not always easy to act "right" and reconcile your own desires and ambitions with your morals, family or society. This almost seems silly to say in the context of college students on an incredibly comfortable campus, but I personally like to believe that although the "ghetto" is his context, Biggie's word is for all.

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