Making a Masterpiece: The Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Life After Death,’ 20 Years Later
In the mid- and late-1980s, hip-hop’s cultural and commercial ground was shifting so rapidly that it could be difficult to pin down. When Kurtis Blow and Whodini gave way to LL and BDP, the question of what it looked like to be a popular hip-hop artist got longer, more complicated. Life After Death was the first album to take as its subject the experience of being a rap star and all that it entails, from feuds to adulation to watching your life get litigated on daytime television.
See the very first verse on the album: Big begins by walking the listener through a murder plot, and right when you start to imagine that this is an alternate timeline where Chris Wallace never left Bed-Stuy, he blurs the line between art and life: “I’m a criminal—/Way before the rap shit/Bust a gat, shit, Puff won’t even know what happened/If it’s done smoothly.” So then what about kidnapping daughters on “Hypnotize,” sticking guns in jaws on “Last Day,” doing God-knows-what on “What’s Beef?”
The most obvious bit of professional one-upmanship is on “Kick in the Door,” which is essentially an extended taunt at Nas, Raekwon, and Ghostface, complete with a fourth wall-breaking jab at DJ Premier—who produced the song—for his work with Jeru the Damaja. On “One Day,” from Wrath of the Math, Jeru imagines hip-hop personified, tied up with a gun to its throat, having been kidnapped by Puff, and subsequently by Suge. (The joke is that Big recorded over Premier’s “Kick in the Door” beat despite Puff’s protestations.)
The most pointed barbs Big saved for Nas. On Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Ghost and Rae aimed the famous “Shark Niggas (Biters)” skit at Big partially on Nas’ behalf, the charge being that Ready to Die’s cover owed Illmatic for the rapper-as-child theme. Big made no bones about what he thought:
“MCs used to be on cruddy shit
Took home Ready to Die, listened, studied shit
Now they on some money shit, successful out the blue
They lightweight, fra-gil-e
My nine milli make the whites shake
That’s why my money never funny
And you still recouping, stupid.”
Not only was Big knocking Nas for adopting a mafioso personality on It Was Written—he was twisting the knife, apparently alluding to the rumors that Nas borrowed money to buy outfits for the Source Awards.
“Notorious Thugs” finds Big once again hyper-conscious of the expectations that came with Ready to Die’s success. Even the rift with Pac was framed as something outsiders constructed: “so-called beef with you-know-who.” Elsewhere on the album, he was qualifying radio songs (“Fuck You Tonight”) with ski mask songs (“Last Day”). On “Mo Money Mo Problems,” he merged the two, dodging DEA wiretaps with Diana Ross.
Then, of course, there’s “Going Back to Cali.” The intra-city squabbles (Nas rapping about snatching the crown off Biggie’s head) and dissolved friendships (Pac rapping about Faith) were one thing, but Big seemed to find the notion that he should turn on a whole coast ridiculous. In many ways, Life After Death embraces mythmaking, casting Big as a tragic figure too monstrous to be contained by a single disc. But he showed little patience for the paper-thin narratives that he read about in The Source. So you get him flipping LL’s original, dragging groupies to Fatburger, and ending the song, coyly, “Cali: great place to visit!”
