When five bullets ripped through Tupac Shakur’s lean muscle and bone physique on November 30, 1994, perhaps Big’s fate was sealed. What happened in the intervening period would weigh on anybody’s soul. Life After Death gave us a dapper don who always dressed like he was ready for a funeral. Big was rocking Kangol hats, Coogi sweaters, dark sunglasses, and a pager tucked into his baggie jeans. The 22-year-old Bed-Stuy emcee channeled his experiences as a low-level street hood and dreams of large-scale success through vivid lyricism and superhuman rap ability. The cinematic rise and fall of a gangster gave us the clearest iteration of the New York street hustler this side of Super Fly. Released in 1994, Ready to Die is a rum punch of a rap record - maybe the greatest ever made. Without Life After Death, Biggie’s oeuvre would have leaned on just one album. Rarely has an artist done so much in a discography so compact. The way things played out makes Life After Death a chilling work of dark prophecy. Had its creator lived to see its release, the album would still have been a cutting meditation on mortality, akin to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Yet, flowing through its platinum outline is the dark specter of death. It’s a blockbuster rap record - all fulsome beats, commanding verses, unchecked experimentation, sharp pop instincts, and mammoth singles. The legend of Big was crystallized on his double-disc sophomore opus, Life After Death, released just 16 days after his death.
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