Ready to Die |
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Released: September 13, 1994 Peak: 15 US, 3 RB, -- UK, -- CN, -- AU Sales (in millions): 6.0 US, 0.3 UK, 6.64 world (includes US and UK) Genre: rap |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 69:05 |
Rating: 4.560 out of 5.00 (average of 19 ratings)
Quotable:“The album that reinvented East Coast rap for the gangsta age.” – Steve Huey, AllMusic.comAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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The Arrival of a Classic and a StarReady to Die, an “East Coast rap classic,” EW’12 was “the first credible East Coast response to the gangsta rhetoric of N.W.A….and other Los Angeles hardcore rappers.” TM In fact, it can be considered “one of the greatest hardcore rap albums” AM of all time. It notably “reinvented East Coast rap for the gangsta age” AM by combining the “in-you-faceness [that] is pure New York” RD and “production…as sumptuous as anything Dr. Dre was cooking up in California.” RDIt made Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, a star. “It’s hard to find a first album that delivered a superstar more fully formed.” EW’12 “This is the true heavyweight champion.” RD “He changed rap forever.” 500 Sean “Puffy” CombsThe album also vaulted Sean “Puffy” Combs, into the spotlight. He read “about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine” 500 and signed him to Uptown Records, where he was an A&R man. That was 1992. Biggie was in the middle of recording Ready to Die when Combs was fired by Uptown. He then formed his own label, Bad Boy Records, and Biggie joined the label and completed his album. WK Combs’ production “gives the album an unparalleled sheen.” RDBiggie’s Talent“It was Biggie’s gift of gab, enormous personality, and sense of humor that made Ready to Die so wonderful.” 500 He “came off as a okester, but here he blossomed into the hip-hop epitome of brutal elegance.” TM He “established himself as one of the greatest storytellers in modern music.” PM Ready to Die features “hip hop’s clearest articulation of the human dilemma by its greatest narrator.” VB “The late, great Big man rhymes on the fine line between birth, death, struggle, triumph, poverty, and wealth with incomparable wit, insight, and drama.” VB “His raps are easy to understand” AM and “he has a loose, easy flow and a talent for piling multiple rhymes on top of one another in quick succession.” AM “No rapper ever made multi-syllabic rhymes (‘Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis / When I was dead broke man I couldn’t picture this’) sound as smooth.” TL He has “the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history.” 500“He’s blessed with a flair for the dramatic;” AM “yet, no matter how much he heightens things for effect, it’s always easy to see elements of Biggie in his narrators and of his own experience in the details; everything is firmly rooted in reality, but plays like scenes from a movie.” AM His BackgroundHe was, after all, “a Brooklyn drug dealer, and, if his early interviews are to be believed, not a very nice one.” AM He worked his real-life scenarios into “overblown taes of cruelty toward women, gang-member insecurity, and thug life under the constant threat of death.” TM Luckily, though, he filtered “his street corner experiences…through his considerable charm. The result was a record that mixed long stretches of menace…with romance…and lots of humor.” TL Biggie also “slips in and out of different contradictory characters with ease.” AMThe Singles“Recognizing that they couldn’t offer a whole album of nonstop killing sprees, Wallace and…Combs added upbeat pop-leaning cuts.” TM “There are dream-sequence fantasies of a life spent enjoying opulence” TM such as on the lead single Juicy which samples Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit,” in which he announces his “stardom before even hitting the Billboard charts” PMThe “ecstatically playful origin story” 500 is a “rags-to-riches tale…[that] chronicles a childhood spent in poverty, being young and dealing drugs, committing crimes and then, of course, tasting success for the first time.” PM It was “a flex that would turn into a lifetime and a legacy of adoration.” PM Paste magazine’s Matt Mitchell calls it “the greatest lead single from a hip-hop album ever.” PM Biggie followed up “Juicy” with “the equally brilliant” PM “party-up pop” 500 of Big Poppa. The song is an “overweight-lover anthem” AM which showcases a “silk-spun groove” PM that is “danceable to no end.” PM The song samples the Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets.” The third single, One More Chance, is a “graphic sex rap” AM that samples the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” The singles make for “a trio of tracks that go toe-to-toe with any three songs made by anyone in rap history.” PM
Other SongsBeyond the singles, “a sense of doom pervades his most involved stories.” AM Gimme the Loot is about “fierce bandits” AM while Me & My Bitch is a “Bonnie and Clyde-style” 500 tale of a “a hustler’s beloved girlfriend.” AM Warning is about “robbers out for Biggie’s newfound riches.” AM “All die in hails of gunfire.” AM There’s also the “self-mythologizing of Machine Gun Funk and [the aforementioned] ‘Gimme the Loot.’” 500“The album is also sprinkled with reflections on the soul-draining bleakness of the streets – Things Done Changed, Ready to Die, and Everyday Struggle are powerfully affecting in their confusion and despair.” AM “Producer Easy Mo Bee’s deliberate beats do get a little samey, but it hardly matters: this is Biggie’s show.” AM “By the time Suicidal Thoughts closes the album on a heartbreaking note, it’s clear why he was so revered even prior to his death.” AM His DeathSadly, Ready to Die was the only album released during Biggie’s lifetime, “but what an album to stake your claim on.” PM He was only 24 years old when he was shot and killed in March 1997. He had become embroiled in the East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry two years earlier when rapper and former friend Tupac Shakur accused Smalls of knowing of a plot to have him shot. A second shooting in September 1996 left Shakur dead and escalated the tension between the two rival camps with more accusations that Smalls was in on the plot to kill Tupac.Biggie was right on the cusp of releasing his second album, Life After Death, in March 1997 when he was shot and killed in a car after leaving a Soul Train Awards after-party. The album was released sixteen days after his death. “As with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far he might have gone.” 500 |
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First posted 5/22/2011; last updated 7/19/2025. |
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