Notorious B.I.G.-- Life After Death (Bad Boy 78612)

I will now give you this review in two parts: The enthusiastic Hip Hop supporter, and then the jaded Hip Hop critic.

Supporter: Another like that album from the prime motivater of Hip Hop's NYC Playa scene. The rhymes are straight-up Notorious flava, with a number of guest rhymers including: Jay Z, Lil Kim, Lil Cease, bringing in their own spice for a tasty stew of got-mine-n-I'm-usin'-it hip hop. The beats fall in line with Puffy et al.'s production--head nodin', license plate vibrating (not rattling though) beats that are intertwined with skits, interludes and the like. There's even an adaptation of Schooly D's classic "PSK": "B-I-G is makin his cream, bitches always say, 'what the hell does that mean?'"

This is the kind of CD that you can put in the car and cruise to, put in the player and chill to, or throw on the tables and party to. He employs his usual mix of dark humor and outright pompousness to bring you onboard the Biggie experience and show you what's up in Big Poppa's world. Biggie does however show more maturity on this album and is a little less scrappy and in-your-face than he was on Ready To Die. Packed with head noddin' beats and intense rhymes that stick with you like a reckless ticket (just ask Biz Markie), this double album is tight, no doubt.

Critic: I mean, call me an over-the-hill, grumpy True-schooler but what the hell?! All respects due to the memory of Notorious, but maybe his passing will bring on a bit more sober, reasonable mood.

Hip Hop music once had a credibility problem because it was radical and new but the movement was positive and motivating; now its credibility problem is that the subject matter is so gratuitously overrun with sex, guns, drugs, and money, that old white women feel like flippin' kilos and knockin' over liquor stores. Now, I realize that the Playa style is all about entertainment, the artists really don't carry on the lives that their songs represent, and the vast majority of listeners can handle that. But it's the 5%-10% that can't handle that who are f@#*ing things up for the rest of us.

Unfortunately, it would be my opinion that the onslaught of commercially based sweetened condensed and distilled playa crap that's killing Hip Hop in this country. Biggie is dead. Somebody capped him because he was a star and because his music presented him as a target and the person with the trigger couldn't handle the fiction. I don't think that Biggie killed Tupac-- that would be bad business. . . and who the hell killed Biggie? It was probably the ignorance of an impressionable listener, but it definitely was the forces of commercialism on the part of BOTH Black and White businessmen who make mad loot off of the objectification of the Young Black Male, much like the objectification of the Young White Female. When Biggie got shot, his family went to a funeral and some businessmen went to the bank.

So take this album for what you will, enjoy it, but listen to what it says and think about what has happened and just remember that you spent $22.00 and you might even want to think about where that money went.

--- Dan Poarch