

The stars he name-checked - including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Essentially a boast rap about which R&B singers Biggie wants to have sex with, the two-verse favorite showed early on he’d become one of mainstream hip-hop’s most ribald stars. “Just Playing (Dreams),” an add-on to the 12-inch promo for “Juicy,’ stands as his catalog’s most obvious example.

The decades of intense idolatry surrounding Biggie’s catalog sometimes overlook that his best material often hung on his comedic wit.

Here are the Notorious B.I.G.’s best 25 songs, including collabs and featured appearances. 1 killer at the time: heart disease.Biggie's Biggest: The Notorious B.I.G.'s Top 15 Billboard Hot 100 Hits Had he not been killed by gunshots, his life could have been claimed by stress, which was a primary cause of Brooklyn’s No. As for Biggie, perhaps we should have been asking why he was motherfucking stressed. Of the seven leading death causes, homicide was in last place, with 11 cases per 100,000.Īll of this is to show that while Biggie and many other young black folks were worried about stick-up kids and gun-wielding hustlers, many of their mothers were worried about killers with no guns or faces. According to a 2002 report from the New York City Department of Health, from 1992 to 1996, there were 104 cancer deaths in Brooklyn for every 100,000 people. (Photo credit: Instagram)Īccording to, health conditions as a black woman in Brooklyn, or even in New York City, cancer was the second-highest cause of death at the time. The Brooklyn rapper imagined multiple scenarios under which his death might occur: In a shootout with cops while pursuing pathways out of poverty that President Obama would not approve of (“Gimme The Loot”) killed by jealous acquaintances who want to rob him for his riches (“Warning”) or, by his own finger on the trigger (“Suicidal Thoughts”).īacon and other meats May Increase Your Risk for This Lung Diseaseīut of all the ways Big imagined himself dying on that album, none of them reflected the real-life horror of death that affects African Americans today–especially his mother, Voletta Wallace.
Notorious big ready to die video series#
The 1994 album is filled with a series of poems illustrating the kind of street war gunplay that would eventually take his life. On “Ready to Die,” Biggie’s award-winning first album, murder seemed like the central theme of some self-fulfilling prophecy that was constantly on his mind. Wallace with Notorious B.I.G./Photo credit Voletta Wallace instagram) That mortality gap has widened since the 1990s. Black women are still most likely to die from breast cancer than all races of women, though they are less likely than white women to be diagnosed with it.

But in reality, not much has changed in that area for Black women. In that song, “Things Done Changed”, Biggie rapped that he was stressed about his mother’s breast cancer. Biggie Smalls, who was gunned down in Los Angeles when he was just 24 years old. It’s been nearly 20 years since of the death of “Brooklyn’s finest” hip hop artist, The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., in “Things Done Changed” from the album Ready to Die (Photo credit: Voletta Wallace instagram)ĭon’t ask me why I’m motherf*cking stressed, things done changed”
