The First Time I Heard "Ready to Die"

Image via Complex Original

Life After Death came first for me. In 1994, when Ready to Die was released, I was still listening to Very Necessary, about to discover Brandy, and gathering around a boombox with the neighborhood kids to listen to the secret song about masturbation on Dookie. It wasn't until after Biggie died, after I'd watched Puff Daddy pay tribute at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, that I heard Ready to Die in its entirety. It was in my older brother's Nissan Maxima that had keypad door locks and a cassette tape hookup for a Discman. The sound system in that car was nothing special, but "Gimme the Loot" still managed to rattle the dashboard. And as for Biggie, he was just cool as hell, with a voice as nimble as it was hulking, especially on "Big Poppa," my favorite track at the time. This was the album that decided my stance in the Biggie vs. Tupac debates come high school. 

I was 11 when Ready to Die came out and was fully immersed in Wu-Tang culture at that time. I had grown up watching kung fu flicks with my cousin and uncle in between playing Nintendo and watching wrestling. By the time I heard Biggie's album all the way through, I was a year older and a year wiser. My uncle had this souped-up burgundy Mercury Cougar with pitch black tints and a sound system that brought as much blunt-smoke-scented fun as it did noise tickets. I was very familiar with the singles "Juicy," "Big Poppa," and "One More Chance (Remix)" through the radio and the fabled Video Jukebox Network, a.k.a. The Box. People used to call in those videos all fucking day and by the time I heard the original version of "One More Chance" I knew all the words to the remix. I was also privy to "Warning" because I heard it everywhere: cars, boomboxes, etc.

My uncle used to drive me through the hood and put me on game. I asked him if he had any Biggie and the first song he put on was "The What" featuring Method Man. I was confused because Ghostface talked hella shit on the Purple Tape about Big biting Nas. I had so many questions. Why would Meth be on a record with this guy? How does the Wu feel about this? My uncle then played a bunch of other tracks but the one that really changed my uninformed opinion about Biggie was "Gimmie the Loot." That song is so vivid, like a comic book. To be able to come full circle and help turn that song into a comic strip is one the most surreal moments of my young editorial career.

I fell in love with hip-hop in the '80s but it was between 1993 and 1997 that it really started to take over my life. Ready to Die played a big part.

I remember Ready to Die's singles. If you fucked with hip-hop at the time like I did (i.e., keeping Maxell tapes close to your stereo to record gems when they came on), you knew loads of Biggie lines before the album dropped. Shit was different when that tape got passed to my Walkman, though. I played through the entire album, but getting to that Lord Finesse-produced "Suicidal Thoughts?" Not to say the album didn't have darker moments but this track encapsulated all of the frustration and depression that is missing from everyone "turning up" and "being in the trap." Fuck Biggie being the greatest rapper alive, fuck the wit and the pristine flows. It was that personal connection, the brooding and concern living behind the charm, the smile, and the Coogi sweaters. Remembering WHY you were hugging the block, WHY you're a "worthless buddhahead," WHY you're sticking pregnant mothers for their #1 mom chains. You're living in a situation where you feel there's no real way out, and living in a community that frowns upon any kind of psychiatric help. Real life shit you can't get off your chest, and won't even dare getting off your chest for fear of being labeled as a "pussy" or being "too emotional?" Yeah, that shit can drive someone insane. Drive them to doing something drastic... like calling their boy, expressing all of that frustration, then ending their own life.

"Suicidal Thoughts" is one of those tracks that grabs a hold early, runs you through the wringer, then leaves you with a lot to think about and no real explanations. It was the best way to end the album, honestly. The bad boy doesn't always win in the end. 

Like most people, my early music education came courtesy of my older sibling. My older sister had a CD stack that was filled with everything that was popping back in the day. It was my musical Tower of Babel—no matter how disparate the selections were (it featured everything from Super Cat to movie soundtracks), it was all good music to me because my sister hand-selected it. One of the albums I remember her playing the most was Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. One of my fondest memories was us waking up to get ready for school as “Keep Ya Head Up” played in the background. 2Pac was her favorite rapper and, by extension, mine.

So when Biggie dropped his debut a year later, despite it being masterpiece, it took a minute for it to get heavy burn in my crib. I remember listening to Hot 97 on our Aiwa stereo and hearing "Juicy" so much that I memorized the words. I remember us getting excited every time the video came on The Box. Still, even though I thought "Big Poppa" was a prime candidate for smoothest song ever made, and "Warning" the most creative, I wouldn't listen to the album in full until after I purchased Life After Death. It wasn't until I sat down with his final studio album and heard the wittiness, the complexities, the brooding melancholy, and the rhymes that crackled like broken electrical wires, that I thought I needed to hear how this all started. It was the only time my sister didn't fully put me up on game.

If my parents weren’t going to be happy about my love of rap, especially when I was a teen, they shouldn’t have played so much R&B around the house and in the car when I was young. Those songs became the DNA for the music my parents once saw fit to take away from me. (Mom, don’t feel bad that you snatched my copy of Busta Rhymes' Extinction Level Event—I get it.) But they didn’t hear the connection. I wish my dad would’ve been there in the late afternoon, one day during high school, when I discovered, while playing his vinyl of I Want You, that G-Unit and Red Spyda had sampled Marvin Gaye’s “Come Live With Me Angel” for “Wanna Get to Know You.” I ran out of the kitchen where I was making Kraft macaroni and cheese to listen. I burned the food.

So when I finally listened to Ready to Die in its entirety (headphones, algebra homework), what jumped out most was the R. Kelly sample on “Unbelievable.” I loved “Your Body’s Callin” and couldn’t get over what DJ Premier had done to it, isolating just two words from that love song and charging them with an entirely different meaning; it lit me up, made me feel invincible and cool. Eventually, the album opened up further, but at first blush all I needed was “Unbelievable.” The song stuck with me, too. The first time I ever got drunk, at a strange party my freshman year of college, I told someone who I didn't know well enough that “I wear boxers so my dick can breathe.” Sorry. That was unnecessary.