CTS Album Review: NOTORIOUS BIG-READY TO DIE

[@marvinbohme7575]

It's one of the few big hip-hop albums that needed quite a long time to grow on me until becoming one of my favorites. The reason was that the production which stands too much behind the vibrant presence of Biggie and left me disappointed for a while. It has various layers of samples at certain times - the original album release must've had a Parliament sample on "Machine Gun Funk" before being cut out on the remastered version - but it didn't feel as consistently hard-hitting or intruiging like on "Gimme the Loot" at first. The more the production grew on me the more I appreciated the amalgamation with his flow. As you said, his flow was truly amazing and his deep, leaned-back-type-of-voice fits various sounds. If he's the best storyteller of hip-hop is quite debatable, but he's one of them next to Nas for example which kind of gets more peotic about street life as Big who painted a more cinematic picture. I personally favor Kendrick Lamar or Lupe Fiasco, although both are leaning more towards the conscious side of the genre. 2Pac, Ghostface Killah, Scarface, The Roots or OutKast sometimes as storytellers are top tier. Sometimes, I think that the best storytellers of hip-hop aren't necessarily even English speaking folks. The Brazilian group Racionais MC's, for me, are also among the best in terms of social and cultural turbulences and problems such as racism, poverty and systematic violence. I guess that Nas and Mobb Deep and some Wu-Tang solo projects will be covered in the near future and I'm definitely interested how you perceive the core of boom bap Big L, Big Pun and DMX are also fantastic MC's that followed after 2Pac and Biggie who also, believe it or not, came to me in my earliest memories of recognizing hip-hop as a kid :D

[@combingthestacks1470]

Biggie in many ways is the rapper of my youth. There are many great storytellers in New York hip hope alone (Big Daddy Kane, Nas, Rakim come to mind), but Biggie had something larger than life about his storytelling that still is vibrant to this day. We're going to fall into tons of 90s hip hop over the next year and we're all very excited about it. Thanks for the tip on the Racionais MCs. We are always looking for bonus albums and I've added them in the queue to potentially cover.

[@marvinbohme7575]

​​​​@@combingthestacks1470But keep in mind: It's Brazilian Portugese (Smooth cadences incoming!) and the content is mainly rooted into their specific culture, so it can be challenging to dicipher at first. But then again, themes like poverty, street life and structural violence is pretty much universal and their presence, especially the charisma from Mano Brown is hypnotizing over long tracks (sometimes 7-11 minutes). And there are some people on KZbin who made an effort to translate the lyrics into English and if the accuracy is to be trusted, they have to be one of the best guys to paint pictures with metaphors of the everyday life in the favelas (Brazilian ghettos). The only distracting thing might be length of various big und culturally significant songs of theirs. And maybe also the static sample with just subtle changes, but that shouldn't be a knock if you like the steadiness of "The Infamous" for example. Also their live albums are great for the crowd responses ("1000 Trutas, 1000 Tretas). I know of them for just about a month or so and they have this special dark yet soulful delivery and that resonates with their community like no other rap act in Brazil. I started with: - "Sobrevivendo no inferno" (1997) (English: Surviving in Hell) English translation of the whole album with extra facts in the description: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZmVoqOPqamgpZYsi=HkkJRzLf7WUx1g9E - "Raio-X do Brasil" (1993) Those are maybe a bit more accessible in terms of overall length. "Nada Como um Dia Após o Outro Dia" (English: Nothing Like the Day After Another Day) where you have so-called "hip-hop anthems of Brazil" is too bloated, almost 2 hours, but the big songs are considered the stellar highlights of their career.