Ready to Die

The Notorious B.I.G.

Bad Boy, 1994

biggie spread the love the Brooklyn way on his historic debut, introducing us to the most immediately likable voice in hip-hop history. “I made the record for New York, but I want the world to hear it,” Biggie said. Ready to Die executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, who had read about the fledgling Brooklyn rapper in The Source magazine, pushed his new discovery to leaven the stick-up-kid self-mythologizing of “Machine Gun Funk” and “Gimme the Loot” with inviting party-up pop like “Big Poppa” and the ecstatically playful origin story “Juicy.”

But it was Biggie’s gift of gab and enormous personality that made Ready to Die so wonderful — whether he was offering a complex vision of the mean streets of Fort Greene on “Things Done Changed,” kicking it Bonnie and Clyde-style on “Me and My Bitch,” or delivering rags-toriches brags like “Birthdays was the worst days/Now we sip champagne when we’re thirsty.” In the process, he remade rap in his image. And as with Kurt Cobain, his tragic death while still in his twenties will always leave us wondering how far this Nineties legend might have gone.