The case remains unsolved, and conspiracy theories abound, but one. Biggie Smalls Quotes and Lyrics About Life and Death Discover the man behind the powerful lyrics with Biggie Smalls quotes to uplift and inspire Christopher George Latore Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G. In a culture where the lives of young, black men have become increasingly expendable, it's now necessary to state what once seemed obvious: Biggie Smalls did not want to die. On March 9, 1997, just weeks before the release of his sophomore effort, Life After Death, Biggie was gunned down in Los Angeles. There's a haunted sadness to the sung refrain, and beneath it a spoken plea is audible: "I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die. Phone callers' issue threats: "I'm gonna kill you," "We comin' for you." On the closing "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," Smalls' world-weary delivery indicates that he considers the song title to be a perverted joke. He acknowledges a vulnerability that verges on paranoia in "My Downfall," swathed in mournful strings and neo-operatic female voices: "Before I go to sleep, I check the bed and the closet." Kelly, in preborn-again mode on You Tonight."īut near the end of the disc, Smalls is no longer the playful rogue, the marauding hustler prowling his ghetto kingdom. 1 on the Billboard pop charts on the strength of a mesmerizing party single, "Hypnotize." There's more raw fun in the "Hypnotize" vein with cameos by Too Short, Lil' Kim, Puff Daddy, Angela Winbush and R. Instead, Smalls and Combs have made a disc packed with hook-filled arrangements that straddle the worlds of hard-core hip-hop and mainstream rhythm and blues - even before Smalls' death, the disc almost certainly would have made its debut at No. But Smalls also avoids petty tit-for-tat posturing there are no putdowns of his late verbal sparring partner Shakur, no words to fuel the purported rivalry between East and West Coast. Too many tracks settle into pimp-gangbanger cliches with numbingly explicit language, casual misogyny and, in two instances, homophobic references. : biggie, : mo money mo problems, : 04:15, : 5.84, : 192 kbit/sec, : mp3. Ready to Die is a milestone album, for sure, but it's nowhere near as extravagant or epic as Life After. Over the course of only two albums, he achieved every success imaginable, perhaps none greater than this unabashedly over-reaching success. Unfortunately, two weeks before its release, he was shot and killed at just 24 years old. In hindsight, Biggie couldn't have ended his career with a more fitting album than Life After Death. This is Biggie’s sophomore effort after Ready to Die, 22. We’re on another streak of death on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "Life After Death" has its share of filler. 179: Life After Death, The Notorious B.I.G.