Ready to Die (OG Version) – JGilla Editorial

A few weeks ago, the Ready to Die (OG version) dropped. I must say like a million other hip-hop fans, I was both skeptical and excited to see what it offered. I was going to do this beat by beat write-up but my man and KTL contributor, JGilla, did a perfect write-up. Check out his editorial after the jump. And if you don’t have what we are talking about:

Ready to Die – The OG Bootleg version (courtesy of RR)

JGILLA writes:

When that Intro came on my clear tape copy of Illmatic in the high school hallway, blasting in my newly acquired Walkman with the Superbass feature, it was like putting on that white Helly Hansen jacket that topped out all the gear I had been sporting prior. It felt just right, had a little swagger, but was closer to Fila than Prada. Between the Spring when Illmatic dropped and the Fall when Biggie Smalls emerged I finally got my hands on a Discman. I remember laying in a college dorm bed staring at the ceiling during my first days as a university freshman, decorating my new life with the atmosphere of Biggie Smalls knocking in my headphones, loving his technique, his confidence, his desperation, and his determination. Putting on Ready to Die was like slipping on Radio Rahim’s four finger rings for the first time. There was definitely street credibility, definitely power, definitely swagger. But like Radio’s rings, Ready to Die was that very thing that let us escape reality in hopes of creating our own.

I think the class of ‘94, the Golden Era of Hip Hop, or whatever you prefer to call it, was important not only because of the music that was made, but because of the place that it occupied within the history of Hip Hop. The soloists and groups that emerged from 1993-1995 represent the moment right before Hip Hop shifted towards popular culture. In 1994, even our biggest acts were still considered fringe. Hip Hop was emerging as a mainstream music yet it escaped the traps of the eventual Mickey D’s ads. It was still too close to its gritty source to be considered sanitary enough for full on consumption. In the mid 90’s, Hip Hop was closing in on the fulcrum of its commercial turn, yet it was still so gutterish that it maintained its ability to shock, surprise, motivate, and emote. For me, Ready to Die was the prototype album that rode the line between Sean John commercialism and Primo’s precision beats. Whether it was Diddy’s plan or Biggie’s ability to project, the ingredients in Ready to Die shaped a generation of strivers- and mostly posers- that are still playing out that scenario today. As gutter as he promoted himself, Biggie was a perfectly refined Brooklyn vessel built to deliver Harlem’s unwritten promise that through belief in our craft and our culture, we could become that elusive but obtainable full version of ourselves. With Big, it seemed a renaissance was always possible.

The entire Ready to Die album sweat humanity, ranging from struggle and anger, to striving and success. It seemed like Big’s obsession with death, and therefore the idea that living was a finite proposition, made him futuristic in a way that related to many of us. But unlike false prophets, the future that Biggie painted was right around the corner, even though most of us listening never could imagine scenarios of success where speed boats and money green sofas were a paid for part of Hip Hop life. Where the beauty of Illmatic was its directness and rootedness in the present, Ready to Die seemed to anticipate the chance to escape reality without losing sight of it- its vigor, its pitfalls, and its potential. Biggie had the ability to predict- and narrate- the success of himself in Hip Hop- and America- even before he had experienced it for himself. And I believe it was precisely this ability to imagine that a petty criminal could have an accountant handling his phone bills that made Biggie, and Ready to Die, an intoxicant for those of us hoping to become something better. Ready to Die was the blueprint for some of us youth figuring out how to grow up and finally find ourselves as part of mainstream America- without apology for who we were and where we were from.

Though the entire album creates the atmosphere, two songs carry the banner for the ‘94 era according to Big: Machine Gun Funk (Premier remix) and Juicy (Pete Rock remix). The former delivers on the promise that the life, stories, and rhythm of the neighborhood are the basis for Biggie’s view, while the latter softly and almost sadly celebrates the possibility of moving beyond reality, even if at a cost. For me, those two songs deliver the gift and the curse of Radio Rahim’s optimism. There is no doubt that the straight funk and ill drum pattern of Primo’s Machine Gun Funk remix is for the heads. Its hardness of content and music- without resorting to early ’90s militancy- packages street stories without politics. But unlike the version officially released, the Pete Rock Juicy remix is a subtle tinting of the more popular version. Pete’s minimalizing of the soundtrack makes the song ghostly, like Big is already looking back on his success, even before having experienced it fully. He could’ve made this song in 2008, re-telling his hopes, dreams, and the reality that he hoped to live out years after the Fall of 1994. With the directness and reality of Machine Gun Funk and the retrospective distance of Juicy remixed, I think Biggie gave us the possibility that we could be us and make it, that it was possible to live in the present and concoct the future at the same time. Big lived it, Sean knew it, and we dreamed it.

Like the suffocation of Radio Rahim at the hands of an almost anonymous killer, we all know how the Biggie Smalls story came to an end. It boils down to the fulfillment of his own psychotic prophecies about being followed, hunted, and eventually killed either by those jealous of his success, or by his own will and spirit unable to reconcile the reality of his identity as one part opportunistic crook and one part cultural hero. But when I sit here 14 years later thinking about that first album as it plays on my iPhone, the Ready to Die sonic imprint mixed with the rattle of the 3 train heading uptown, I have to believe maybe the Notorious story has yet to end. Because even though Big seemed ready to die, the more you listen to him rhyme on that first album- the optimism of his thick skinned stories, the joy he found in cultivating his rapping techniques, the belief in being himself without apology, and the faith that the end of the story could always be Unbelievable- the more obvious it is that what he was- and what he was about- will never die.