Send "Notorious (Notorious B.I.G.) " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Rapreviews |
 Ten years and change since Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down. Recently a rap fan sarcastically told me that Puffy has profitted off recycling the same 25 Biggie songs ever since. My first instinct was to rise to Bad Boy's defense, then I thought about it and held my tongue. In truth looking at the Biggie related releases since "Life After Death" it's hard to argue. "Born Again" took cameo verses and built songs around them, then filled out the album with rearrangements of other tracks. After that we got a remastered re-release of "Ready to Die," which was Biggie's old shit with a little new polish. From there we got the awkward "Duets" album, which took the same small catalogue of Biggie material and imagined it as collaborations with other artists. The album could have actually been called "Born Again 2" but that wouldn't have been as marketable. While said rap fan's sarcastic quip was not entirely accurate given that Biggie has been spliced, sliced and diced into "new" songs ever since his death, there's certainly a kernal of truth to his statement. The "Greatest Hits" album may have been the most honest of any posthumous B.I.G. release in how little it tried to reinvent the legacy of Christopher Wallace. The funny thing about that is that you could package his debut and his double album together and call it "Greatest Hits" and achieve the same result. When you think of Biggie's greatest hits you need only think of ANY song from his catalogue. They all seem like hits now. They have to. We've heard them so much we know them by heart, because there's nothing else to hear. Biggie was popular, Biggie was influential, but Biggie was not PROLIFIC. It's possible if he hadn't been gunned down we could have had five new albums of original material by now, but it's just as possible we could have had ONE. Wallace took his time making tracks because he thought he had all the time in the world to take. Before March 9th, 1997 no one would have complained about the pace - stars are entitled to take as much time as they want as long as they keep coming back with more and more hits. Only in hindsight do we now realize we'd hear "the same 25 Biggie songs" for a decade straight. If you were expecting the "Notorious" soundtrack to be a revelation that sheds new light on a man we didn't get to know nearly well enough while he was alive, you should have seen the movie instead. Out of 17 tracks, 10 songs are the same Biggie catalogue one finds on "Ready to Die" and "Life After Death." The 11th is his "Party and Bullshit" track which wasn't on either album originally, but Biggie fans know this soundtrack song well enough to rap it word for word anyway. Just say the words "I was a terror since the public school era" to anybody who was a rap head in the 1990's and you'll get a Kool-Aid smile. If the movie about his life gets anything right it's the sense of anticipation everybody felt about a Biggie album when "Who's the Man?" put this song on the map. "Niggaz wanna front, who got your back? (BIGGIE!) Niggaz wanna flex, who got the gat? (BIGGIE!) It ain't hard to tell I'm the East coast overdoser Nigga you scared you're supposed ta Nigga I toast ya, put fear in your heart Fuck up the party before it even start Pissy drunk, off the Henny and stuff On some Brand Nubian shit, beatin down punks!" The other six songs on this album represent Biggie well enough to justify copping "Notorious" while it's on sale for $9.99, even though that's an average of $1.66 per track. If you're saying to yourself "That's fine, I'll just buy those songs on iTunes and save $4" you're shit out of luck. Having figured out in advance that anybody who owns Biggie's catalogue five times over would just buy the "new" material and not the rest, all of these songs save for "The Notorious Theme" are "album only" on iTunes. Why is "The Notorious Theme" the exception? It's the orchestral score for the movie composed by Danny Elfman. No offense to the Notorious E-L-F but it's hard to picture anyone paying 99 cents for it - Biggie doesn't rap on it and the song only lasts two minutes and change anyway. Of the other five two aren't Biggie songs either but they can be excused because they are from his contemporaries. Jadakiss writes a heartfelt "Letter to B.I.G." that his widow Faith Evans sings on, and I'm cool with Kiss just expressing his feelings about the time that's passed and what everybody's been up to since. If you've heard anything from this album it's the Kanye West produced "Brooklyn Go Hard" by Jay-Z featuring Santogold. Jigga's track would definitely be worth buying seperately....full text |
| Billboard |
| The "Notorious" film soundtrack not only assembles the best of the Notorious B.I.G.'s work, it includes gems like the rapper's first demo tape, two new tracks from Jay-Z and a "One More Chance" remix featuring B.I.G.'s son, CJ Wallace. On the demo cut "Microphone Murderer," B.I.G. gruffly performs his first lyrics over the rhythm of Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't No Half Steppin'." Jay-Z and Santogold contribute the hipster-friendly "Brooklyn Go Hard," while Jadakiss delivers the heartfelt "Letter to B.I.G.," featuring Biggie's widow Faith Evans. It's a bit awkward to hear the young Wallace, who plays his father as a youth in the film, rapping about how "Navajos creep me in their tee-pees." But it's not enough to lessen the impact of the album, nor its reminder of B.I.G.'s legendary prowess on the mic. —Hillary Crosley...full text |
| Allmusic |
| The soundtrack to the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious is a welcome surprise. Selections from the past (a bunch of old hits plus some wonderfully raw demos) and the present (Jay-Z's infectious collabo with Santogold) along with a hint of the legacy's future (an appearance from Biggie's son, Christopher "CJ" Wallace, Jr.) are sequenced in a way that avoids any of the bombast or misguided majesty of Born Again or Duets, the other posthumous releases from the Bad Boy label. Best example, the album's strength can be found in the Biggie Jr. and Faith Evans track where departed father, widow, and son collaborate thanks to studio trickery. This "Legacy Remix" plays it casual, effortlessly mixing melancholy, nostalgia, and pride for something pleasingly smaller than Diddy's "I'll Be Missing You," which is notably absent. The Jadakiss track is heartfelt while Danny Elfman's short theme music winds up a wonderful noir dream, transporting listeners back in time and to a golden age Brooklyn. It's an ideal set up for the raw demos that follow, all of which sound better than any previous bootleg. Closing with a track called "Love No Ho" may see counterintuitive for an album honoring a late, great cultural icon, but for a man who truly lived the thug life and told its stories like few others could, it's a perfectly Biggie move. Don't think of it as the ultimate set or the best possible introduction, but the Notorious soundtrack is the closest the Bad Boy label has come to capturing the man's true spirit....full text |
Notorious (Notorious B.I.G.) lyrics
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