In 1997, Jay very presciently declared on In My Lifetime Vol. Tomorrow, March 9, marks 16 years since the rapper’s death, and if we want to take a guess based on the legacy Big left behind, we can look to his dear friend Jay-Z. It would be fair to question whether he would have been able to maintain the same lyrical prowess over the past decade had he not passed away. His lyrics were meticulous and mind-bending, packed with brutal double entendres and breadth of vocabulary that rarely required him to use cliché to pad a punchline. He knew all the best ones, too, but never rapped about dancing on couches - he absorbed every scene, and at the end of the night he could give you a detailed rundown of every corner of the room. While there are many in the canon who are adept storytellers or able to spin clever yarns about their money, women, and other ephemera, Biggie Smalls was able to finesse the English language in a way that hardly ever utilized egregious transitions or flossing - almost everything he spit advanced a narrative, even if it was one of party and bullshit. At times he was Aesop, others Hitchcock, often Don Giovanni. The rapper, né Christopher Wallace, had too dynamic a scope, despite his catalogue being limited to his debut, Ready To Die, and its double-disc follow-up, Life After Death. Choosing the ten best songs by one of Brooklyn’s most beloved children, the Notorious B.I.G., is essentially a fool’s errand.

Life after death biggie smalls meaning