Maps of Music

Life After Death (1997)

Where the lyrics of Life After Death take you, and where it was really made.

The album came out sixteen days after its artist was murdered, then held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 for four weeks.

Key places

Recorded at Daddy's House Recording Studios (1997)

Recording site Daddy's House Recording Studio — The album's recording is listed at Daddy's House Recording Studios in New York City. The point marks the listed studio, not an exact date of sessions. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Life After Death: second and final studio album by American rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
• Released March 25, 1997 by Bad Boy Records, distributed by Arista Records
• Double album, released sixteen days after the rapper's murder
• Guest artists include 112, Jay-Z, Lil' Kim, Mase, R. Kelly, The Lox, Angela Winbush, Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Too Short, and Puff Daddy
• Pushes further into the mafioso rap subgenre
• Sequel to the debut Ready to Die, picking up where its last song "Suicidal Thoughts" ends

Background

• Two and a half years before release, Biggie had married Faith Evans and become an East Coast icon in the East Coast–West Coast rivalry
• Biggie also appeared on albums by Michael Jackson and R. Kelly
• The album had many planned release dates
• A car accident in September 1996 delayed finalizing the album, and it was pushed back to 1997
• He said on BET's Rap City that he aimed to reach a wider audience, with a more varied set of collaborators than on his debut
• A record with Bay Area rapper E-40 was not included on the final track listing
• In February 1997 he traveled to the West Coast to promote the album and shoot the video for the lead single "Hypnotize"
• On March 9, two weeks before release, he was shot four times in a drive-by shooting and later pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles

Recording

• Production was handled by DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee, Havoc, Buckwild, RZA, Clark Kent, and the Hitmen, Bad Boy's in-house production team
• Q-Tip submitted a beat that Biggie liked, but the album was already complete
• In 1995, Bad Boy producer Rashad Smith made two tracks for Biggie, but the budget was not yet approved by Arista Records and Smith was not paid as expected
• Those tracks were requested by Def Jam executive Chris Lighty for LL Cool J's Mr. Smith, which caused a falling out between Biggie and Smith and left Smith off the album
• Recording is listed at Daddy's House Recording Studios in New York City

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Disc 1

Disc 2

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), known as the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper and songwriter from Brooklyn, New York City.
• He was raised by his mother, Voletta Wallace, after his father left the family when he was about three.
• He first gained attention through a 1991 demo tape, which was featured in The Source magazine's "Unsigned Hype" section in 1992.
• In 1993 he became the first artist signed to Sean Combs's Bad Boy Records, which Combs founded after leaving Uptown Records.

Career

• Rooted in East Coast hip-hop and gangsta rap, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time.
• His debut album Ready to Die (1994) brought East Coast hip-hop back to prominence and produced the singles "Juicy", "Big Poppa", and "One More Chance".
• In 1995 he was named Rap Artist of the Year at the Billboard Awards and released Conspiracy with his group Junior M.A.F.I.A.
• He was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, at age 24, six months after Tupac Shakur's murder.
• His posthumous album Life After Death (1997) debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produced the Hot 100 number-one singles "Hypnotize" and "Mo Money Mo Problems".
• Later posthumous albums include Born Again (1999), Duets: The Final Chapter (2005), and The King & I with Faith Evans (2017).
• He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Received widespread critical acclaim on release
• Jon Pareles of The New York Times described it as flaunting affluence with a leisurely swagger
• Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone called it a conscious continuation of Ready to Die
• Cheo Hodari Coker of the Los Angeles Times said it reflects both the dark and heartfelt sides of the rapper
• The Source gave it five mics, and Michael A. Gonzales felt it would become a classic for hip-hop fans
• David Browne of Entertainment Weekly was unfavorable about its length and some violent and materialistic content, but praised its bicoastal respect

Reappraisal

• Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), called it a filler-free two-disc rush of musical bravado
• AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier said the follow-up to the debut was done in a huge way
• Evan McGarvey of Stylus magazine called it a grand exercise in personal mythology and cinematic as a double album
• VIBE named it the greatest Hip-Hop/R&B album since 1993 in 2013
• Widely considered one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time
• Ranked No. 179 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020

Records

• Sold 690,000 copies in its first week
• Number 1 on the Billboard 200 for four consecutive weeks, from April 12 to May 3, 1997
• Largest jump to number one in the chart's history, from 176 to 1 in one week
• Number 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for four weeks
• Top album on the 1997 Billboard Year-End Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart
• Certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2000, denoting 10 million shipments
• Nominated at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Solo Performance for "Hypnotize", and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Mo Money Mo Problems"
• Displaced from number one by Mary J. Blige's Share My World, released April 22, 1997

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Q-Tip submitted a beat that Biggie enjoyed, but the album had already been completed and turned into Bad Boy.
• That beat was later used for A Tribe Called Quest's song "The Love" on their 1998 album The Love Movement.
• Hypnotize samples Herb Alpert's Rise and interpolates La Di Da Di by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh.
• The album's Mo Money Mo Problems samples Diana Ross's I'm Coming Out.
• Two weeks before release, on March 9, Biggie was shot four times in a drive-by shooting.
• Released in the wake of the shooting, the album signaled a stylistic change in gangsta rap as it crossed to the commercial mainstream.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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