One Song - The Notorious B.I.G's "Mo Money Mo Problems"

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

On this special rerun, Diallo and Luxxury dive deep into the Notorious B.I.G classic, Mo Money Mo Problems. Join the guys as they break down the song's use of a disco beat, Stevie J's unique contributions, and prepare to feel chills when you hear Biggie's isolated vocals. Album: Life After Death  Artist: The Notorious B.I.G.  Featured artists: Mase, Diddy  Genres: R&B/Soul, Hip-Hop/Rap  Featured Songs: I'm Coming Out by Diana Ross, Worst Behavior by Drake, Break Your Heart Right Back by Ariana Grande and Childish Gambino, Star Wars Theme by Meco, I Can't Explain by Nazz, Guns on the Roof by The Clash, I'm Rowed Out by Dynamite Platoon, The Banjo Song by The Big Three, Venus by Shocking Blue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm director, actor, writer, and sometimes deal. DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, Luxury. And this is one song, the show where we deconstruct and celebrate some of your favorite songs from the past 60 years in music history.

And tell you why it deserves one more listen. That's right. Yo, Luxury, what's up with you? Man, it's been quite the week. It's been a big week. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. Why was it a big week? As EPMD would say, if you're tired,

go and take a nap, do we have time for a nap? I don't have time for it. You know what? That was a diss back when he said it. But now that we're a little older, like it's like, Just like, go take a nap. Why, yes, I will, Eric Sermon. It's a kind suggestion now.

Like, thank you. I don't mind if I do. I am tired. Was it the eyes? As a matter of fact. We're too. But I am not too tired to have an hour long chat with my buddy Diallo about music. I'm kind of pumped.

I got to be honest with you. Oh, okay. Well, should we get this thing started? Let's do it. If you didn't know, this August is the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop. We'll be covering a lot of hip-hop songs. But I'm excited to say that today's song comes at literally the half. halfway point in hip hop's history.

So if you consider 1973 the beginning, we are now firmly planted in 1997. Okay, it's not granted. It's not 1998. But 1997, about as clear as a halfway mark as we can get. And it marks a shift in how mainstream hip-hop is going to become. And the irony is that the main artist on this song never got a chance to see it. Oh my God, such a buildup, the suspense.

Can we, what is the song? We all want to know. Well, get ready because today we're talking about the notorious B-I-G, Puff Daddy, and Mace on their hit song, Mo Money, Mo Problem. All right, can't wait. By the way, I had a quick question for you. It is the 50th anniversary, technically, of Cool Herk throwing that party at the rec room at 120 Sedgwick. In the Bronx. In the Bronx.

Yeah. Does that, to you, why is that the beginning to you? Do you agree that that should be the beginning of hip-hop? You know, without stepping into the mind field of what is hip hop, I think that... Step into it. No, because that's a whole other episode. And I really want to spend some time talking about big. But I do think that, you know, you've got the four avenues of hip hop present in some form at that party, according to the people who were there. Yeah.

You know, you've got teenagers breakdancing, emceeing, you know, on the turntables. There may have been some graffiti. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, to have those four avenues. and have them come together, you know, in that unique way. And to have those kids realize that they had sort of stumbled on something, a new recipe, if you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I honor it. I mean, like, it's hard to put your finger on it and to also think about how far we've come. Right. Right. Like, you know, nowadays, you can definitely go to a hip-hop show and there's no graffiti in sight. You know what I mean?

There's very little break dancing going on. Yeah, exactly. So, you know. Right. Well, what I was going to say that seems interesting, to think about as we're talking about it, it just sort of dawn on me is like, we're talking about a live moment,

and like that as the crux of the birth of a genre makes so much sense, because hip hop happened in a room with people, experiencing it, experiencing there was a DJ on the turntables, there were emcees, there were B-boys, it was all happening in a live setting, and we now kind of think of it as a genre that we choose to listen to, and maybe we go to a show,

but the birth of hip-hop is the birth happens in a live setting, which I think is really interesting. There weren't any recordings yet. There were no hip-hop records out yet. But it's live elements coming together in real time. And I think nowadays, if there are new genres being invented, I think they're happening, they're not happening in live settings. Oh, yeah, you don't need a $5,000 studio or a performance at Carnegie Hall.

It's usually people on their lap house. Piecing together music in their bedrooms. Totally. Interesting how it has changed. But hip-hop's 50, but when it was in its mid-20s, this song came out. And this song means so much to hip-hop, I feel. We didn't know it necessarily at the time And some of this is looking back

But I just think that this is one of the seminal hip hop tracks And you can sort of see where hip hop goes off In a different direction Not just for moment anymore problems But life after death in general That album, such a major, you know, moment in hip hop history That I thought we spent some time talking about today I'm excited, I can't wait to like frankly get educated from

Well, that's why I'm going to break down the essentials Yeah This song was released after Biggie died. And I pointed out after Tupac died about nine months before him in 1997. This was on Biggie's second and final album, Life After Death, as I said. We all know that Biggie's real name was Christopher Wallace. He was fatally shot in Los Angeles after attending an after party for the Soul Train Awards.

And Life After Death was literally released 16 days after his murder. And by the way, quick question for you. the Biggie Smalls notorious BIG thing. There's a transition that happens, right? Because he starts out as Biggie. He starts off as Biggie Smalls. And then there's like a lawsuit, right? Well, there was like a rapper named Big E Smalls.

There's a white rapper. Yeah. There's a white guy named Biggie Smalls who like threatened a lawsuit or something. So then he made the conversion. Is that what happened? I don't know if it was threatened. I mean, like, you know, nowadays you see things on social media that suggests that it goes really deep in terms of like, you know,

big, e small sticking out not just the name, but like the use of certain samples. I'm not going to touch that either. I feel like that's a different. kind of briar patch. But obviously at some point, he needed to change his name for legal reasons, and he became the notorious B-I-G. Okay.

So we're going to call him big. We're going to go by Biggie. We're just going to go by Biggie. We might call him, you know, King of New York. You know, we might call him a lot of things. Man has a lot of names. Might call him Frank White. I call him Chris.

I love the fact that he called himself Frank White because, like, clearly, like, rappers have a lot of time to watch movies when they're on tour, and I find that, like, they're usually some of the most voracious consumers of movies. So they'll see a movie. He'll be like, yo, Christopher Walker played Frank White in King of New York. I'm going to drop that name. No way. I love that. But you know what's crazy

is like this was also a concept album. You know, it picks up where the last song on his debut album, which I think is you know, just an amazing album. Ready to Die. Amazing album. It picks off where that album left off. And, you know, that

last song, I believe, is called Suhiscuit. societal thoughts, you know, so this was life after death, you know, which made a lot of sense at the time. And Mo Money More Problems was a monster hit officially ushering in what some people call the shiny suit era of hip hop. I mean, like, you know, I remember Fat Joe's first video, you got a flow, Joe. He had 80 guys in the Bronx standing on pure rubble. Everybody had on, you know, like the fat jackets and like the timbos and like, no, nowadays, like, when Puffy takes over hip-hop when Puffy and Biggie, I should say, take over hip-hop, everybody's wearing these shiny suits, you know, in the videos, you know,

even people who weren't about that before, I'll never get. Puffy and Mace wear the suits, but does Biggie ever get into it himself? Oh, Biggie definitely has on it. He had the shiny suits? He has on the suits. I remember Mike Geronimo, one of my favorite New York rappers, and if anybody wants to ever check out Mike Geronimo, he's got some great songs, The Natural Master I See. He's got a song called Time to Build, which is the first appearance. I'm going to talk in comment book terms. It's the first. appearance of DMX, J-Rul, and Jay-Z all on one cut.

Oh, wow. That's canon. But they're all featured, and Mike Geronimo is the star of the track. And it's just funny because, like, three years later, you know, they're all mega-superstars. But I bring up Mike Geronimo just to say that, like, he was, like, gully, you know, like, he had that New York swag going. And then literally, after, more money, more problems, Mike Geronimo's next video, he's wearing a shiny suit.

And everybody's like, oh, you know, the shiny suits, the shiny suits. When is Missy, when is Supaddupa Fly? Well, those were trash bags, you know, like, so that's, you know, shiny. Is that a play on, is that like a. Well, here's the thing. Satter. Sympire. And to a less extent, F. Gary Great.

Like, these are like some of the big, you know, music video directors at that time. And I feel like, especially in Hype Williams, there was like a lot of play with color. Yeah. You know, and so the shiny suits. Fish Eye lenses. And the, yeah, the fish eye lens and like the bright lights, like, it all kind of jelled into this moment. Yeah. So I want to dig into the story of the song and the production and how it got made a little bit. So as you probably know, there's a squad working for a bad boy called the hitmen.

There's the production team, right, the hit men. And, you know, StevieJ is in there, right? Stevie J is in there. Stevie J is the producer, is the co-producer of this song. Now Puff gets co-producer credit. But when you say producer, it can mean a lot of things. There's a spectrum of what producer means. Yeah. Puff Daddy is not the Kanye type of producer. He's not like the premier type of producer.

He's not in there with the MPC making. the beats but what he is doing and this is kind of worth talking about in this topic because he is a visionary for whatever what lots of things that can be said about Diddy or Puff at the time what he is is he's the guy that's like has the grand master vision like we're gonna do this we're gonna hit this up and he leans back and he directs people what they're going to do musically in the track I also got the sense he would be like you know what I don't like those bells right that's right bring that bring down that base a little bit that's really crucial

that's I think that snare a little bit like you know right and that's underrated because I think sometimes people think Well, unless you're touching the faders, are you really making anything? And the answer is yes. That is a very, Rick Rubin is a very famous modern example of someone who's leaning back in the chair making choices and kind of helping with the big picture, you know what, let's trash all the songs and write completely new ones, you know? It's sort of like what a director does when he's looking over his editor's shoulder.

Right. Yeah. Or the cinematography. The director's not holding the camera usually. Exactly. Almost never happens. Almost never, right. But I say all that.

And in this case, from what I understand, the actual. choice to flip the sample, the Diana Ross sample, came from Mace, who was apparent, for real. For real. I never knew that. I found a couple instances of him talking on some footage of him, like, where he's still mad. Because it was his idea, and he brought it to Steve and Jay. He wanted it for himself, and Stevie's like, that's great, let's do it. And then Puff comes in, and he's like, oh, this is for big.

That explains why I think this is going to be controversial. Do it. I think that Biggie's verse is obviously a classic Biggie verse, but I think Mace has the best verse. And that's probably because he found the track and he felt the greatest connection to this song. That's really interesting that you bring that up. Because I think it's like a solid mid-class Biggie verse.

I can think of a lot of Biggie verses where I'm like, oh, Biggie just proved he's the goat. This is not really one of those verses. And I do feel like the Mace who's not, you know, who's hot, who's not. Like, he comes in on the track with a certain connection to it that, you know, it doesn't surprise me. He's the one who found the sample. Right.

And it's interesting you mentioned that because that does become one of the more iconic lines from the song. We'll get into it in a bit, but that becomes an interpolation for Drake later. So, like, the mace who's hot, who's not, those bars may be more than the biggie bars are what the song is known for. And there may be some subbing of who shot you. Yeah, there's some shade maybe directed at a certain other famous rapper Tupac. There's a lot of things that could rhyme with Tupac at the beginning of that maze first. Oh, okay. We'll talk about that a little later.

That sounds cool. So going back to the story of how the song gets made, around 96, Puff brings his stable, the hitman. They go to Trinidad, and they're like, we're just going to get out of town. We're going to get out of the mindset of all this stuff going down, and we're just going to make music. Wow. So they spend six weeks in hotels in Trinidad. They got two room set up. Sounds like a dream.

With engineers, and they just have the hitmen going through track, track, track, track, track, track, track, track, crank, crank, crank, and a lot of the stuff that ends up on on Puff's solo album, but also on Biggie record. Oh, Pug Danny and the family. A lot of that stuff comes out of a session. Which is an album that I feel like goes very much hand in hand. Even with the sort of like sepia tone album art. It came out a week later, right? The Puff album comes out a week after the More Money More Problems comes out in 97, if you can believe it. Wow. Yeah. So basically, it was Mace's idea to flip the I'm Coming Out sample. He just came into the studios like I got a great one. Give it, give it to me, give me, I'm coming out. This is this 1980

huge hit for Diana Ross, which is effectively a Sheik song with Diana Ross singing it. Because it's Niall Rogers and Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson. It's the band Sheik playing a song and Diana Ross is singing on top. Yeah. And that actually ends up being controversial later. Diana Ross doesn't like the song. She has all the production redone. The versions you end up hearing are remixed by other people and she never works with Sheik again, which is ironic because it's a huge hit. It's everyone's favorite Diana Ross album is a great album. It's a great album. It's got upside down. And I've listened to the original

chic version of all these songs. And they sound pretty much the same. Pretty similar. What got released. I agree. There's barely, there's very subtle differences. So the Diana Ross sample, I want to play it for you because one thing that's interesting that most people don't know

is in the first place, you're hearing a pretty wholesale four bar loop of I'm coming out. In fact, when the song starts, you're like, oh, Diana Ross is on the radio. Like, it literally just is the song. until you get that wooka, wooka wooka coming in. Which was the beef that a lot of us had with Puffy and Bad Boy Records in general was that, you know,

when you have people like DJ Premier who take obscure records, flip them into like pretty much brand new compositions by just the way they chop them up. Oh, yeah. You know, like DJ Premier, Pee Rock, like these guys are like, you know, they're doing what Dilla will do in the 2000s, right? But like, Povey and them, they were just like, I may even let you know, we take hits from the 80s, don't it sound so crazy. He told you what they were doing. Yeah, so it sounds like it's a single four-bar loop, but what's actually going on is a little more complicated. I'm going to play it for you.

There's actually two samples that are being layered here. And here's the second sample. And then I'll play them both together so you can hear how they blend. Something that's really cool when you hear those samples isolated is you hear all the grit and crackle, because these are vinyl records that are being sampled. This is still the era pre-digital.

There are CDs and such, but they're sampling these records. sampling the vinyl copies of the record, so you get all the grit. All right, now I'll play them together. Oh, and I almost left one thing out. There's actually a third layer that comes in after every, I think, 16 bars. Three layers, and arguably this third one is the most important one because it's this one. Which is just that first beat, that first downbeat, one, two, three, four, which is kind of a Farrell thing, which is in 1997. Farrell's hearing this.

Ferell's being inspired by this? What's going on in Ferrell's mind? I think four downbeats is something of the... couple of people have probably done. Yeah, it may not be the first time, yeah. By the way, again, I was DJing at the time. And I remember that when this Deanna Ross sample was used in Mo Moneymo problems, it caused a little bit of controversy at the time.

You know, there were whispers of like, you know, I'm coming out. Why Puffy are you using, you know, why do you sample a gay anthem? You know what I mean? Like, this is in the less, you know, the less woke era of hip-hop where, like, you know, there was pretty rampant. Homophobia? Homophobia. Yeah.

You know, I mean, like, I think about some of the songs we used to play then that, like, nowadays, like, you'll be doing an old school set and you'll forget, like, you know, a certain word or a certain something's coming up in the song. You're like, ooh, damn, I don't know how we ever got away with that, you know? We got to listen to the sample one more time because there's something about the use of it, the choice, like literally the selection, not just what I played for you, which is the layering, but the selection of a huge 1980 massive disco hit that's important to talk about. I got a question for you, do y'all, does this feel like this something Q-tip would crate dig and put in a Tribe Call Quest song?

Does this qualify as a sample, in your opinion, that would be used in the De LaSole? It's how they use it, right? Like, if you go back and listen to, you know, me and myself and I, like, they didn't drastically change, you know, that stuff. Like, there were times when Buddy, which is a De La LaSole Tribe Call Quest, you know, classic, really doesn't do that much. to change the song that they sampled there. You know, like, they took a snippet that they liked put it out there. I think what happened was the West Coast blew up

really big. And Dre, you know, around the time of the... The Chronic is a seminal album. We could get a whole episode talking about that. But on the chronic, they didn't do sort of like the DJ premiere, Pete Rock, and C.L. It's interpulations.

They were... There was a lot of interpolations, but they were also just taking, like, you know, swing down, sweet chariots. stop and let me ride. Like, they just took the song and rapped over it. Right. And not even in the subversive way, I would argue that, like,

someone like Ghostface Killer will wrap over a song that he literally didn't change. Like, he'll literally just put on a song. You'll still hear the vocals singing underneath it. It would be like, yo, I saw a baby doll. You know, like, it's just like, man, he didn't change a damn thing. This is somewhere in between. And there were definitely rumblings that what they were doing was, like, you know, taking a pop song from a previous era.

you know, probably 20 years ago, and then just wrapping over it. So, yes, absolutely, I do consider it a sample, but understand that this type of sampling, though popular, with the public, did get critiqued by a lot of their fellow artists. I think when you got producers crate digging, you know, in the sort of classic, like, I mentioned Q-tip in, or Dilla or whoever. Oh, yeah. There's an art to it, which is both the portion of the song,

which I think you were referring to, but also, like, what is the song? Yeah. And the more obscure, the better is kind of what I was alluding to, a little bit with the Q-Tip mention. So what's happening here is that that is not important to the hitmen. The hitmen, they're called the hitmen. Let's take a hit and make a hit. It's right there in the title.

There's no surprises going on. But, you know, I will say that, like, you know, some of this, when you look back now, you do realize, like, anybody could have done this. They did it effectively. Right. You know what I mean? And so to a certain extent, I'm not even adopting, you know, an argument that would have been made against the critics back.

Oh, y'all just Hayden because we selling out, you know, all these CDs and shows. I'm not making that case about it. I'm not saying just any old thing that works with the public is automatically good. But the fact is they, you know, the fact that they took a song, a Diana Ross song that at that point in my life, I'd never heard this song. You know, like, I just hadn't. And I was like, oh, man, that, you know, that sounds really cool. To a certain extent, the youth will sort of drive the way. You know what I mean?

Like, a song that was 20 years old at the point that I was probably 18, you know, that's going to be a brand new song to a certain extent if it's an album cut. And you probably feel the history. You can tell that what's being... You can tell it's a disco song. It's a song that is from the past, whether or not you were familiar with it personally. Right. Right.

And that gives it something that gives it something that makes it hip-hop, probably. Absolutely. I mean, again, place everything in the... context. This is the late 90s. Boogie Nights is in theaters. Puffy's sampling disco. Like, disco was back in a big way in the end of the 90s because, you know, again, it was 20 years old and anybody who was like, you know, under 30 thought, oh, wow, this is fun. We're taking our parents' music. And you're right. You kind of alluded to it in the opening. It's like, it's a quarter century after the beginning of hip-hop, which begins with disco and funk. But we're going back with this

period of West Coast interpolations and kind of slowed down George Clinton, whatever, this, that and the other, we're kind of going back to hip-hop origins. Exactly. With tracks like this one. Exactly. And to your point, it wasn't just Diana Ross. Like, they were literally taking so many things from, you know, 15 and 20 years ago. So he didn't just hit up Diana Ross.

He took Bowie for us for a spirit. It's the same thing. The song starts and you're like, oh, here comes David Bowie's Let's Dance. It's the same thing as with no money more problems. The song starts with it. It could be the original song. it's only slightly modified. It's sort of pitch down and slow down.

Listen, not everybody was in love with this kind of sampling back then. And some people are still like, oh, no, you know, I got to have, you know, that the fact that like someone like Q-Tip can take a Mini Riperton song and take the quietest part of the song and then flip it into, you know, a number of songs. A number of Q-Tip songs are based off of Mini Ripperton's songs. Like, that to me seems like... Right, my Rudolph's mom. What's that?

I mean my Rudolph's mom. Maya Rudolph mom. Yeah, for those of you. We don't know. It's, you know, to me that is the art, but, you know, but this was something different. This was, this was Puffy taking pop music back from the West Coast. Because by this point, Snoop is off death row. You know, the prizes for the taking.

And for, you know, the first couple of years after Biggie's gone, New York definitely reasserted its dominance. Yeah. You know, because you had Puffy, you had Buster Rhymes releasing, you know, his solo records. He'd moved on from leaders of the new school. He's not really claiming native tongues in the same way. We're in the Wu-Tang era. Wu-Tang, I would argue, is not really on the scene right now either. I think Wu-Tang has, like, this amazing period from, like, 93 to 97-98 where they're driving the culture.

But I remember, I think the only album that came out from Wu-Tang in, like, 97-98 might have been, like, inspected deck or something like that. They passed the torch along to pop. I'm not sure they were like that. asking any torch, whether they meant to or not. I think that what happened was New York discovered how to make hit records in a way that sort of like, you know, and also the South is coming up now. So you've got JZ, J.Z, Jarl rule, DMX. Like that's sort of the new face of New York, right, right, at this time.

I think the Rizzo was hanging with Quentin Tarantino and doing the Bobby Digital album, you know. But like, you know, this is New York's, you know, dominance, and then 50 Cent comes in. Yeah. But then sometime around the time 50 Cent comes in, and Eminem is a huge major pop star, then the South comes in. And all this swings on a pivot that we call life after death, aka, mo money, more problem single. Just to add one more point, by the way, to the sample transformation in favor of like the cred reputations of the hitman or Puff in general. It is important to mention that this is a transformed sample not just because of the layering, but because it's layered furthermore

with additional instrumentation. So what Stevie J does, and I think out of the hitman, he was known to be one of the most instrumentally gifted. He's programming some beats, and I'm going to play for them right now. So he's adding a beat on top of it. And when you hear it isolated...

That's a very strong scratch. That's a very strong scratch. And when you hear it isolated, you can kind of hear the song. That is the momentum of the song. The beat of the song is not the disco beat. It's really coming from the additional material that StevieJ adds, not the least of which is the bass line,

which is completely original. Is that a live bass? That's a synthesizer, and he's playing that part on a synth. By the way, probably the reason for it is that in the mix, when you've got a sample and you've got all these beats, there's not a lot of room left for where the base, like, content would go, to not just blow up your speakers.

So when you play a synth, it's a lot more controllable. You can kind of control where it sits in the mix, basically. So I'll put that together with the sample. And you can hear how the blend is actually very artful. Can I just say as a DJ, this was a hard record to mix in. Because it comes in like, you kind of want, like, at least like. There's no mixing room at the top. I feel like some producers will give you like a little snare hit like a cat.

da-na-na-na-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know, like something like that. Preparation. This was a hard one. But you're making such an interesting point because, like, we were just talking about the birth of hip-hop being in a room. I think we're at a moment in hip-hop where hip-hop is for the radio. Like literally, let's make a hit for the radio is the intention behind this track. And to their, they didn't really consider DJs needing a little time to get the record set up.

This song is a pivot because to me, you know, like I grew up in the South. I grew up in Atlanta. But to me, most of the early 90s hip hop that came out of New York was grimy and gritty. You know, it was Daz's effects. It was Mobb Deep. Daz's first album, Milmatic, is like an ode to like a new, to a, to a, to a, to a pre-Juliani New York. You know what I mean?

And that was what everybody thought of when they thought of New York. It was like rhymes and skills and it wasn't about, you know, all these material things. It was about like really, people don't even talk about like Red Man and K Solo.

And we were talking a little bit earlier about EPMD and Rakim is sort of the birth of that and K.S.1 is sort of the birth of that. Like they were rapping about the streets and coming up from the street. Well, I'm not talking about MellyMell because that's like the 80s. I'm literally talking about early 90s, hip hop, New York.

And then something happened. I'm still convinced it's because everybody saw the West Coast just, the West Coast was selling platinum. They were going platinum. You know what I mean? They wanted some of that. We're not talking about MC Hammer and Vinyl Highs. Like, we're not talking about like the highest selling rappers.

We're talking about like the G funk sound, everything that Drey put out after the chronic, you know, started with nothing but a G thing. But like everything they did was just huge. And then Doggy Style got the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. And it was like people were really paying attention to hip hop in a different way. It was like the beginning of hip hop's ascension to slowly replacing rock as like the music of the youth culture. And I truly think that like the East Coast saw this.

You know, people like Tribe Called Quest, Mobbed Deep To a certain extent, like, you know, which are not really that far apart when you think about like both of them are from Queens. You know what I mean? Like they were watching this. They were like, well, you know, we're going to be the protectors of hip hop as art. And I think what Puffy did by bringing somebody as talented as Biggie, as a lyricist, he brought somebody who's unassailable. You can't ever claim Biggie didn't have lyrics. He didn't have flow.

But he put it with production that was as shiny and as pop driven as what Drey was doing on the West Coast. Right. And that potent mix sort of came together. You start seeing the beginnings of it on Ready to Die. But Ready to Die is still a very sort of like New York Rudy album, you know what I mean? But by the time we get to life after death, it's a different biggie. You know what I mean? Like he's doing, you know, songs with Jay-Z.

He's doing songs with, I think he's got a song with R. Kelly on there. You know, he's bridging that gap between R&B listeners and hip-hop. Right. And again, mo money, more problems in its shiny suit glory is a song that you don't have to be like wearing a scully and, you know, those kind of gloves that everybody wore and like a puffy jack. Like, no, you can be an R&B listener and still appreciate what Biggie's bringing. Part of what we don't like to do, but collective as people and also on the show is like get a little too like going down the rabbit hole of like pinning down definitions. because that's just a waste of everyone's energy. However, I'm curious to know your opinion.

Is this track a hip-hop track, a pop track, an R&B track? Does it matter? Or if it's a pie, what's the allocation? Because I think that would be an easier question to answer with a NAS track, with New York Stadium. I mean, like, that's a hip-hop track. And what is this? Look, I think almost everything on Life After Death is absolutely hip-hop.

All I'm saying is that you take hip-hop's, you know, arguably hip-hop. hip-hop and going on the radio makes it a pop, makes it a pop song only after the fact. Is that what, something like that? No, I guess what I'm saying. You take hip-hop's greatest lyricist and you put him over not the DJ premiere. One of my favorite songs on Life After Dead is I Got a Story to Tell. I think it's a fantastic track. But that track is not meant to push the album to sell records or to, you know, Bill Biggie's fan.

That's a song for the streets. Right. That's I got a story to tell. More money, more problems, you know, sky's the limit, I think, is on this album. These are songs that are very smooth, very Biggie. Right. Very Biggie. You know, I said we were going to give him many names in this episode.

By the time Biggie comes out. You made a promise and you're delivering. Yeah. That dude, he can wrap over any smooth song. Biggie showed the industry that you didn't have to sacrifice your lyricism to sell a lot of records. All you had to do is change the production. And I think that you have to give him credit because what he sort of opened the door for was, you know,

labelmates 112 on the R&B front, Mary J. Blige, you know, she comes in. The real love remix has Biggie on it. Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. You know, like Biggie was always saying like, hey, we can sell records too. We just got to give people something different.

And you see it in 112, you see it in Mace, you see it in the locks, you know, Total, basically doing R&B. I mean, like, to a certain extent, when we heard Biggie's, when we heard Biggie opened the song, Can't You see by Total, you know, give me all the chicken heads from Pasadena to Medina, you know, like people thought it was a hip-hop song. And then Total started singing. What did he want chicken heads? Yes. What does that mean? So that term, you know, not a great term.

It's for ladies. Explain, please. You guys have access to dictionaries and urban dictionary. Go look it up yourself. Is it a sex thing or is it a drugs thing? What is it? Like, what's the category? It's a, actually, in some ways,

it was a term of endearment for the girls in the neighborhood you grew up with. I see. So I should go call someone from my past chicken head? I feel like you're trolling me. What about Carolyn from next door on Washington Street in San Francisco? No, don't use that term for anybody. Unless you're Project Pat, he can get away with that.

But, you know, like, it's because of Bad Boy's success with this format that we got three of, I think, just seminal New York labels. You got Rough Riders, which gave us DMX and Swiss Beats. You had Murder Inc., which gave us J.Rul and Ashanti, and he had Rockefeller, which gave us Jay-Z, and eventually Cameron and Dipset and Kanye West. and, you know, these labels, these New York-based labels, all under Lear Cohen's Deft Jam label,

you know, they were watching what Puffy was doing at Bad Boy. It was a violator label, you know, also great label at this time. And everybody was doing that while Rockas was over here, sort of keeping it New York True, doing its stuff with Most Deaf and Black Star, you know, and a rapper named Socrates, which I remember because everybody on the scene was like, Socrates is the best freestyle and rapper in New York. And, you know, sometimes those rappers don't, the best freestyle rapper isn't necessarily the best when it comes to writing. And we still have the left field stuff as it. Well, we still have the, like, native tongue stuff

is still happening. They still exist. But are they kind of on the down? But, you know, it's always like, and let me be very clear. I think Wu Tang makes great records from 93 till today. And I think that Q-Tip and De La Sol. you know, rest in peace, Trugoy. Like, I think that all these people have made great records, but there's a point of which you're driving the culture, and there's a point at which there are other people driving the culture.

Midnight Barters are sort of the end of their run, right? Yeah, I think so, because I think by the time Beats Rhymes in Life comes out, I think that's the next record. You know, I'm already listening to Outcast at that point. I'm starting to notice that the South, the South got something to say, you know, as he famously. He said it. But to come back to Puffy, I think that life after death plants a certain flag in the ground and says,

Hey, New York's still around. And that's what's so ironic is that. I mean, like, not that Biggie wasn't already running New York, but this album, which was a double album, you know, would have absolutely, he deserved a rain on the top while this album was out. And unfortunately, he just didn't get it. I know you, I usually repel at these kind of comparisons, but I consider him a little bit the Kurt Cobain. Oh, we're going there. Yay!

Let's take a break. Wait, I think there's more we can, more depth we can get into, talking about Biggie's delivery and his rhyme schemes and his lyrics. What do you think? Is there more we can dig into? Oh, absolutely. We should definitely get into it because this song, have we talked about my theory about the tale of two Biggies?

There is so much we need to get into. Is there more show? Is there more show coming up? I think there's more show. Should people keep listening? We're going to come back after a quick break. I love it. Welcome back.

So we've been talking about the Biggie, Mace, Puff Daddy, classic, Mo Money, Moe, Mo Problems. And I've got a question. You had this tale of two Biggies line. Was that just you trying to get a literary pun on the show, or is there something behind that? You're going to explain it? It was not. You're going to explain it?

It was not. But to understand the two sides of Biggie, we got to go back further the 1997. Take me back. Now, I consider myself something of a voracious consumer of mixtapes. And I mean, like, that was how. you got, you know, so much hip hop back then. I'm, I actually want to give a shout out to, to our, our producer, Eric 1, because there's two Erick's in here.

They can, they can fight to the death over who gets Eric 1 and Eric 2. Big E. But Eric reminded me, DJ Clue, DJ Clue had the greatest mixtapes at the time because there were versions of songs that we will probably never hear again because they were just, they weren't the album version, they weren't the radio version. We're going to need to do. They were just a guy rapping over the instrument. There's going to be a whole episode.

We're going to have to do a mixtape episode because that's such a seminal part of the culture. Let's find them. Every now and then I go on YouTube and someone has been so kind to upload these mixes. But I remember hearing Biggie very early on.

He was one of, he was in the source's unsigned hype one month and that was a big deal. You know, like that was when the source was really driving things to. Like, I'll never forget when the source gave Illmatic, Nas' debut album,

the proverbial five mics. Like everybody was like, Yo, no, it's got five mites. Yeah, that's a big deal. They're saying there's no notes. Like, this is the perfect album. And by the way, if you go back and listen to Illmatic now, can I just say, represent?

I might have cut that song. It's got some sludge. I think that song, I still believe we've got to do classic album, worst song. That should be a segment. Absolutely. Every album, almost every album has a song you would cut. I got ideas.

But I remember Biggie Smalls, the first time I heard him on a mixtape, and it was the song, Party and Bullshit. Oh, yeah. bathroom passes cutting classes smoking blunts a day A chubby n'all night smoking sacks up in acts and Sacks and side kicks with my sidekicks Honey's want to chat but all we want to know is with not

I hope I don't get shit So this wasn't unsigned hype But this was the first time that I remember hearing Biggie You know I remember everybody's like, yo this dude is sick And he's really ill and like you know where to party at And can't I bring my dad? I was like, oh, don't let him in our party. We don't want that kind of party.

We don't want any gats at our party, but like that, I mean, you can hear Biggie was rapping differently than he's in a high register. He's like, you know, he's like that grimy street kid. Yeah. Out of Brooklyn. You know what I mean? It just sounds so different. It just sounds really different than what he's going to end up sounding like.

I mean, this is the first of our two biggies. This is how he was introduced to us who were listening to hip-hop at the time. And it's ironic because if you go and listen to his first album, ready to die, he kind of. acknowledges that he had two styles coming into that first album, you know, because on the track, give me the lute, it's like a scene where, like,

an actor acts opposite himself. Like, you hear Biggie use both of his voices, and it's like he's having a conversation with himself. Yeah, on Give Me the Lute. One of the greatest, one of my favorite Biggie songs of all time. This is Give Me the Lute off of the debut album, Ready to Die. Stick and move with the same clip and the same four, five,

two points. Blake a motherfucker sure to die. That's my word. They even try to vote on. Have his mother singing. It's so hard. Yes, love. Such a interpilation of boys to men.

It's so hard to say goodbye. But, you know, the first time I heard that song, I remember some people thought it was two rappers on the song. It's just so different. And somebody was like, no, that's Biggie rapping both verses. And it's amazing. It was subtle enough that, like, you know, know some people actually thought it was two different rappers on the song but there's also just

again he's like he's using if you if you really study the lyrics he's using different flows for the different voices like they don't they don't they don't there's staccato's a little bit different and uh it's it's listen it's violent i got kids now some of these lyrics i'm like dang but like you know as a kid back then i was just like i was loving it you know there's there's a line on there that got edited on all the CDs that came out of for ready to die he's got line on there it says don't give a, don't give a, if you're pregnant, give me the baby rings and the number one

mom pendant. And I'll never forget on every CD it says, don't give a, if you're, and I was like, there's so much cursing on this album. That's the word. That's the word that did he was gone too far, Biggie. This is not freaking acceptable, but it's almost like

the George Clooney approach to making a movie, like, or having a movie career through most of the 2000s. He would do a big, Clooney would do a big budget movie and then he would do a small yeah, he would go off and do a small movie. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like

both Biggie albums to a certain extent have songs for the streets and then a song made for radio. And not that did he, you know, invented this as a strategy to get artists play, but it definitely felt like he perfected it for the 90s, especially on the East Coast. Right. You know, because

to this day, when I think about that album, might think about, oh, that's my favorite song. Like, the warning is a great song, but it comes on right after a song that you feel like was maybe made, at least for the mixed shows, mixed shows being black radio shows at night. So they would play songs that you wouldn't hear

during the daytime, but they were still acceptable enough that you could play them at some time. And they're covering all the different markets, all the different potential audiences. 100%. Biggie was able to keep that mainstream appeal without losing the street appeal. And that was sort of the potent nature of the second biggie.

The biggie who, you know, some say the ex makes the sex spectacular. Let me lick you on your neck in the back in the, like, that's a different. Oh, I love your biggie. Like he's, I can't listen all day. But that is a guy who's rapping for, you know, potentially R&B fans. Just still trying to keep it a little grimy, but, you know, not the same as the biggie we heard on that other song. Right. Let me ask you, do you have his.

his vocals on Mo Money Mo Problems? I got him teed up right here. I got the Acapadeau. Where are you getting this stuff? Are people going to come find us in the studio and kill us? Because, like, you know, it's one thing if it's like, here's some ELO sample. Hey, man, this one of my special skills. But like, I don't want Diddy coming down.

Like, yo, is this serious? I got friends and I place. That's all I can say. Well, we need friends here. I'm your friends here. What are you saying? You have a friendship. Come on.

Just I want to be like, yo, who leaked that stuff to luxury? We're not cool with that. Well, we're going to listen anyway because it's pretty, it's pretty hair-raising on the back of the neck. Let's listen. This is isolated Biggie Smalls. Isolated notorious B-I-G, I mean. B-I-G, P-O-P-A, no info for the DEA, federal agents mad because I'm flagrant, tap myself, and the phone in the basement. My team's supreme, stay clean, triple beam, lyrical dream, I beat at, catch a seat at all events bent.

Gats and Holsters, Girls on Shoulders, Playboy, I told you, me and mics to me, Bruce 2, I lose too much. Step on stage the girls booed too much. I guess it's cause you run with lame dudes too much. Me lose my touch. Never that. If I did, ain't no problem to get the gap where the true players at. Throw your rollies in the sky, wave them side to side and keep your hands high while I give your girl an eye.

Player please, lyrically, you see, B-I-G-B-flossing, jig on the cover of fortune. Five-D-O. Here's my phone number, your man, they got the know. I got the dough, got the flow-down Pizzat, Platinum Plus, like Zizzat. Dangerous on Trisax. Leave your flizzat. I got to say a couple of things about this. One is that Biggie famously didn't take paper into the studio.

He was completely off book or memorized. He and J.C. Two of the first. And, yeah, Jayce is the same way. So that part of it is always amazing to me. How dialed in you have to be to. He's writing him in his head. And to, well, not writing him in his head, but it's in his head.

It's in his head. I mean, okay. But here's what I've always, because I've always struggled with the idea that Biggie died when he was 24 years old. That's a 24 year old. And I hear it for the first time in my entire life, I can hear a 24-year-old rapping because you have the vocals with no treatment on it. I feel like when they put it in the track, it's a deeper, like, that sounds like a 24-year-old. When I hear the finished track, I hear a person who I will never be older than, you know, like he always sounds like. a deeper registered voice. That is crazy. I've never heard his isolated vocals.

One of the things I love about hearing and playing and sharing these isolated vocals is that you really hear the human being. You even hear the like the uns and the like the headphone bleed. You're picturing Biggie as a human being. And that's in the room with you. He's not a voice on high. Right. With all the reverb and doubled up. Invelled and protected by the musical bed and the bead and the whole and everything else going on. He is just a human of He's just a 24-year-old kid. And he's a 24-year-old kid. With an amazing talent. And in some ways, it touches.

It's so tragic that he'd be cut down so early. You know what I mean? Yeah. And something else that really comes clear when you listen to the isolated vocals. I mean, you hear everything we've been talking about. You hear his flow, the unusual rhyme schemes where he's placing rhymes, not just at the end of a line and then rhyming at the next time. There's rhymes within the line.

There'll be a word at the end of a line that gets rhymed. and then there's a new rhyme. All that stuff is mixed up in addition to his choice of where to place the syllables in time. So what's really interesting is when you learn that he had a childhood friend, there's a guy in the neighborhood who was a jazz cat, like who played with Miles Davis, like a real guy named Donald Harrison, that took him under his wing, that saw something innately in young Chris, Christopher Wallace, and took him in. And young Chris would go to his house, they would play jazz records. He'd play Max Roach Records and point out in like the drum source. solos, like what he was doing and what was interesting about it. So thinking about the syncopation, the idea that the choices a drummer makes are about how to surprise the ear, how to do something syncopated, which means against the beat, that would be unexpected and interesting.

That, I think, really sunk in with Biggie. When you think about what he's doing with his choice of where to put the syllables in the air, like when to say something and when to give it a little bit of space. It's so unusual. You and I have never talked about this ever. Okay. So I'm just amazed and happy that you've brought this up. What you're saying is 100% right.

And what I've heard somebody else far smarter than myself say online was the difference between Tupac and Biggie's flows was that Biggie was almost like using his voice as a jazz instrument. And Tupac was using his voice as a preacher. So he's like, you know, like in a maze. Like it's like he almost sounds like Marluther the King, Tupac. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's melodic like a picture too, right? Yes. I love that.

But Biggie, like you said, he's hitting, sometimes he's right on the beat, but he's got so much rhythm he can go off the beat and then bring it back to the beat. And it sounds so casual and like easy. He's like he's not breaking a sweat while he's doing it. No, no, it comes very natural to him. If you think about his verse on one more chance, you know, Just the way you could, you know, like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to wrap it right now. But go back and listen to it.

I love you, Biggie Raps. The number of times that he sort of takes a syllable and stretches it past the fourth beat into the first of the next beat. Exactly. And keeps it going. Like, all that stuff is very jazz-like. It's very drummery. And we're both drummers. We talk about it.

I remember one of my first, when you're playing the drums and you learn your fill is, the first one you learn is tunes. Cat, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dda-dda-ps. And you come right back on the one. right? Yeah. And then a little later on, you learn, boom, skat, dun, but that bunk, go, you're kind of like not hitting the crash on the one. You're finding new unexpected places to put the rhythm, to put your... So shout out to the public schools where they still have banned.

Thank God for that. So, you know, this episode is sort of like a love letter, you know, to the notorious B.I.G. And I just think it's so wild. I always try to avoid, drawing direct comparisons between genres like saying oh, Tribe Call Quest is the Rolling Stones of hip-hop. I really try to avoid that stuff. We're going to do it on the show a lot.

Whether you like it or not. No, no. I almost refuse. I think it cheapens everyone, but I will say I will say there are some connecting tissue between I think Biggie and Kurt Cobain in the sense that you know, there are two major

release albums under both of their belts for Nirvana, Nevermind, and in uter. I know that they did bleach. Look, Biggie did a whole album worth of, you know, stuff before he came out with Ready to Die. But I'm saying there are two sort of

major albums that both guys brought out, and then they're gone. You know, then they're just gone. They're, they're, gosh, this sounds like I'm trying to make a joke. Their rain on the top is very brief. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're not around very long enough to enjoy it.

They're lasting impression on the genre. And when you see kids who are 11 and 12 now walking around with notorious BIG on their shirt, it just really lets you know just how much impact you can have in just a really brief period. I'm just having this conversation. Like if you go around the world, you'll see just like graffiti and spray pan and in T-shirts. Like who are the iconic artists that have traveled? You'll see, I think you might see some John Lennon. you'll probably see some Bob Marley

and you'll probably see some BIG and you might see some Kurt Cobain. I think there's this small group of artists who went too young that have global impact decades after their passion. And you know, I think you've got to prove, you kind of prove my point in the sense that like John Lennon, Tupac,

these are guys who have a lot of albums. To me, what connects Kurt with Chris is that they kind of both broke out in 91. You know what I mean? And by, you know, by 97, they're both gone, and you can't imagine the 90s without these icons. You know, it's just their impact was huge. Yes, perfectly put.

Well, that's our show. Dialla, thank you for sharing the tale of two biggies with me. Anything for you, my friend. Anything. Help me in this thing. Who are you again? Well, I'm glad you ask, because I am producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury. And I'm director, actor, writer, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle.

And this is One Song. Until next time. Bye-bye.