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Biggie Smalls "Duets" album

Does anyone actually own this, and is any good? I've avoided buying it because it just seems like a shameless attempt by P Diddy to make money off Notorious' name, but at the same time I'm kinda torn because I'd quite like to hear it and I like a lot of the other artists on it.

If it was all songs that Biggy wrote and left half recorded, and they got someone else in to do the bits that weren't finished I could sort of accept that. But if they are all like "Nasty Girl" where they just took one verse from one of his completed (and previously released) songs, cut the vocal out and pasted it over a completely new track then got Nelly, Diddy et all to add another 4 verses and a chorus, and then released it as "Notorious BIG featuring Nelly and Diddy" ! Well that just sounds like a load of balls.

Is it worth picking up?

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Guest Tam o' Shantie

i haven't heard it, but no, no it's not.

i wouldn't go as far as to say that i hate 'posse' type songs in which all of the rappers weren't at the same session, but it does ruin it when you can tell that they were nowhere near each other. a posse cut should be consistent and have a live feel.

i will unashamedly state that i despise 'remixes' featuring new verses from mcs who had nothing to do with the original song, or dead rappers collaborating with living ones...it's phoney. is a hip hop beat not more than just a metronome? how is biggie's flow going to sound when he had no idea what he was rapping 'over'.

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i haven't heard it, but no, no it's not.

i wouldn't go as far as to say that i hate 'posse' type songs in which all of the rappers weren't at the same session, but it does ruin it when you can tell that they were nowhere near each other. a posse cut should be consistent and have a live feel.

i will unashamedly state that i despise 'remixes' featuring new verses from mcs who had nothing to do with the original song, or dead rappers collaborating with living ones...it's phoney. is a hip hop beat not more than just a metronome? how is biggie's flow going to sound when he had no idea what he was rapping 'over'.

It sounds wrong to me that he is duetting with people he never even met who he may well fucking hate. Who's to say he wants Eminem anywhere near his album for example? He might think Eminem is whack.

Though I disagree with you on the posse thing, I like hearing a group of rappers collaborating, it's interesting hearing all their different styles over the same track. But yeah it is a lot better when it's people who are mates and may have actually recorded it together.

It also helps you notice which ones are shit. Like Cashis. Cashis sucks big time. He should fuck off. His flow is boring as hell and he doesn't stay on the beat.

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I expected parts would be changed (to save face, length of the film and well just for entertainment purposes), what was wrong with it?

It was mostly just the characters. Biggie was portrayed as the gentle giant who wouldn't hurt a fly, which I just don't really buy. The guy was selling crack on the streets at age 12, and the arrest you see in the movie was actually his third or fourth arrest. I think he was a lot more "gangsta" then the film lets on. Also Diddy comes out of the film looking like a sort of Yoda character, always on hand with wise advise and always abiding by the law. When in fact he's been arrested a bunch of times for weapons offenses and charged with bribery. Diddy himself, and Biggie's mum were executive producers on the film, and it seems re-wrote history a bit, it's a very one sided film. Really really good film though.

As I said when I watched it in the "Last film you watched" thread...

I watched Notorious last night, which was absolutely brilliant.

I don't really know enough about Biggie as a person to comment on how accurate the portrayal of him was, but they painted him as a sort of gentle giant who didn't want to hurt anyone, and was sucked into the world of drug dealing and gangs against his will to look after his daughter. I'm not entirely convinced this really is the case (especially given that the contributors to the movie were his best friend P Diddy and his mother), but it made for pretty compelling viewing.

The actor who played him put in a great performance, as did the actress who played Lil' Kim, and the guy who played Tupac. My only complaint about the movie was that it felt really rushed in places, and the running time could have done with being a bit longer to delve into his character a bit further. For example his year in prison passed in about 20 seconds, and they didn't really touch on his other arrests and brushes with the law. The East Coast / West coast rivalry, which is pretty central to Biggie's life, wasn't touched on until the last half hour of the film, and then suddenly it was just there, they didn't really explain how it all began and didn't go into much detail about how Tupac suddenly and ferociously turned on Biggie.

They omitted the fact that Biggie and Puffy were implicated in, and largely blamed for, Tupac's murder, instead showing Biggie greiving for his fallen ex-comrade, and later implied that Biggie was only killed because he was East Coast, with no mention of the fact that it was seen as a revenge killing. Suge Knight was only glimpsed very briefly in the film and you didn't see him stirring up the rivalry, and you didn't see all the stuff about Tupac pretty much calling out and threatening to kill the entire East Coast scene on his records. There wasn't any mention of the fact that Bad Boy and Death Row were business rivals, and crucially they didn't mention the fact that when Biggie came on the scene, rap was firmly centered on the West Coast and he pretty much single handedly shifted the attnetion back to the East Coast. I know it's a lot to cram into a 2 hour film, but it did feel really rushed in places and it could have easily filled 3 hours.

For all it's faults though, it was a truly excellent film, really compelling stuff, the 2 hours fly by. An absolute must see for anyone, whether they are into Biggie's music or the hip-hop scene, or otherwise. Highly recommended.

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Guest Tam o' Shantie

"rap was firmly centered on the West Coast and he pretty much single handedly shifted the attnetion back to the East Coast."

Yeah it helped to shift attention but...

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sun Rises in the East - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Illmatic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...

There are way more too depending on how far you want to go, liquid swords/return to 36 chambers/tical, The Infamous etc.

36 Chambers and Illmatic are both frequently seen as a couple of the most significant hip hop albums of all time (in fact, most significant full stop in some cases). Biggie seems to personify the east coast revival just because he was in the middle of the death row/bad boy feud but in terms of boosting the east's credibility singlehandedly i disagree

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"rap was firmly centered on the West Coast and he pretty much single handedly shifted the attnetion back to the East Coast."

Yeah it helped to shift attention but...

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sun Rises in the East - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Illmatic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...

There are way more too depending on how far you want to go, liquid swords/return to 36 chambers/tical, The Infamous etc.

36 Chambers and Illmatic are both frequently seen as a couple of the most significant hip hop albums of all time (in fact, most significant full stop in some cases). Biggie seems to personify the east coast revival just because he was in the middle of the death row/bad boy feud but in terms of boosting the east's credibility singlehandedly i disagree

Illmatic is certainly good, but I'm not such a fan of the Clan. I just can't get into 36 Chambers, I don't know what it is there's just something about it that I don't like. I like some of their solo stuff, though I haven't heard a lot of it tbh. Method Man, GZA & Raekwon are pretty good, prefer it to Wu Tang.

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Illmatic is incredible. Love it. I do actually prefer GZA's Liquid Swords to 36 Chambers, but its close. Liquid Swords seems to have a better structure to its tracks, but 36 Chambers just has that raw anger. It gives you the feeling that any one of them would gladly jump out of the stereo and put several holes in you, just for fun. I dig that.

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Illmatic is incredible. Love it. I do actually prefer GZA's Liquid Swords to 36 Chambers, but its close. Liquid Swords seems to have a better structure to its tracks, but 36 Chambers just has that raw anger. It gives you the feeling that any one of them would gladly jump out of the stereo and put several holes in you, just for fun. I dig that.

To me, 36 Chambers just sounds like a bunch of angry blokes shouting. Their solo efforts still have the same anger but it's a bit more reeled in.

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Guest Tam o' Shantie

36 chambers is simple hardcore NY hip hop...it is distinctly east coast, unique in its production (or was, at least) massively raw and really strikes a chord as being true and real...almost all of these guys really were slinging rocks. Lyrically you've got biggie glamourising the drug dealer's lifestyle, the wu tang rapped about it in a desperate and hopeful tone. I always say that 36 chambers is a hip hop album for punks.

Anyway, total thread drift here - all i'm saying is that Ready To Die was neither the first, the only or the most important album to shift focus from the west coast to the east during that time

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Get in. I hope it finally exposes Dre for the hopeless non-rapper that he is. He is a joke.

Anyone who's ever heard The Chonic can attest to that. It's apparent from the first track that Snoop Dogg is a million times better as a rapper than Dre. His voice is just so boring.

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36 chambers is simple hardcore NY hip hop...it is distinctly east coast, unique in its production (or was, at least) massively raw and really strikes a chord as being true and real...almost all of these guys really were slinging rocks. Lyrically you've got biggie glamourising the drug dealer's lifestyle, the wu tang rapped about it in a desperate and hopeful tone. I always say that 36 chambers is a hip hop album for punks.

Anyway, total thread drift here - all i'm saying is that Ready To Die was neither the first, the only or the most important album to shift focus from the west coast to the east during that time

Thread drift is fine if it's a good thread drift! It's turned into a hip-hop appreciation thread, which is a fine, and overdue, thing. At least we're not all just calling each other names and stuff.

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Guest Tam o' Shantie
I've never actually listened to Notorious BIG, I think the Puff Daddy connection always put me off....I wonder if there's as extensive an archive of unreleased material about to appear as per Tupac....fuckers had more albums out since he died than he had when he was alive.

trust me when i say that he is not an 'album' rapper. ready to die on the whole is overrated but at least it has an above-average amount of decent tracks. aside from the few gems on 'life after death' i will honestly say that i think it's a pile of shit. weak production from most of the collaborators, corny beats and bad guest spots.

personal faves are Juicy, Kick In The Door & 10 Crack Commandments

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