If he didn’t like it, he didn’t waste any time passing on it. Easy Mo Bee played Big countless instrumentals. To be in the studio with Big around this time of his life was to expect any and everything. New York hip-hop had become complacent.īig ultimately agreed, but in terms of the content, he knew what he wanted. Big loved the tag team of albums, and honestly loved pretty much everything he was hearing from the west and the south with artists like Scarface and UGK. Snoop’s project was a slightly different speed, but it encapsulated the same attention to musical detail that drew Big into its predecessor. That one-two punch in terms of debut albums for a label is perhaps the greatest in rap history. If The Chronic wasn’t enough, Death Row followed it with Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle a year later. The Chronic was a sonic boom, and if you weren’t putting out a project at least in the same zip code, then you shouldn’t even waste your time. It was one of those albums that made Big, as confident in his own skills as perhaps any MC before or after him, realize he had to step his shit up. Dre’s 1992 breakout success, The Chronic from the moment Matty C let him hear the project months in advance of its release.

aka Christroper Wallace) mind was blown by Dr. The following is an excerpt from It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him.

The notorious b.i.g. ready to die zip