B.I.G. and Me: Things Done Changed

Banger, who I'm told by XXL was a member of Biggie's posse, Junior M.A.F.I.A., said of his mentor that he "absorbed his whole life;" that when anything happened to him he'd "analyze it and absorb it and suck it up and then make a song about it."

Ready to Die, his debut album, is riddled with social observations, but they aren't phrased overtly in the way the commentary on a song like 2pac's "I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto" is. Where Pac would takes a more global view with a line like "I see no changes/All I see is racist faces," Biggie maintains a street-level perspective: "I hear you mother fucker's talk about it/But I stay seein' bodies with the motherfuckin' chalk around it."

The opening lines of "Things Done Changed," the first song on Ready to Die, illustrate Banger's assessment of Biggie beautifully. "Things Done Changed" is not the first track on the album. True to Sean Combs' love of excess (for the uninitiated, that's Puff Daddy, or P. Diddy, or Diddy, CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment and Ready to Die's producer), the album opens with a nicely constructed audio collage that introduces you to Big's world: a medley of song samples and urban ambiance that takes you from Big's birth in the comparatively peaceful Harlem of the early 1970s to the then-present urban hellhole of the early '90s. Like I said, it's nicely constructed, but you have to wonder why anyone thought it was necessary when Biggie opens the album up with:

"Remember back in the days? When niggas had waves,

Gazelle shades and corn braids,

Pitchin' pennies, honeys had them high top jellies

Shootin' skelly', motherfuckers was all friendly,

Loungin' at the barbecues, drinkin' brews,

With the neighbourhood crews, hangin' on the avenues,

Turn your pages to nineteen-ninety-three,

Niggas is gettin' smoked, G: believe me."

Few novelists can paint a picture for you with so few words. I'll tell you right now, I do not have any memory of back in the days, when African-Americans had waves. But with just seven lines (or approximately seven lines... obviously there's some degree of arbitrary editing on my part to put a verbal art form into written words), half of which focus on nothing more than fashion trends, Biggie puts you in a sepia-toned idealization of a thriving community and subculture. Your brain almost wants to block out the harsh street beat he's rapping over and replace it with some Motown. And then at the end of the stanza, with a single line, he flips the script on you: this isn't a song about nostalgia; it's a song about the horrifying contrast between what once was, and what is now.

From there, the song stays focused on the urban blight of post-crack Harlem, presenting a street-smart and brutally blunt assessment of the social mores of Big's mileu ("Instead of a Mack 10, he tried scrappin'/Slugs in his back and that's what the fuck happens") that can resonate even with those who have no personal experience of those conditions (like me!).

At the same time, Big crafts a deceptively broad social comment, that ranges from depicting the horrors of the endemic poverty that pushes people into a life of crime (Shit, it's hard bein' young/From the slums/Eatin' five cent gums/Not knowin' where your meal's comin' from"), to calling out the political establishment's apathy to the blight afflicting Harlem (the aforementioned "I hear you mother fuckers talk about it..."), to warming Republicans' hearts by refusing to absolve his own generation from at least a partial share in the responsibility for their situation ("Back in the day our parents used to take care of us/Look at 'em now, they even fuckin' scared of us"). And then at the end, he brings it all back to the personal, opining "shit, my Mom's got cancer in her breast/Don't ask me why I'm mother fuckin' stressed/Things done changed." Even in the midst of this social horror, the universal horrors of every day life go on.

Not too shabby for a single song from an artist who's never really gotten props for his political side.

Next up: we discuss "Gimme the Loot" and whether Biggie glorifies violence. And we make fun of my least favourite widely-respected music critic (who's that, you ask? Stick around and find out!).