Life After Death is released

Why it matters

Life After Death came out on Bad Boy on March 25, 1997, sixteen days after Notorious B.I.G. was shot to death in Los Angeles. The album is the second and final studio LP Biggie completed. He had finished it before his death. The release date had been set before his death. The release date was not changed. The album is a double LP (24 tracks, 110 minutes) and stands as Biggie's most ambitious commercial product. "Hypnotize" was the lead single and hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Mo Money Mo Problems" with Puffy and Mase hit #1 too. "Notorious Thugs" with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. "Sky's the Limit." "Niggas Bleed." Life After Death sold ten million copies in the US over the following years and is one of the best-selling rap albums of all time. The structural and thematic dread of the title (recorded by a 24-year-old who titled his own follow-up album about his own demise) became, posthumously, one of the most discussed sequences in the history of pop. The album did not have to land the way it landed. He had set it up to land that way. You can hear it. He knew.