Ready to Die is released

Why it matters

Ready to Die came out on Bad Boy on September 13, 1994. Notorious B.I.G. was 22. The album is, conceptually, a short story collection about the life and probable death of a young Brooklyn hustler trying to get out. It opens with "Intro," which is a four-minute audio collage of Biggie's life from birth to prison. It closes with "Suicidal Thoughts," which is a phone call to a friend about wanting to die. In between, it contains "Juicy," "Big Poppa," "One More Chance," "Warning," "Things Done Changed," "Gimme the Loot," and "Everyday Struggle." The album sold four million copies in the United States. It established Bad Boy as a label that could compete with Death Row on the same chart. It is one of the few rap LPs of the 90s that critics and casual listeners agree is one of the great albums of the era, full stop. Biggie's writing is dense, vivid, scary, funny, devastatingly observant, and (in the case of the conceit) prescient about his own future. Ready to Die is what the East Coast had to offer in the same year Snoop's Doggystyle was running the West Coast. The argument was even. The two of them never got to finish the argument. You can hear all of it on this album.