LIFE AFTER DEATH: A Millennial Review Of A Notoriously B.I.G. Album
(Editor’s Note: Micah Drago is a 22-year old writer that recently listened to Ready To Die and Life After Death for the first time this year.)
(AllHipHop Special Review) Ready to Die was a great album, but I came into Life After Death with reservations for two reasons: it’s really long and it doesn’t get as much praise. For a lot of artists, 2-disc albums end up being career lows, and a debut album as great as Ready to Die pretty much guarantees an underwhelming second album.
In reality, I was pleasantly surprised with Life After Death. While it doesn’t have the same punchy beats and ferocious punchlines, B.I.G. used his second album as an opportunity to branch out and explore various musical styles, and the result left me wishing I could see the direction he took with his subsequent albums.
That’s not to say Life After Death didn’t have its flaws. To me, the biggest drawback of many ‘90s albums was the simplistic rhyming. A lot of rappers showed flashes of complex, multisyllabic rhymes, but I often find…