by Jody Rosen for Slate.com
How Biggie Small Changed Hip-Hop
The Notorious B.I.G. loved to talk about his own untimely demise. On his 1994 debut Ready To Die, the Brooklyn rapper insisted in song after song that his days were numbered: “I don’t wanna live no more/ Sometimes I hear death knocking at my front door.” In “Respect,” B.I.G. flashed back to a brush with death at the moment of his birth 
(“Umbilical chord’s wrapped around my neck/ I’m seeing my death, and I ain’t even took my first step”). The album concluded with a soap-opera suicide: The rapper phones a friend, threatening to kill himself; a gunshot blast is heard, followed by the sound of a heartbeat petering out.
And the mortal peril didn’t end there. In the opening moments of his second CD, Life After Death, Biggie flat-lines but is revived by the wheedling words of his producer and record-label head, Puff Daddy (“I know you can hear me, nigga … You got too much livin’ to do, too much unfinished business”). He promptly rises from his hospital bed to rap more death-haunted songs: “Long Kiss Goodnight,” “My Downfall,” “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You),” and so on. In real life, of course, there was no miracle recovery.
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