Ready To Die and Life After Death as concept albums
 

The Notorious B.I.G's two album's Ready To Die and Life After Death seem to have a hidden narrative. To begin with, both albums contain non-music segments of dialog and action. Secondly, the songs on both and in general the feel of the two albums seem to indicate a storyline.

Ready To Die:

http://www.notorious-big.com/images/...ady_to_die.jpg

Biggie goes from selling rocks and obscurity as a musician to superstar. But he still dabbles in crime and becomes a very rich, Scarface like character.

He's the big thug on the block until he ends his own life in Suicidal Thoughts.

Life After Death:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...AfterDeath.jpg

Biggie is back, either having survived his suicide attempt or coming back in some other form. He is soon back to his old ways but this time his enemies get the best of him and he is assasinated.

I just get the feeling that I'm watching a crime movie when I listen to these albums. It's all probably a construct in my head, but has anyone else noticed?

Inviting discussion on this.

I've never thought of them having complete and continuing storylines. I mean, obviously they're intended to follow one another as the intro on Life After Death more or less confirms it, but I've never really listened to them as a story. Although, now that you mention it there does seem to be a loose narrative (and maybe an actual story upon close inspection) as Ready To Die begins with his birth and Life After Death ends with his death (where would he of gone from there? Now there's a question).

I look forward to listening to them both again with this storyline in mind, to see how well it fits. It certainly sounds like a very Biggie-esque concept.

Yeah, that's a pretty neat idea. I've only listened to 'Ready to Die' intensively, and the track listing doesn't completely compliment the idea, but still, it's entirely plausible. I wouldn't be surprised. These albums did leave quite the impact, I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to them.

that general idea is definitely there.

However, if this was a story, Life After Death would be the more filler side of the story.

Dude you'll be hard pressed to find rap albums that don't have skits and interludes and intros and whatever
Brotha lynch has like 3 in every album! :P
Cosmic Slop shop The Federation & Big Lurch all use em
and if they don't have a skit it's probably because they just kept it as part of the song where it like fades into the beat or whatever.

I like the whole concept idea. I never heard the whole albums though.

Yeah I know that several hip-hop albums have non-music segues and such. It's just these seem to play out more and reinforce the storytelling aspect of the albums.

Ready To Die is autobiographical in places,Life After Death is a very obvious concept album.

Just gotta point out... did you mean to mispell your username?

after hearing the full cd's I think it's pretty clear they're concept albums.I understand what you mean about the interludes now,there's a lot in the cd's. even at the end and beginning of songs.

if you were trying to say that they're connected concept albums, thats pretty obvious as well. the titles say it all, and so does the first song on life after death.

good albums though.I like the majority of the songs.