Album: Ready To Die (1994)
Charted: 72 27
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, Notorious B.I.G. raps about his humble beginnings and unlikely rise to fame. He grew up in Brooklyn at a time when rap was just emerging in that area and widely considered a passing fad. In the song, he mentions several hip-hop pioneers who influenced him, including Marley Marl and Mr. Magic.
  • This samples "Juicy Fruit," a 1983 track by the funk group Mtume. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Donovan Berry - El Dorado, AR, for above 2
  • On August 4, 1994, four days before this single's release, Biggie married the R&B singer Faith Evans. They had a hit together in 1995 with "One More Chance/Stay With Me."
  • "Juicy" was Notorious B.I.G.'s first hit, kickstarting a fast rise to fame. He wrote almost all of his own songs, filling his tracks with clever and very considered wordplay. Many rappers like to freestyle in the studio, but Biggie would write and refine his lyrics.
  • Music producer Pete Rock claims Sean "Puffy" Combs, who was executive producer for the Ready to Die album, stole the "Juicy" beat from him. Rock told Wax Poetics:

    "I did the original version, didn't get credit for it. They came to my house, heard the beat going on the drum machine, it's the same story. You come downstairs at my crib, you hear music. He heard that s--t and the next thing you know it comes out. They had me do a remix, but I tell people, and I will fight it to the end, that I did the original version of that. I'm not mad at anybody, I just want the correct credit."
  • The lyrics, "Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade" reference the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On February 26, 1993, Al-Qaeda-funded terrorists detonated a truck bomb at the base of the North Tower, hoping the explosion would cause the building to crash into the South Tower, destroying them both. Although the plan didn't work, over a thousand people were injured and six people were killed.
  • This was featured in the 2002 movie 8 Mile, starring Eminem.
  • As the lyrics "the building I was hustlin' in front of" imply Biggie was a drug dealer until he signed the contract for his debut album. According to the hip-hop magazine XXL, the rapper took Puffy's advice and abandoned the business for the sake of his music career. It was a narrow escape: just one day after he left a drug house in North Carolina, it was raided by the police.
  • Biggie's mother didn't appreciate the picture of squalor her son painted in this song. While the family didn't have much money, she said, they weren't poverty-stricken. "To me, that's a part of an alter-ego. That's the rags to riches person that he wants to sing about. In all my son's life, my son left my home when he was 20, and there was not one single second when I didn't have food on my table," she explained in the 2002 documentary Biggie and Tupac.
  • This was named the greatest hip-hop song of all time in a 2019 poll for BBC Music. Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" was runner-up and Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones (Part II)" came in third.

    Over 100 experts voted for the list. "That infinite optimism - going from broke to paid, nobody to legend - still propels rap and keeps us dreaming," wrote hip-hop journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy of "Juicy" in an essay that accompanies the poll.
  • Ready to Die is the debut studio album by the Notorious B.I.G., released on September 13, 1994. It was the only LP that Biggie Smalls released while he was alive, as he was killed on March 9, 1997, two weeks before the release of his second album, Life After Death.

    Ready to Die is widely regarded as a classic and one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, featuring hits such as this song, "Big Poppa," and "One More Chance."
  • The album cover of Ready to Die features an image of an infant that resembles the artist, but with an afro hairstyle. This choice of imagery was consistent with the album's overarching theme, which portrayed the artist's life from his birth to his eventual death.

    The infant on the cover is Keithroy Yearwood, who was 10 months old when the photo was taken after a run-of-the-mill casting call. He was paid $150 for the two-hour shoot.
  • While Biggie's Ready to Die cover art has become iconic and imitated by other artists, it wasn't the first to use toddler or baby photos. Nas' Illmatic, for example, from 1994 features a photo of Nas as a child. Albums from Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, and Drake later drew influence from Ready to Die, using photos of random babies or themselves as youths for their cover art.

Comments: 1

  • Ramsey Chikopa Ray from Blantyre MalawiThe greatest hip-hop song of all time
    If you don't knw now you knw......!
    Rest power biggie smalz
see more comments

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