I vividly remember this album dropping. Having heard dreams of fucking an r&b bitch blow up about a year before this came out there was quite a lot of anticipation to this and i copped it the first week. I remember at the time thinking it was classic, but making a tape with just the standout tunes because there was a bit of filler on the record imo. Its an obvious classic and big was a great great mc. But i didnt check for any of the post humous output and went sour on puff and bad boy and all the utter crud that came out of that camp soon afterwards. All these kids repping big as the greatest ever and the whole biggie and pac adulation that followed their deaths is some real gossipy outside looking in sucker shit to me. All these kids buying into the myth capitalising off the violent death he suffered and the glorifying and romanticising of his death is wack as hell. The album is a classic, no doubt, and big is def one of many great mcs. But take the whole best there ever was myth and sell it back to the herbs pushing it. thats where my memories end and the fake non head marketing of east vs west and bullshit non hip hop hype came in and polluted the whole game with bullshit to the point where people now understand this to be some universal truth about hip hop and big being the best ever. Fuck that. He was just a great mc, and this was a great, albeit very short moment. But these 80's and 90's babies who bought the shirt and fawn over the myth need to fall way way the fuck back to the back of the rear.
