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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ain't Biggie's FAULT, December 27, 1999
It was a total shock to the entire hip-hop community when Notorious Big (aka Biggie Smalls) was shot to death at the age of 25. Two years later, Biggie's fellow producer, Sean "Puffy" Combs intends to utilize his remixing and collaborating skills to bring Biggie back to the "Greatest Rapper of All Time" by releasing Born Again [Dec. 7]. Unfortunately, Puffy failed to do that. This album only revealed Puffy's avarice and disrespect to his ceased homie. Puffy simply just sliced together the collection of Biggie's old lyric and remixed songs, which had seemingly ruined the originals. It was sad what Puffy did to the album especially with the guest appearances. These guests seems to make Biggie not as the "greatest rapper" on the strength of the two multi-platinum selling albums he had previously completed (Life after Death and Ready to die) before he was murdered by a drive-by shooting. This album contains some of the posthumous Notorious B.I.G.'s demos, freestyle verses and other fragmented clips, cut with new production and guest verses in the present tense that makes Biggie "born again". Since Puffy doesn't want to waste a second of Biggie tape, the production frames his lyrics like jewels of wisdom. Of this disc's 18 tracks, 14 are brought up to regular length by "featured" guests and not counting the intro and the outro. Thus Biggie's gifted performance only appeared in the remaining fragments. The most obvious example is the song "If I should Die Before I wake". It is built out of roughly 20 seconds worth of Biggie sound, covered by the guest rappers Black Rob, Beanie Sigel and Ice Cube. The song "I Really Want to Show You" sounds like the replica version of "Everyday Struggle", featuring the excellent performance by K-Ci and Jo-Jo and Nas. New rapper Eminem tears into his verse of "Dead Wrong" like it's his one chance to prove himself, and knocks Biggie out of the picture. Before Biggie's death, he doesn't even know who Eminem is, and we don't know if Biggie is willing to mix his song with Eminem. The fast song "Notorious B.I.G.", featuring the cheerfully nasty Lil' Kim, the cheerfully bland Puff Daddy and a cheerfully inevitable is a much better idea than it sounds like. This album is a disgrace to a Hip Hop legacy. Not because Biggie lacks of talents. It is Puffy try to make more money o release this cacophony and he ruined this brilliant rapper. Even worse, Biggie wasn't there to stop Puffy and Puffy makes all the profit. Anyone who dared to characterize the immortal lyrics of Life after Death and Ready to Die with this latest release is sheer blasphemy, and Puffy should go to Biggie's grave to beg for pardon.
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by The Notorious B.I.G. 
