Home Music Music Lists

The 50 Best Notorious B.I.G. Songs

On the 25th anniversary of the legendary rapper’s tragic death, we honour his incredible musical legacy by counting down his 50 best songs.

Chris Walter/WireImage; Clarence Davis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images; Larry Busacca/WireImage

When Christopher George Latore Wallace was fatally shot at a Los Angeles traffic light on March 9, 1997, he was 24 years old and had released one album. But his stature at the time was towering, due both to his peerless artistic gifts and the desperately competitive atmosphere within hip-hop, viewed either rightly or wrongly as one of the few career dreams for Black kids boxed in by poverty, mass incarceration, racist drug policy, and corrupt, violent policing. That stature has only grown in the 25 years since. If the Notorious B.I.G. isn’t the greatest rapper ever (he is), then he’s the most respected. His narrative mastery, linguistic joy, dizzyingly rhythmic flows, emotional depth, and wry wisdom have never been equaled. Here’s why Biggie Smalls is still the illest.

From Rolling Stone US

Play video

Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

9

‘Party and Bullshit’ (1993)

Out of context, this debut single (paid for by Puffy Combs, then at Uptown Records) is in hot pursuit of fairly mundane, youthful pleasures — girls, weed, the latest sneakers. But it’s early ’90s New York, so Biggie’s guard is up and his body armored, rip-roaring and reckless, counterpunching with caustic punchlines, and quoting the Last Poets’ and Rodney King’s entreaties to Black America like some crazy shit some dude said at a party. —C.A.

Play video

Larry Busacca/WireImage

8

‘Unbelievable’ (1994)

A neck-snapping call to order amid a hail of bullets, “Unbelievable” is Biggie announcing himself as “the livest one” on his Bed-Stuy promenade and beyond. Not only did he strike fear in MCs with a landslide of outlandish, gun-waving punchlines and elbow-throwing internal rhymes, he illuminated project-hallway imagery, taunted white bystanders, and instructed DJ Premier to sample the smoothly sung title from a random verse on an R. Kelly slow jam. —C.A.

Play video
7

‘Hypnotize’ (1997)

“Hypnotize” was released on March , 1997, five days before Biggie’s death, and many fans heard the tragic news of his passing just as they were first basking in the glow of this glorious party anthem. Skimming a sample of Herb Alpert’s “Rise” and a Slick Rick interpolation, “Hypnotize” was an opulent stunner, a smash-hit celebration of the wealth, women, and sweaters once dreamed about and now fully available, rapped in a style that was savvy, subtle, and slick. The more distance from 3/9/97, the more of a joyful remembrance this song became. —J.G.  

Play video

Gene Shaw/Getty Images

6

‘Everyday Struggle’ (1994)

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that if society broke down, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” That broken society is Biggie’s subject on this bookend to “Juicy,” where the drug trade exploits those who suffer most from poverty, racism, and the rest. A lovely melodic phrase (here, from jazz pianist Dave Grusin) leavens the narrative’s unsparing baritone thunder, but it’s Big’s uncanny rhythmic cadence that keeps you breathless. —C.A.

Play video

Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

5

‘Who Shot Ya’ (1995)

“As we proceed to give you…” a lyrical lambasting of Ecclesiastical magnitude. The atmosphere alone created by the resituating of that delicate piano sample from David Porter’s “I’m Afraid the Masquerade Is Over” makes you feel as if you’ve wandered into a religious service and can’t feel your face. But Biggie’s most battle-ending performance may be remembered more for microwaving his discord with 2Pac to a point of no return. Although the song absolutely was not written about his supposed rival MC, the fact is that the lickshot reverberations of the song remain, Big and ‘Pac do not. —C.A.

Play video

Catherine McGann/Getty Images

4

‘Ten Crack Commandments’ (1997)

In professorial mode, Biggie slaps you upside the head with a jewel-encrusted wooden pointer, and DJ Premier crafts a taut, back-stiffening beat that spotlights Chuck D’s stentorian countdown and Les McCann’s soul-jazz electric piano. The writing itself is peerless; the delivery is mesmerizing. The very idea that he’s sharing his coke-dealing tips in manual form is bonkers. Note: Just the other day, I heard a white sports-radio dork scold somebody for getting high on their own supply and wished Biggie was around to shut his ass down. —C.A

Play video
3

‘Big Poppa’ (1994)

Even as a very young, belligerent street kid, Biggie carried himself with a venerable authority. He was the éminence grise of the bodega cypher. As a result, he could flow serenely over that familiar Minimoog whistle — here sampled from the Isley Brothers’ quiet-storm staple “Between the Sheets” — and still sound like he had a gun in your ribs. His sweet talk was almost formal, yet vile at the same time: “Allow me to lace these lyrical douches in your bushes”? You had to laugh, or else. —C.A.

Play video
2

‘Flava in Ya Ear (Remix)’ Craig Mack feat. the Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, and Rampage (1994)

An ineffable moment when the attitude, the sound, the movement, the art, the fashion, the business, and the whole damn sociocultural engine of New York City went skrrrrrrrp. It started with the snare-crackin’, siren-swirling, funky-earth mover beat — produced by Easy Mo Bee on a SP-1200 sampler that he played like an eight-key grand piano. Apparently, Biggie thought Mack was, let’s say, “basic,” as an MC, especially beside three eventual G.O.A.T.s (plus Rampage). At the time, 22-year-old Biggie only had a single and a few features, but his opening verse set off car alarms around the world: “You’re mad ’cause my style you’re admiring/Don’t be mad, UPS is hiring.” —C.A.

Play video
1

‘Juicy’ (1994)

“It was all a dream…” goes one of the most famous opening verses in history. “Juicy” was full of layers both prominent and subtle: It not only epitomized the Notorious B.I.G.’s evolution from street hustler to successful musician, but also symbolized how the East Coast rap establishment learned to adapt to shifting pop tastes and a then-omnipresent G-funk sound. Co-produced by Poke of the Trackmasters and Puffy, it’s a stark departure from the dusty boom-bap sound New York rap was known for and boasted a smoothly harmonized chorus from soon-to-be famous girl group Total. In his book Decoded, Jay-Z explained how Biggie’s ad-lib about being arrested simply for “trying to feed my daughter” held deep meaning. “I loved that he described what a lot of hustlers were going through in the streets — dissed and feared by teachers and parents and neighbors and cops, broke, working a corner to try to get some bread for basic shit — as more than some glamorous alternative to having a real job,” wrote Jay. “He elevated it to ‘the struggle.’ ” —M.R.