The Notorious B.I.G.

Released shortly after his untimely passing, Biggie's second album made him a true rap legend. This double-disc extravaganza finds the Brooklyn icon in top form, offering classic club hits ("Hypnotize"), rugged street anthems ("Ten Crack Commandments") and saucy love jams ("F*ck You Tonight"). Timeless music from one of the best.

Biggie's murder made it too easy to romanticize intimations of mortality that don't truck with any Tupac-style martyr complex. Equally devoid of morbidity and joie de vivre, Biggie is far more sardonic, self-deprecating, and tough-minded, "ready to die" in the cast-a-cold-eye sense. Although his moments of warmth for family and comrades seem real enough, he proves one funny son of a bitch on the love-man parody "#!*@ You Tonight," the achingly lyrical slow-falsetto showcase "Playa Hater" ("Open the door/Lay on the floor/You've been robbed"), and the tall tale about being caught in some bitch's crib by her Knick boyfriend ("one of those six-five n*gg*s, I don't know"), done first as a rap and then as a story for his boys. Where Cali hides behind funkamysterioso, Puffy Combs's chart-friendly r&b hooks rub comically against Biggie's unoratorical street style, with its trademark Schoolly D cum Butt-head "huh huh," as the likes of RZA, Bone-Thugs, and Lil' Kim add flavor. In short, way more fun and somewhat more moral than the look-ma-no-hands unaccountability promoted by showbiz outlaws from Mobb Deep to Westside Connection. (Grade - A)