Tip of the Spear

On Friday a jury in Nashville, Tennessee decided that the title song of the Notorious B.I.G.'s debut album Ready to Die sampled from an Ohio Players tune and awarded 4.2 million dollars in damages to the two record labels with the rights to the Ohio players music. More substantially, the judge halted the sale of Ready to Die.

The true injustice to Christopher Wallace's legacy is though the title track "Ready to Die" brings the album together it is not one of the best on the album. "Big Poppa", "Warning", "Gimme the Loot", "Juicy", and "Me & My B!tch" are all better examples of Wallace's wit and talent. Now these greats will be taken off the shelf as well, no doubt to be rereleased in a few years by Sean Combs mixing Biggie's music with whatever chump rapper of the day that pops up on his radar. These subsequent perversions only further water down his legacy. Whenever I hear one I just can't help but wonder if the "chump of the day" has more of a connection to Wallace than I do (and that would be zero).

Sean Combs and Bad Boy records admitted defeat in this case long ago in my mind. As Combs continued to sample and rerelease Christopher Wallace's work over the nine year since his death, I don't recall him ever using pieces of "Ready to Die". Though Combs has stumbled through the management of Wallace's musical estate, this is truly his biggest mistake. Surely he could have settled out of court for less than the 4.2 million. Even if it was more it would have been worth it to keep his friend's music in the stores.

Ready to Die is the only pure Notorious B.I.G. album, selling over 8 million records. Now Bad Boy Records has embarassingly fumbled away one of the best CDs of all time.