Sprinkled with cinematic grandeur and held together by that unassailable flow, Ready to Die represents Biggie—and hip hop—at its contradictory best. Ready to Die - The Remaster The Notorious B.I.G.

1. Ready To Die Album Art

Ready To Die Album Art

Writers & Publishers

from the album Ready To Die 路Copyright: Writer(s): Clarence Satchell, Barbara Mason, Osten Harvey, Sean Combs, le Roy Roosevelt Bonner, Gregory A. Webster, Christopher Wallace, Marshall Eugene Jones, Walter Morrison, Ralph Middlebrook Lyrics Terms of Use

Advisory - the following lyrics contain explicit language:

Yeah...
Yeah...
(you ready motherfucker?)
(we gon' kill your ass)

As I grab the glock, put it to your headpiece
One in the chamber, the safety is off release
Straight at your dome homes, I wanna see cabbage
Biggie smalls the savage, doin your brain cells much damage
Teflon is the material for the imperial
Mic ripper girl stripper the henny sipper
I drop lyrics off and on like a lightswitch
Quick to grab the right bitch and make her drive
The q-45, glocks and tecs are expected when I wreck shit
Respect is collected, so check it
I got techniques drippin out my buttcheeks
Sleep on my stomach so I don't fuck up my sheets, huh
My shit is deep, deeper than my grave g
I'm ready to die and nobody can save me
Fuck the world, fuck my moms and my girl
My life is played out like a jheri curl, I'm ready to die

As I sit back and look when I used to be a crook
Doin whatever it took from snatchin chains to pocketbooks
A big bad motherfucker on the wrong road
I got some drugs tried to get the avenue sold
I want it all from the rolexes
To the lexus gettin paid, is all I expected
My mother didn't give me what I want, what the fuck?
Now I got a glock, makin motherfuckers duck
Shit is real, and hungry's how I feel
I rob and steal because that money got that whip appeal
Kickin niggaz down the steps just for rep
Any repercussion lead to niggaz gettin wet
The infrared's at your head real steady
You better grab your guns cause I'm ready, ready

I'm ready to die!
(nah we ain't gon' kill your ass yet)
(we gonna make you suffer)

In a sec I throw the tec to your fuckin neck
Everybody hit the deck, biggie bout to get some wreck
Quick to leave you in a coffin, for slick talkin
You better act like cece, and keep on walkin
When I hit ya, I split ya to the white meat
You swung on like you slumber right you fell to the conrete
Your face, my feet, they meet, we're stompin
I'm rippin mc's from tallahassee, to compton
Biggie smalls on a higher plane
Niggaz say I'm strange deranged because I put the 12 gauge to your brain
Make your shit splatter
Mix the blood like batter then my pocket gets fatter
After the hit, leave you on the street with your neck split
Down your backbone to where your motherfuckin cheek drip
The shit I kick, rip it through the vest
Biggie smalls passin any test, I'm ready to die!

I'm ready
(time to go, we gonna put you out your misery motherfucker)
Niggaz definitely know what time it is
The notorious one in full effect
For ninety-three!
Suicidal, I'm ready!

(now I lay me down to sleep)
Yeah
(pray the lord my soul to keep)
(if I should die before I wake)
(I pray the lord my soul to take)
(cause I'm ready to die)

(all y'all motherfuckers come with me if you want to)

(biggie smalls the biggest man)
(rockin on and on in ninety-three, easy mo bee)
(third eye, and the rest of the bad boy fam)
(I don't wanna see no cryin at my funeral)

Song Discussions is protected by U.S. Patent 9401941. Other patents pending.

Ready to Die arrives with none of the heady expectations of The Weirdness, the 2007 comeback that found Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers, aided by the sturdy Mike Watt, attempting to re-create some of the madness of Funhouse. For a variety of reasons it didn't work, but it wasn't so much an embarrassment as it was, well, weirdness, from a band weighed down more by its own ongoing internal tensions than its legacy. A little over a year after its release, Ron Asheton died and the group did what they did last time they were hanging by a thread: they brought in guitarist James Williamson. Back in 1973, he was the fuel that propelled Raw Power, an album that found Ron sitting in uneasily on bass, and he and Iggy recorded a bit after the Stooges final '70s implosion, but after 1980 he retired from music, choosing to pursue electrical engineering. So, in a sense, Williamson was further removed from rock & roll than Ron Asheton, who always plugged away in a variety of Ann Arbor- and Detroit-based rock bands, which makes the success of this second-phased Stooges reunion all the more remarkable. Because Ready to Die feels like a Stooges album in all the right ways, throwing out the halting, lurching hard murk of The Weirdness in favor of successive blasts of sleaze, intermittently interrupted by the occasional moment of reflection. Ballads were verboten in the olden days -- whenever the Stooges slowed the tempo, they got mired in a dirge -- so this pair of quiet ones suggest an older band, one filled with musicians facing their seventies (perhaps that's the origin of the title?), but the rest of Ready to Die showcases grizzled, gnarly vets who not only know how to deliver the goods but take pleasure in doing so. That sense of joy is a new wrinkle for the Stooges: at their purest, their fun was nihilistic, celebrating the joy in destruction. Here, there's a sense of joy in still being alive and still being able to make noise. Much of that comes from Williamson -- who not only writes and plays guitar but produces the album, giving it a clean, efficient attack -- as the guitarist seemingly relishes the opportunity to get back into the game. If he takes things seriously, Iggy most decidedly does not, happily succumbing to silliness -- he's on his knees for those Double Ds, bringing to mind the Iggy who's always anxious to encore with 'Louie Louie' -- and that reckless vulgarity is preferable to the strained pretension of The Weirdness, particularly when it's supported by the righteous noise of the reconstituted Stooges. Liberated from the weight of their history, they're just ready to rock while they still can, and that's why Ready to Die is, against all odds, a terrific Stooges album.