This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
On the intro to this posthumous CD, slain rapper Christopher Wallace is heard saying that in 10 years, all he wants is to be “just living … but I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”
Prophetic it may be, but it’s hardly surprising. For the most part, Wallace — aka Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G. — made a career of predicting his demise (his first disc was titled Ready To Die, after all). But even taken with a grain of salt, that opening quote is the most authentic moment on this sub-par, barrel-scraping release from his mentor, collaborator and homeboy Sean (Puff Daddy) Combs.
Although a handful of tracks featuring Biggie have been issued since his drive-by shooting death in Los Angeles a couple of years back, this is the first full-length release. But surprisingly, unlike Biggie’s similary slain counterpart Tupac Shakur, who reportedly left hundreds of songs in the can, it seems the well of untapped Biggie material is already running dry.
Most of Born Again’s 17 songs sound like obviously unfinished tracks. Typically, Biggie contributes just a verse or chorus in his surprisingly graceful, marble-mouthed style, while a lengthy guest list of hip-hop and rap stars — Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim, Ice Cube, Mobb Deep, K-Ci & Jo-Jo, Redman, Method Man and plenty more — try to take up the slack and keep a party vibe going in his absence.
Sometimes, like when Puffy nicks Duran Duran’s Notorious for a tribute tune, Notorious B.I.G., it almost works. But most of the time — especially when Puffy enlists an artist like Eminem, somebody Biggie probably never even heard of — Born Again really takes on the vibe of one of those creepily exploitive duet-with-the-dead albums. And the final spoken-word track, which features Wallace’s mother Violetta painfully wishing her son had never become a rapper — only to be cut off in mid-speech like some rambling rando at an awards show — manages to be touching and frustrating at once.
Ultimately, like the recent posthumous album from Shakur, Born Again isn’t so much a tribute to a great artist as it is a sad reminder of lost potential and a life stolen far too soon.
