Biggie‘s original tracklist for Life After Death has surfaced, revealing several unreleased songs and a few surprise collaborations.
The tracklist, which was unearthed by the Instagram account 92 Bricks, stems from a January 1997 listening party for the now-iconic album, which was originally titled Life After Death… Til Death Do Us Part.
At the event, there were 28 tracks played, four more than the 24 that appeared on the final version (although one song appears twice on the original tracklist which may have been a printing error, suggesting the album was originally 27 songs).
The original tracklist features not only a completely reworked order but five songs that have yet to be heard by the public. These include “Once Upon a Time” featuring Fat Joe, “Stayin’ Alive” and untitled tracks produced by RZA, Easy Mo Bee and DJ Clark Kent.
There is also a song that didn’t make the final cut called “Spanish Fly,” although this is most likely an early version of the track of the same name from Black Rob‘s 2000 album Life Story.
Several songs that did appear on Life After Death are listed on the original tracklist under different names, with “Comin’ Out” featuring Ma$e becoming “Mo Money Mo Problems” (which sampled Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out”), “Bones Track” becoming the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-assisted “Notorious Thugs” and “Mo Bounce” becoming “Going Back to Cali.”
The tracklist has not been independently verified by Biggie’s estate or Bad Boy Records.
Fat Joe has previously spoken about collaborating with Biggie before his untimely death in 1997, claiming that they once planned to record an entire album together.
What’s more, the project was supposed to contain diss songs aimed at B.I.G.’s then-rival 2Pac.
“You know I say stuff, Tim, and they always say I lie or I say too much,” he said to Timbaland over Instagram Live in 2021. “You know I worked on an album with Biggie? We cut about five songs together.
“He was like, ‘You the Latino don, I’m the Black don.’ And we was in that studio going crazy. It’s verified by Puff Daddy and everybody.
He added: “I’ma keep it real: at the time, we were dissing 2Pac a lot and all that, and so that should have never seen the light of day. Which is respectfully so, because you know they both passed on. But yeah, I worked with the B.I.G. for real.”
IG post by 92 Bricks 🙄
Wasn’t there a story back in the day that Biggie wanted this to be a 3CD project so that he could get out of his deal with Bad Boy and Puff said no🤔. Carry On!!!
His next album was supposed to be three CDs. Sony was already working on getting him out of his deal according to Un Rivera, so I don’t know if one had anything to do with the other. He just was planning on doing a three-CD album to keep with the theme of Ready to Die, Life After Death, and it was supposed to be called Born Again, which I think Puffy ended up naming one of those wack posthumous albums he put out.
I don’t think I was ever more disappointed in an album, and it was fucked up because he got killed two weeks before it came out. It was like Puffy’s vision won, and he never got a chance to course correct after that misstep, or maybe even he keeps down that path since that introduced the Shiny Suit era that all the NY rappers were on until X dominated 1998. That shit was wack when he should have stuck with the direction he was going with Moe Bee along with the remixes he did in between albums.
I love the album. I feel the cinematic production and storytelling was next level, and is really hard to front on. Otherwise, I feel you make some really stong points. Hypnotise and More Money/Problems set off the shiny suit era (which I hated).
@Loud_Pack I couldn’t disagree more. Life After Death is one of my favorite albums , so is Ready to Die
That’s just his enormous talent shining through regardless, but Puffy was making him into a Caricature. I could have seen a big backlash to him had he lived because of how over the top it was. Like all that shit he did with Ma$e the next two years is what he had planned for Biggie, and just think of how Ma$e was not thought of as serious at the time when he was a grimy rapper before he signed to Bad Boy.
Ready to Die is. Life After Death, I rarely ever revisit anything on that album.
I guess being around and actively buying albums in the early 90’s…i remember there were fanbases and circles that loved Ready to Die and Illmatic, but hated Life After Death and It Was Written. I don’t agree with it, but I’ve seen it.
As a DJ back then, who spun both sophomore albums, many felt they were good but did not live up to the standards of their predecessors.
I’m definitely dating myself but Special Ed’s 3rd LP and Black Sheep’s 2nd LP were 2 the biggest disappointments for me but LAD was also up there for me. It felt bloated. It could’ve been a much tighter and cohesive single album. There are few songs on it I have not listened to since it first came out and don’t ever need to.
I love Special Ed, but to be surprised that Ed’s third album was a disappointment? C’mon son. I was disappointed by Black Sheep’s second album as well, but they were coming off a very hot album, and should have kept that going. After Youngest in Charge and Legal, what was Ed supposed to do?
I didn’t feel that way about It Was Written. Just Life After Death was too over the top glossy. Ironically, I had similar criticisms of it as I had of All Eyez on Me. They both just didn’t seem like the artists and that they were putting out the vision the labels had for them to crossover to MTV and all that shit. People say that about It Was Written too for diehard Nas fans, but I just thought Nas was following a natural progression there. Now, when he did that Nastradamus shit after he scrapped the original double disc because it leaked, I thought that about him too. That Trackmasters microwave shit was not it.
This captures it perfectly. It was bloated, and that lazy Puffy sampling shit that probably worked better for R&B won out. It worked for One More Chance, and then he was like let’s do that over and over and over again and make a whole album of that. Sky’s the Limit, Mo Money, I Love the Doe, and a few others were just straight up replays of old songs with Biggie rapping over the instrumentals with drum programming. Nah. You also would hope Biggie would speak more on social topics on album two after his introduction, but it was none of that either. Just more flossing and party songs. So much untapped potential.
It was a good album, it just had 4 or 5 songs that should have been left off. They only made it a double album because 2Pac came out with a double album.
Dissing Pac after he died is still a bitch move regardless. At least Pac did it while Big was alive and wasn’t scared to do it.
Would have been hard for Tupac to do that now wouldn’t it smart guy?
And everybody want act like Biggie was an angel in that situation when he never even attempted to try to reach out to Pac to iron out the situation and never disassociated himself from Puffy. Then made a diss song about Pac, Long Kiss Goodnight, after Pac passed. And notice the references in the song to Pac, he references the laugh now cry later tattoo Pac had and referenced I ain’t mad atcha. Sneak dissing a person that wasn’t even around.
fat joes peoples probably doctored this up. Lol at fat joe being the sole guest spot on the cutting room floor. I rather hear Pun spit the verses he wrote than to see Fat Joe on a biggie double album as one of the few guests…pun wasn’t available then???
I guarantee ‘Staying Alive’ would of been a corny sample flip of the Bee Gees song.
Nope. Its the intro you dummy 🤡
I guarantee ‘Staying Alive’ would of been a corny sample flip of the Bee Gees song.
The version that was released could have done without like 4 songs. There’s about 4 skips on that album. But they was releasing a double album because you know who had one out a year earlier