Notorious Movie Soundtrack Review
I think I knew all the words to “Juicy” before I learned the whole national anthem. Every hip-hop head should be able to recite that song better than they know their ABCs. I picked up on Biggie just before his short-lived success was taken away. I believe I was in the 4th grade. Since then, his music has always been an essential part of my play list, as my musical taste buds evolved over the years.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a review on Biggie’s biopic, Notorious. As I’ve previously stated, I thought the flick was a mediocre and safe attempt at revisiting the late life of Christopher Wallace. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but bop my head for two hours in the movie theatre, as the Biggie classics were bumping – in all its surround sound glory. So when I received the Notorious soundtrack (thanks, Allan for the hook-up) in the mail a few days ago, I felt a rush of nostalgia, feeling like that fourth grader once again.
The soundtrack is essentially a collection of songs that span from “Ready to Die” to “Born Again”. To avoid looking like a greatest hits album rather than a movie soundtrack, they threw in a few new songs with guest features such as, Jay-Z, Faith Evans, Jadakiss and even Santogold. The album also contains three never-been-heard demo recordings.
For the most part, the classics are all here. The album opens with the hard-hitting “Nototorius Thugs,” featuring Bone Thugz. Arguably one of the top ten hip-hops songs ever, the classic tale of rags to riches is told through the soulful sounds of “Juicy”.
One of the stand out tracks on this album is the Kanye West produced, “Brooklyn We Go Hard,” which samples the song “Shove It,” by Santogold (she also drops a third verse on this.) and has Jay-z dropping two verses. “I father, I Brooklyn Dodger them / I Jack, I Rob, I sin / Awww man, I’m Jackie Robinson / Except when I run base, I dodge the pen.” This is the Jigga man at his finest. “Letter to B.I.G” has Jadakiss paying homage to his old label mate as Faith Evans lends her voice as well.
“Notorious” is a solid soundtrack album, mixing up the old with the new and a few remixes in between. Add this to the already large collection of Biggie albums that were released after his death.
Brooklyn We Go Hard
One More Chance
Tags: album
