Since Notorious spent the time to tell us about Arizona Ron, he can later spit: As soon as she hit the door we start blastin I saw her brains hit the floor, Ron laughin, I swear to God Notorious is explaining to us why he’s friends with Ron and more importantly, why he wants Ron to join him on this mission. Spending the time to describe characters is something really important in these stories. Big L does something in these few bars that Notorious spends a whole verse (18 bars) doing in Niggas Bleed where we’re introduced to Arizona Ron and by proxy, the depths of Notorious’ character : Nothing to lose, tattooed around his gun woundsĮverything to gain, embedded in his brainĪnd me I feel the same for this money and diamonds It’s the stream of conscious raps that makes these stories fun to listen to. Often, the most boring shit is the actual action. The deviation from simply describing all the events in the song in chronological order. This is what makes these stories interesting, to me. “Oh, I didn’t recognise you with your hat down Lookin like he can’t wait to start sprayin shit up Ice-grill, lookin like he had a license to killĪnd he had somebody else with ’em playin the cup You can read this like a regular paragraph almost! Really linear storytelling the whole song until L hits a little patch where he starts describing a character: “I just seen Mike and Ben with your wife and a friend and they just got a room in the Holiday Inn”. I called back on the cell, it’s Coley mad as hell, he told me to listen well as he started to yell. Then I got a beep, my voice is harsh, barely can speak. So I jumped in the jeep, stash the heat under the seat. Now I’m ready for sleep but first I want spaghetti to eat in this good Italian restaurant right up the street. Hey yo, I just left the studio, and it’s about 2 in the morn I just finished doing a song. But instead of reading it as lyrics, why not look at these bars in paragraph form. Take a look at Big L’s opening bars from The Heist. What seperates a song like Niggas Bleed from Big L’s The Heist (also a great song, btw) to me, it’s the fact that BIG doesn’t tell a linear story at all and the narrative is told with just enough information at each interval to keep the plot moving. No story has been told so vividly (that I’ve heard) and with such authority. To me, Niggas Bleed is the best song ever made.
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