March of Paradigms

abelson:

#471: notorious b.i.g. - the warning (1994)

while he warms himself up, the notorious b.i.g. casually fits fourteen rhymes (this, six, morning, dawning, yawning, eye, why, pop, shop, spot, plot, paper, neighbor and caper) into the song’s first two sentences. and when he really gets going, corridor, coroner, and florida spill out in the same breath, along with gorgeous threats in near-imabic pentameter: “there’s gonna be a lot of slow singing/ and flower bringing/ if my burgular alarm starts ringing.”

he’s so generous he even shows poor puff daddy voicing the song’s second character, though the vocals are still the notorious b.i.g.’s, just distorted a bit. (puffy does get his voice into the skit that plays at the end of the song’s album version: he’s a failed assassin whose last words are, “oh shit.”)

but the best thing about the song, the best by far, is that it’s built around a sample of isaac hayes doing burt bacharach and hal david’s walk on by, a song about crying. the song goes, “foolish pride is all that i have left,” which makes this video’s nudity and violence look a lot more interesting.

It’s 5:46a somewhere and Abelson is only getting started.