Rap listeners had been busily copping and sharing Biggie exclusives from a steady stream of mixtapes, freestyles and unfinished cuts dating back to 1993, but those traveled in rarefied circles, and the idea of a studio album bringing this stuff to the masses was enticing. Initial reports promised a sort of Biggie bildungsroman, pairing narration from Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace with unheard demos and unreleased material. Somewhere in there came the announcement for Born Again. It was clear that whatever Puff thought of the grief process, he didn’t see much need to keep it behind closed doors. The album included the less-heralded, equally maudlin tribute, “We’ll Always Love Big Poppa.” In the video, baby-faced Jadakiss, Sheek Louch, and Styles P poured their hearts out to their dead friend, while Puff Daddy stood behind them, pointing meaningfully at the camera. Puff decked them in shiny suits and dropped them in front of Hype Williams’ fish-eye lens, where they looked about as comfortable as middle schoolers stranded at prom. The following year, he released the debut album from The Lox, a hardheaded trio of Yonkers rappers with a deafening street buzz. Its biggest single was his Police-sampling, “I’ll Fly Away”-interpolating “I’ll Be Missing You,” a maudlin tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. Puffy's solo album, long in the works, was retitled No Way Out from working title Hell Up In Harlem and overhauled after Biggie’s death, emerging full of gothic dread and intimations of ready-to-die-ness. In the two years since Biggie’s death, his mentor and corporate svengali Puff Daddy had already found several ingenious ways to siphon cash and attention from his dead protégé.
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