Review : Ready To Die – or Ready To Reborn by Re:Imagine @Xoyo

By Timothée Chataux • On Reviews , ,

When I said to myself, “alright let’s go to this event, it should be fun”, I thought it would be a sym­phony orches­tra, where people are quiet, com­fort­ably seated, and just appre­ci­at­ing the musi­cians try­ing their hand at one of the greatest hip hop album ever.

Let’s be hon­est, it was not like this AT ALL.

BIG 1 The loc­a­tion should have giv­en me some hints. Xoyo is more known as a night club than an opera.

Any­way, when I came here the crowd was already massive around the stage. 16 pieces of orches­tra, which included 3 viol­ins, sur­roun­ded 3 rap­pers and 1 sing­er. The ambi­ance was highly charged, far from the sym­phony con­cert.

Dur­ing more than one hour, the entire Biggie’s album has been revis­ited. The rap­pers were tak­ing over from each ones to per­form while musi­cians were bring­ing Ready To Die back to life.

First let’s talk about the rap­pers and the sing­er. The 3 rap­pers had their own flow but always fit with the Biggie’s one, which was not an easy job. The sing­er per­formed on the sung parts. Hav­ing dif­fer­ent per­formers was def­in­itely a great idea, by bring­ing diversity to the show. The tracks “The What” or “One More Chance” are good examples.

Even if this album has some crazy beats like “Juice” and “Big Poppa”, a lot of them sound like boom bap beats. I thought it would be dif­fi­cult to make this kind of beat attract­ive for an orches­tra. Once again I was com­pletely wrong. In fact, the instru­ment­als brought a new dimen­sion to the album. The way you listen to the album at home is way dif­fer­ent from the live per­form­ance. You are trans­por­ted by the musi­cians which give you a dif­fer­ent vis­ion. Each track is unique, has its own iden­tity. We can pass from fest­ive tracks like “Me and My Bitch” to ser­i­ous ones like “Sui­cid­al Thoughts”.

Spe­cial men­tion to “Machine Gun Funk” and the viol­ins on “Juice”.

Set­l­ist : The whole Ready to Die album – in dis­order

  • Things Done Changed
  • Gimme the loot
  • Machine Gun Funk
  • Warn­ing
  • Ready to Die
  • One More Chance
  • The What
  • Juicy
  • Every­day Struggle
  • Me & My Bitch
  • Big Poppa
  • Respect
  • Friend of Mine
  • Unbe­liev­able
  • Sui­cid­al Thoughts

BIG 2BIG 3

Don’t miss out their next shows in Lon­don ! Oth­er clas­sic albums will be reviewed by these guys.

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Timothée Chataux

Com­ing from Par­is and inter­ested in French & US Hip Hop top­ics. I’m writ­ting about any rel­ev­ant sub­jects for I am Hip Hop magazine. You only know MC Sol­aar ? My mis­sion is to show you many more.

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About Timothée Chataux

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Coming from Paris and interested in French & US Hip Hop topics. I'm writting about any relevant subjects for I am Hip Hop magazine. You only know MC Solaar ? My mission is to show you many more.