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The King & I (2017)

Where the lyrics of The King & I take you, and where it was really made.

Released twenty years after The Notorious B.I.G. died, the album was built partly from his old demos and verses recorded earlier, and it drew mostly mixed reviews.

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Album story

Overview

• The King & I is a collaborative album by American singer Faith Evans and the late rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
• Released by Rhino Entertainment on May 19, 2017.
• Appearances on the album include Snoop Dogg, Mama Wallace, and Jamal Woolard, who played B.I.G. in film.
• Album came out about 20 years after the rapper's death.
• Several tracks use rapper verses taken from earlier recordings, and the sample credits list the original sources.

Background

• Evans came up with the idea while thinking about Natalie Cole's cover of "Unforgettable", which used the voice of her late father Nat King Cole.
• Bad Boy Records had kept several Biggie demos, which gave enough material to continue his work.
• Members of Junior M.A.F.I.A. and Lil' Kim also appear on the record.
• Evans said she wanted to respect the work of her late husband.

Recording

• Verses on most tracks come from older recordings, and the credits name the source track for each one.
• Some verses come from unreleased reference tracks made for Lil' Kim songs.
• Multiple producers worked on the album, and the credits mark co-producers.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · fr.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), known as the Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper and songwriter from Brooklyn, New York City.
• He was raised by his mother, Voletta Wallace, after his father left the family when he was about three.
• He first gained attention through a 1991 demo tape, which was featured in The Source magazine's "Unsigned Hype" section in 1992.
• In 1993 he became the first artist signed to Sean Combs's Bad Boy Records, which Combs founded after leaving Uptown Records.

Career

• Rooted in East Coast hip-hop and gangsta rap, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time.
• His debut album Ready to Die (1994) brought East Coast hip-hop back to prominence and produced the singles "Juicy", "Big Poppa", and "One More Chance".
• In 1995 he was named Rap Artist of the Year at the Billboard Awards and released Conspiracy with his group Junior M.A.F.I.A.
• He was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, at age 24, six months after Tupac Shakur's murder.
• His posthumous album Life After Death (1997) debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produced the Hot 100 number-one singles "Hypnotize" and "Mo Money Mo Problems".
• Later posthumous albums include Born Again (1999), Duets: The Final Chapter (2005), and The King & I with Faith Evans (2017).
• He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Critics gave the album generally mixed reviews.
• Metacritic average of 48 out of 100 based on 10 reviews.
• HipHopDX critic Jesse Fairfax called it a worthwhile concept that once deserved to see the light of day, but said excessive filler and intermissions dulled its shine.
• The Guardian's Hannah J. Davis wrote that Evans moves from a poignant duet to a Juicy-style sexathon alongside The Notorious B.I.G., though it lacks improvisation and cohesion.
• AllMusic editor Andy Kellman felt that constant recycling and the quantity of other voices took away from some of Evans's best performances.
• Pitchfork editor Evan Rytlewski called it yet another gangly, recycled posthumous album of verses, while saying the muse is solid.
• Spin critic Brian Josephs called it an unconvincing Biggie tribute and said it turned a 72-minute project into a poshly produced endurance contest.
• The Observer's Damien Morris wrote that the greatest rapper of all time is propped up in the corner of each track instead of meeting Evans as an equal.

Records

• Debuted at number 65 on the Billboard 200 with 9,000 album-equivalent units.
• By February 2018, it had sold 24,000 copies in the United States.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• The album came out about 20 years after the rapper died, and the French article cites this timing.
• Bad Boy Records had kept several of Biggie's demos, which the French article says made it possible to continue his work.
• Some Biggie verses are taken from an unreleased reference track made for a Lil' Kim song.
• A remix of the single When We Party by Matoma came out in May.
• The Italian track list includes two bonus tracks, Body Language and My B.

Sources: fr.wikipedia.org · it.wikipedia.org

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